You probably know him as the star of the hit Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs,” a show which chronicled a day in the life of the “hardworking men and women, who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us.”
Recently, however, he has sparked some buzz in the political sphere because of a letter he wrote to Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney about the need for a renewed appreciation in America for hard work and skilled labor.
In particular, Rowe’s letter was about the need to mend the systemic emotional disconnect many Americans have with jobs that society considers to be undesirable, and well, dirty.
Below is an excerpt of the letter but I encourage you to read the entire thing, which can be found here.
Certainly, we need more jobs, and you were clear about that in Tampa. But the Skills Gap proves that we need something else too. We need people who see opportunity where opportunity exists. We need enthusiasm for careers that have been overlooked and underappreciated by society at large. We need to have a really big national conversation about what we value in the workforce, and if I can be of help to you in that regard, I am at your service – assuming of course, you find yourself in a new address early next year.
To be clear, mikeroweWORKS has no political agenda. I am not an apologist for Organized Labor or for Management. mikeroweWORKS is concerned only with encouraging a larger appreciation for skilled labor, and supporting those kids who are willing to learn a skill.
After posting the letter on his website, mikeroweWORKS.com, word eventually spread to the Romney campaign and the newly minted Republican nominee decided to give it a read.
Twitchy has documented quite well how the letter went from Rowe’s website, to the twittersphere, blogosphere, and eventually, into the hands of Mitt Romney.
After receiving news that Romney had indeed read the letter, Rowe tweeted his reaction:
Rowe’s letter underscored a very real problem in the American workforce. Now that it has been heard by Romney, it might just get the attention it deserves.
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Comments
It has been clear for a long time we need a return to the vocational schools. As it is now, we are trying to train everyone for college and leaving the vocational training to the career colleges. That is a waste of time and money.
Hemmingsblog did a piece a while ago regarding the need to bring back shop classes to our high schools:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2012/07/27/bring-back-shop-class-series-comes-to-hershey/
One observation that came up in the comments there (and in a later open discussion entry that linked back to it) was that a lot of would-be employers were frustrated with finding even Mechanical Engineering and Automotive Tech graduates who simply did not know how to work with their hands. Physically building things from scratch, understanding the difference between something drawn in CAD or printed on paper and what it will be in reality, adaptive resourcefulness – these are the kinds of skills kids used to learn, well, as kids, but that are now foreign.
Anecdotal, but true story. When I began Engineering school as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin in 1960-61 we had to take 3 full 18 week semester courses in machine shop, metal working, and welding. When asked the professor(s) would respond that you can’t design things if you can’t relate to building them. Last time I took an Engineering Extension course in Madison in the late 1990’s, an instructor, who coincidently had been in school with me, told me that the University long ago dropped that requirement. Too bad.
I get it they don’t require India ink & pencil drafting with manual tools anymore, what with Autodesk AutoCAD and Bentley Microstation available. But had I not had skilled trades experience and training as well as college, I’d not have known squat really.
In a way that “punishment” for 3+ semesters taught us to be v-e-r-y patient and careful in our work …one wobble of the quill pen at the finish of a large isometric drawing would wreck all of it as the nasty ink dribbled across the paper.
These are often great paying professions and they don’t take four years of debt and non earning to get there. I am a big fan of Mike Rowe’s letter and I am glad Mitt Romney had the common sense to show case it. Kudos for his staff for tipping him off about it. I posted it too.
Expecting – ahem – non-motivated members of society to work at actual skilled (or unskilled) labor of any sort is – ahem – racist.
You just wait and see.
In a past life, I worked in an IT department for a county government. One of the system managers was an electrical engineer. We were laughing one day when we discovered that one of the county electricians made more than the EE. Of course the electrician had about 900 years of service, but still….
OMG . You made my day. I just love that guy-he is everything American men used to be .
I could think of a few jobs i would have him do.
yes yes that is sexist racist ageist but he is gorgeous.
