The New Deal's National Industrial Recovery and Wagner Acts of 1933-34 countered productivity growth by fostering monopolies and higher wages. Not until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 allowed firing of sit-down strikers did recovery from the Depression actually begin. The 1939 elimination of the fiercely controversial undistributed profits tax, too, contributed enormously to the industrial muscle developed through the Eisenhower years.
Today our productivity growth lags most emerging nations. CEOs with engineering degrees are virtually extinct, and, as exclaimed in the Seattle Times on Boeing and the Wall Street Journal on Lockheed, replacing factory-floor engineers is tough. Minimizing long term inflation with stable central banks being all The Federal Reserve can do, "aggregate demand" subsidies once again aren't overcoming the adverse impacts of various legislations on corporations.
Bottom line: engineers and factories are the only way for getting jobs back. In addition to collective bargaining and tax reforms, back-to-basics (all day, all grades), E-Verify, re-skilling of unemployeds, flexible robotics and two-year engineering prep programs at universities like Western Washington University are what it will take.
Also, Congressional pandering must go and wild salmon come back. U.S. Senators appointed by state legislatures would build much better budgets and just one marine biologist deputy sheriff and advanced microalgae habitat reconnaissance could do wonders for our fish!
Terry Montonye
Bellingham