No one, but no one, appreciates the skill of a plumber until you’ve had a clogged toilet discharge pipe going out to the street sewer line or the septic tank.
Yeah, that computer techie is pretty important in getting/keeping the internet coming into your house.
But sometimes it’s even more important to make sure things flow out of the house.
Aren’t the skilled labor jobs which require hard work, yet have a good pay rate disappearing ever more rapidly? And, aren’t they being replaced by ones which call for unskilled labor, run you into the ground (and, please, please, smile while we squeeze every ounce of energy out of you), and pay at minimum wage or slightly above? Look to our national corporate culture, or should I more accurately state the multi-national corporate culture that exists within our country. We’ve sold the farm. Now, we complain about the food, the prices, the lack of jobs, and the pay.
Uh, no.
I live in Western PA and if you have a welder’s certificate you can get a job at easily over $50,000 tomorrow. More if you have experience.
If you are a licensed truck driver, there are many places in the country (primarily the Dakotas) where you have a job waiting for you.
Just read the articles about the booms in the Marcellus Shale and the Baaken oil deposits. They are hurting for experienced workers.
But you know, you have to WORK.
I have a cousin who lives in SE Ohio, who works as a “boilermaker” (building water towers, chemical tanks, etc.). It pays very, very well, the only requirements being:
1 – Know how to weld.
2 – Be willing to work your ass off.
3 – Accept that it’s inherently a damned dangerous job.
Since well before the automobile put the buggy-whip industry on the skids, innovators have been in the business of finding ways to do jobs more efficiently, including ways that allow less-skilled workers to do them.
It’s the responsibility of the worker to stay ahead of that curve, by maintaining and expanding their skill set to provide value worthy of their hire … including knowing when to fold ’em and move on to another venue or skill to keep their income stream healthy.
Don’t just blame this on the evil rich guys … you can blame this on the Progressive conventional wisdom of workers as a protected class, absolved of the responsibility to maintain their value in the marketplace because they are not seen as the Best and Brightest who are to be trusted with such responsibility on their behalf.
One example: a lot of unionized skilled tradesmen have let their union leaders drive the price of their services so high, employers now have the incentive to make investments in equipment and technology that reduces the skill level necessary to do the tasks at hand.
They outsourced their responsibility to define and enforce their value to others whose interest was simply in driving the price up, without regard to value delivered. They chose poorly.
That being said, there are still serious shortages of skilled tradesmen to work in the areas where employers can’t leverage equipment and technology to reduce the skill level … and those shortages are what Mike Rowe is addressing.
Those shortages are in part a result of another piece of Progressive conventional wisdom: the idea that educational/professional credentials and other mere appearances of intellect are equivalent to intellect itself, and that the level of intellect is proportional to the presence of these mere appearances.
This belief is what has set the pecking order of our society with respect to credibility … highly-credentialed idiocy gets respect, while common sense and hard-won experience does not. As a result, people (who strongly seek respect as individual members of the species) have been discouraged from “getting their hands dirty”.
I don’t know if this really happened or is just an urban legend. But this is how I heard the story:
Milton Friedman once visited a Latin American country that was engaged in a Keyensian-like government funded infrastructure “stimulus” program. When he toured the job site, he was surprised to see most of the workers manually using shovels to move the dirt rather than using bulldozers, excavaters, etc. He told the project manager that if he allowed the workers to use modern technology it would lower the project’s overall costs, shorten the time to complete the project, and consequently, would be a much more efficient use of resources.
The project manager, a government empployee, said he wasn’t interested in efficiency. He said the government’s primary goal was to create a program to supply more jobs to people who needed them.
Freidman said, “then why don’t you take their shovels away and givem them spoons”?
To me it seems like the entire attack against our society started back in the 70s when everyone started complaining about ‘rights’. Many of the complaints had (or have) a seed of truth within, but the complaints have become outrageous: consider PETA as an example. Most people I know do not consider forcing a chicken to live in a cage as torture, they just want to eat chickens – or let them lay a few eggs first, and then eat them.
Our currant crop of liberal progressives are advancing the notion that a person has a ‘right’ to food, housing, medical care, toys and comfort — all without the expenditure of serious effort.
What I hear Mike Rowe saying is that WORK IS HONOURABLE; not just work that includes a Brooks Brothers suit – but all work. America has lost it’s appreciation for the work ethic, being puffed up with their elitist attitudes of empty education without practical functionality. If this country has the benefit to experience another great crash like we did eighty years ago, then we will learn again the honour of sweating 10 hours a day to prosper ourselves. Those whining about ‘rights’ will become very hungry and PETA will come to mean People Eating Tasty Animals at such a national adventure as I described.
According to Forbes, these are 10 Disappearing Middle-Class Jobs:
14% Travel Agents
14.4% Vocational Ed Middle School Teachers
15.9% Broadcast News Analysts
18.4% Agricultural Engineers
18.7% Transit and Rail Police
22.9% Law Clerks
31% Proofreaders and Copy Markers
31.4% Mathematical Technicians
32.7% Advertising and Promotions Managers
34.2% Compensation and Benefits Managers
(Amount each of these has declined over a five-year period).
http://www.forbes.com/2011/06/23/middle-class-jobs-disappearing-economy_slide.html
According to 24/7 Wall St., the following is the projected decline, between 2010-2020, of these ten jobs:
14% Pump System Operators, refinery operators and Gaugers
14.7% Desktop Publishers
15.9% Prepress Technicians and Workers
15.9% Coil Winders, Tapers and Finishers
16.2% Textile Machine Setters, Operators and Tenders
17.9% Semiconductor Processors
22% Communication Equipment Operators
23.1% Shoe and Leather Workers
25.8% Sewing Machine Operators
26.4% Postal Service Workers
http://247wallst.com/2012/08/29/americas-10-disappearing-jobs/
It also is no secret that major retailers, restaurant chains, grocery chains, and others have adopted a policy of having a core of full-time workers with all the rest being part-time. Of course, there’s always health care which is projected to have a significant increase in the years ahead.
A lawyer arrives at his office one morning to find his bathroom flooded. He calls in a plumber who spends an hour fixing the problem and presents to the lawyer a $250 bill for services “$250 for one hour! I only get $150 per hour myself!” complains the lawyer. “Yeah,” replies the plumber, “that’s all I could get when I was a lawyer.”
I can’t remember who it was, but I remember reading the true story of a gay writer who is staying in Europe on a hot summer weekend with his hunky HVAC repairman lover and a bunch of snobby literary friends.
They are all talking down to the HVAC guy and treating him like dirt until the air conditioning breaks down and they are all miserable.
The HVAC guy fixes it and is suddenly like some kind of exotic god to them.
LukeHandCool (who wanted to take the 1-1/2 year long electrician program at a technical-trade school downtown starting this month, but his buddy at work balked. Five hours a day, finishing at noon. We could’ve done it and had plenty of time to get to our regular job. I’ll work on him and maybe next year we’ll do it. Luke is too shy to embark on this alone. So, he’ll just settle for a couple more online accounting classes this fall).
Luke, Henry would like to see you in his office at 11 am Tuesday to discuss the roots of your habit of referring to yourself in the third person. Henry suspects there may be an actual third person careening around in there, possibly more.
It was that class I took.
“I Am He: Giving Voice To Our Underrepresented Selves in a First-Person Singular Overrepresented World.”
Are you… the walrus?
How bad is it? Community colleges and manufacturers have teemed up with a credential for skilled labor. The starting point? Teaching high school grads the need to show up on time and to take instruction without displaying an attitude.
Ain’t that the truth.
With today’s kids that would be a four year course.
And, yes, remember to tuck in your shirt and tie your shoelaces!
Don’t forget pulling up your pants and wearing a belt if they won’t stay up…
Without skilled labor, this nation would still be, The Original 13 (or is it 57) Colonies!
Sorry mr. sissy boy, THEY DID BUILD IT!
I’m not sure if you mentioned it, but the whole story is that Rowe sent the same letter to Obama when he first took office.
He never got a response.
And it’s not like Mr. Obama is unaware of the Discovery Channel … He actually submitted a challenge to “Mythbusters” that made it into a show.
The myth was busted … may that be a sign of what is to come for the one who submitted it.
Government workforce training programs are just slush funds for unions, used as a bargaining chip for other concessions from liberals.
Of course, the GOP has intentions to expand legal immigration because they believe Americans don’t have all the necessary tools to build that.
We need economic growth, everything else will fall in place for those that see opportunity and seek necessary skillz.
As someone who has spent my life earning my living with my hands , now as an upholsterer , it amuses me to give an estimate to someone making $50k + , much higher for a dual income couple , that dickers over $ 50 -100 , totally clueless as to what is involved in doing the job. If I were to reciprocate and evaluate their jobs in many cases what they do has little value in my world but is usually involved with serving a dubious system.
What an amazing letter. It is so true. This is how I was raised, it’s how almost anyone I can think of in my generation (I’m 24) was raised.
Our parents called it menial labor, they said “I’m not raising you to be a [blank].”
But it’s the “Dirty” jobs that hold society together.
It’s not just liberals that bought into the dream of every child going to college. It goes so far beyond that. We started treating hard & dirty work as lesser work & those workers as less intelligent, resourceful, & successful.
We shouldn’t take this as a sign that somehow we have to regress as a society, go back to the “good old days,” but it is time for a cultural shift. We need to respect & value hard work.
Now hopefully we can take this message through to November & beyond.
This note must have moved Romney deeply as he sold out the conservatives in the party on Obama/RomneyCare only a week after accepting the nomination. Well, don’t worry. You can get him next time by packing the convention with conservative delegates. Oh, wait, that won’t work either.
WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING FROM A MASSACHUSETTS REPUBLICAN?
Don’t blame Romney. This is just what Weasel-RINOS do.
Romney Reneges on Promise to Fully Repeal Obamacare
What else will he renege on by the end of the campaign? Can you say “Obama-Lite”?
YOU HAVE BEEN PLAYED!
I’m glad Romney made that statement at this time. Now I’m saved the trouble of spending two months volunteering at Rep headquarters to get him elected.
How anyone could believe that the man whose primary accomplishment in his last office was universal health coverage for his entire state would overturn the same program on a national level eludes me completely.
Ron Paul looks better every day.
Obama wants to send college students into long term debt, while enriching his Marxist prof buddies. What does college really provide? Sure there are the science degrees, but what about all the party schools, and party degrees?
Put kids on a skilled labor path in their last three years of high school, especially if they are not science degree bound. They will learn more skill and ethics in a real work place than struggling through their last three years of high school, being mocked and disdained by college bound brats.
But don’t keep funding degree mill schmucks, that pick up on the Obama type funding that is sending government funds to colleges, assuming these institutions will churn out more liberals.
http://www.wwltv.com/news/Former-state-senator-running-fraudelent-school-from-behind-bars.html
During the Primaries, we Reagan Tea party Conservatives warned the voters about Romney’s progressive GOP RINO record and alliance. He says he will do this and that, ie; repeal Obamacare, etc, but if you look at his record and policies as Gov of Mass., you will see the opposite of what he says, progressive RINO cronyism, just like with Obama.
What we warned about Romney is now coming to fruition, to light.
Article- “Romney: I’ll Keep Parts of Obamacare”
NewsMax – Sunday, 09 Sep 2012
quote-
“Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has called for scrapping President Barack Obama’s 2010 U.S. healthcare law, said in remarks aired on Sunday that he likes key parts of “Obamacare” despite his party’s loathing of it and wants to retain them.
Romney, who faces Obama in the Nov. 6 election, has vowed throughout the campaign to repeal and replace the Obama healthcare law. But asked about the Obama healthcare law on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Romney said, “Well, I’m not getting rid of all of healthcare reform.” unquote
The Primary GOP base Republican voters were are naive and or just too blind to see, let alone acknowledge the truth about the liberal progressive RINOism that has all but turned the Republican politicians like Romney and Boehner and into liberal Democrats, against We the People.
This is the last straw for us Reagan Conservatives in and of the Tea Party.. I will be writing in a candidate, and in fact, I will start a national write-in campaign against both Romney and Obama.
Don’t point out the obvious truth around hear.
Some folks here can’t handle the truth!
I remember having this thought: The problem with Romney is that he will try to make 0bamacare work.
If people don’t have health insurance because they simply can’t afford it because of existing conditions, then yes, have a high risk pool for them, and help out extreme cases. Don’t overhaul the whole system because of a few.
Too many states have health care mandates, which require all covered to have certain things in their policies. This makes it very difficult to have catastrophic insurance.
When will we loosen the grip of doctors on who gets to practice medicine? In the U.K. being a doctor is an undergraduate degree. We train military medics to do some pretty serious stuff in the field. Nurse practitioners could do a whole lot more. The list goes on.
When will be disconnect health insurance from employment? A start would be taxing the benefit as income.
A write-in? That might not be a good idea. A third political party established and viable for 2014 and 2016? That might be the solution to one of our national problems?
You’ve got the Dems who believe in just about everything, so that means they believe in very little. And, the Repubs are much like we believe in . . . Oh, wait a minute. That was last year’s candidate, or the candidate four years ago; what’s the current candidate believe?
Having a political party with a core platform that doesn’t get revised for each and every candidate might sound attractive, I’m not sure it’s feasible. Even so, would it be sustainable?
We’ve two choices come November 6, Romney or Obama. All that has passed before no longer matters. A vote for Obama is a vote for Obama. A refusal to vote is a vote for Obama. A write-in vote is a vote for Obama. A vote for Romney is a vote against Obama.
What a President Romney might do is at least two bridges down the road. Let’s cross the first bridge first.
Hogwash. A vote for any candidate is just that. If I vote for a third party candidate, my vote is not tallied under Barack Obama’s column. (Setting aside for the moment the utter corruption of our electoral system.)
These are scare tactics, designed to limit the choices voters have. They don’t work with me.
Romney is obviously running scared. That this is his response to some discouraging polls says everything I need to know about him…he’s a triangulating weasel just like the rest of them.
Like it or not there are only two candidates who can win. Obama and Romney. A vote for anyone else is akin to a spoiled three year old threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue and passes out.
Concern troll is concerned.
At least try to stay on topic…
“If I vote for a third party candidate, my vote is not tallied under Barack Obama’s column.”
And your nose will be lying on the floor, and your bloody face will have a spiteful gaze upon it as it contemplates that nose.
You forget that we can elect a Congress that will “persuade” Mr. Romney to repeal Obamacare … and that I can read the article myself. We can debate the wisdom of eliminating the pre-existing condition requirements, but what Mr. Romney is talking about here is more like “repeal and replace” than “keeping Obamacare”.
Just like creeper, you forget that we can elect a Congress that will “persuade” Mr. Romney to repeal Obamacare … and that I can read the article myself. We can debate the wisdom of eliminating the pre-existing condition requirements, but what Mr. Romney is talking about here is more like “repeal and replace” than “keeping Obamacare”.
Let’s not cut off our noses to spite our faces … Romney isn’t perfect, but an Obama re-election is the road to nowhere.
There’s a reason our youngest son decided to go to welding school before college – now he can attend the college of his choice with serious cash in hand and zero financial stress.
I had a handy-man/builder for years. He became a friend. I recall him telling me one day how satisfying it was to scope a job, maybe do some design (our screen porch), solve some problems and build something. And to do it on his schedule, without a Supervisor looking over his shoulder. His son is in graduate school in Aero Engineering, and his daughter was in college in some soft curriculum or other. I doubt either will have a more satisfying life than Dad.
I know another man who designs and builds irrigation systems. He also farms, plows snow, and does any odd job that comes along during the slow season. He works on his own schedule and answers to no clock, other than his internal one and the seasons. He can figure out any problem, and build most anything. He just knows a lot of useful stuff.
I admire both of these men greatly for their skill and ability to solve every day problems, and build things of value. Then there is my BA and MS, and I wonder of what earthly value they have been in my life. I earned them in my late 30s after I had been in my career for several years, and often wondered if I was an improved person as a result. Never have resolved the question.
The other problem that doesn’t get much talk from RnR is the fact that the US Government, for at least the last 4 years, has stifled job creation by over regulation, bad regulation and poorly administered regulation over businesses.
Before cutting anyone’s taxes, cut some regulations. Make sure businesses can hire (and fire) employees without penalty and that there are no uncertainties in regulations and how they are enforced.
Without jobs, cutting benefits and lowering taxes won’t make the recovery come as soon as rolling back the anti business attitude that is prevalent in Government.
This should happen across the board in every industry or service regardless of whether it’s dominated by multi billion dollar companies or Ma and Pa’s.
Too many think that 6 months after RnR get in, we’ll be on the road to recovery. It’s easier to fire people than hire them and it will take a lot of positive business indicators for folks to feel confident enough to risk hiring.
Meanwhile everyone thinks that cutting benefits is some sort of panacea to the financial problems.
Well it could but the social costs are tremendous and do you all want to pay the price of that? There are folks who have no income and depend solely on the few benefits that they receive for survival. yeah we all hear about the welfare queens and people on food stamps buying candy bars but that’s just silly. The majority of folks who have those benefits qualified due to their poor financial status and though many could go back to work, the jobs aren’t there and won’t be for awhile.
Mike’s thinking long term, which is okay but we have to realize that the next 4 years will be very tricky.
We are skirting the edge of disaster and a bad move could put us over with no coming back.
“Hard work?” You must be kidding. This is a generation of black and white kids who are absolute narcissists.
Narcissists these days all want to be famous: rapper, mass murderer, hit-man (or woman), reality show star, etc. These are people only willing to start at the top.
Perhaps when they’re in their late 30s, and the ‘dream’ is dead, they may pursue training for job skills ‘beneath their station.’
But now? Don’t count on it. That’s why illegal aliens have so much work opportunity: they’re willing to do the work black and white kids in the US won’t do.
It’s time to shut off the entitlement spigot.
The fundamentals of work are often learned on those first jobs. I got my college degree, but built a (very) small business doing a trade I learned in my college years, but separately from college. Discipline and incentive is the issue.
The example unions set is so contrary to learning to hustle to get work and complete it. Unions say “give us what we want, or we will harm your company”. Public unions say they will harm the politician and the kids (for teachers). Most of my pay raises were because I became faster and better.
But Obama says you did not build that … join the union, never let the boss push you around. Teach the boss “he is not the boss of you” with slow downs or strikes if need be. Not personal ambition, but “workers of the world unite .. in mediocrity”.
I concur with many of the comments on this thread, but feel I must make my own comments.
I am a degreed Engineer, with an MBA and a bunch of other letters all mashed up. I have a great job in Europe, and live a life I could only dream of in my youth.
But I got here through 11 years of night school, working jobs where I got dirty because I had mouths to feed. My family’s blue collar tradition goes back to before the Industrial Age, including a grandfather who was a Master Pattern Maker – a job which almost doesn’t exist any more. I grew up making things work because there wasn’t always money to buy things new. It’s a habit I carry to this very day, and I pride myself on being able to take off my tie and actually work.
I once ran a plant where I had a 70-year-old fabricator, who could make dang near anything. I would come to him with my crazy ideas, and he would find a way to make it work. Together, we did things the company thought impossible. We had our share of blowups, and he once told me to “get the f*@& out of here, and let me figure it out…sir”. He came back later and apologized saying “you understand what I do better than any of the other f*@&ers in Maintenance”.
Two lessons here: 1) He was 70 years old!!!! and 2) the Maintenance team couldn’t do what he could. There’s the problem. We are so chock full of knowledge that we don’t know how to do things any more.
My son could be a brilliant engineer, but he recently asked if I would mind if he became a great machinist because he likes to work with his hands. Hell no! Go make $100K a year! We need people like my son, who can put the engineer’s vision to reality. Not better or worse, but equal partners in the execution of creative progress. Give ’em hell, son!
The thing is this – I believe Romney gets this, and Obama doesn’t. Obama simply can’t. He’s never had to work for any length of time in the private sector, and his Ivy League education has put him in a bubble away from reality. “He couldn’t work 3rd shift at a Dairy Queen”.
I always thought Mike Rowe would make a great president. Besides having different perspective, he would bring new meaning to the term “a politician who gets his hands dirty.” Think of all the puns that could be made. 🙂
I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
Mike Rowe seems like a great guy and its obvious that America needs a shot in the arm after all the division and bashing of markets and corporations by BHO.
Mike could fill this need, Sarah too.
Romney tour of America is great idea, to highlight what’s working and identify problem areas and needs, although visits from government officials many time disrupts commerce, maybe they could leverage private sector “cash mobs” to tour local businesses and offset.
This blog in its support for Newt attacked Mr. Santorum, (Santorum was describing his US manufacturing policy) who is in support for those that “work with their hands.”
While the attack was foisted upon the “Obama Is A Snob comment” and parlayed to mean he was anti-higher education.
While Newt has stated he would require those receiving the 99 weeks of unemployment to work to continue receiving it, this is an effort to allow corporations to expand without making a commitment to hire while the taxpayer foots the social safety net bill.
This is nothing new, Japan has a temporary workforce of 20 million who’s lifestyle (housing, food, education) is subsidized by gubmnt.
Hey here’s an idea, let’s simply END paying people not to work for years instead of trying to be more like Japan.
Additionally, if we are going lower taxes for corporations to spur economic growth and taxpayer funded “workforce training initiatives” (slush fund, that drives down wages for corps looking to hire), let’s make sure those corporation are not foreign entities like China
China ups pace of US corporate raids
02 Apr 2012
Chinese conglomerates are swooping on distressed US companies in record numbers and often paying twice their domestic value.
http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2012-04-02/china-ups-pace-of-us-corporate-raids
I’ve also seen liberals destroy a states corporate and small businesses and then Israel stepped in to raid those failing corps.
I don’t care if its Ally or Enemy ..let’s make sure “We Built That” means Americans are the ones who benefit not some foreign country who wishes to plunder the US market and taxpayer gifts.
Lastly, Romney said he would take on China, a trade war would be devastating for exports, especially in the non-union south.
A tricky prospect for “Mr. I like grits” .. these businesses would need help in transforming their customer base to maybe serving more domestic needs.
I admire Romney’s effort here but let’s work smart not hard.
You are unhinged.
Romney is about as understanding, and relates to hard working middle class Americans as George Soros does, Warren Buffet does, and all the Wall Street Goldman Sach’s companies do..
His attempt to seem, and to be seen as empathetic is pathetic.
Romney really should stop his pretentiousness, as we are not as dumb as he thinks we are..
This is more to what the real Romney is like, not a middle class working man..
Segmented quotes from the article-
“Mitt Romney is the Dorian Gray of 2012”
By Robert Shrum
“Romney’s image is set in his own stiffness, reflective of his remoteness, and nearly irreparable.”
“This guy (Mitt Romney) is like the Earl in an English period piece who doesn’t understand why everybody doesn’t summer in the south of France. ”
” FDR and JFK were wealthy, but Americans thought they got it and they cared. In contrast, Romney now stands there as of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.”
“No wonder he’s the first presumptive nominee in either party with higher unfavorable than favorable ratings “in the [last] eight presidential primary seasons,”