Why It's Never Your Fault (in even-numbered years):

As the Primary season officially comes to an end tonight, I'd like to take a nostalgic look back at some of this year's greatest hits from PANDER-monium 2008:

"It's not your fault you don't have a well-paying job, it's because of immigration!"

"It's not your fault you got laid off, it's because of NAFTA!"

"It's not your fault oil prices are high, it's because of greedy oil companies and speculators!"

"It's not your fault you're about to have your home foreclosed, you were swindled by your lender!"

I'd like to thank the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and John McCain for six months of top-notch buck-passing none of us will soon forget- at least until 2010. I guess my greatest regret about all of this is that it has to come to an end sometime (five months from now most likely), but why does it really have to? I've gotten quite used to constantly being told that nothing is ever my fault, can't we just make it so that campaign season never ends and I can finally have indefinite absolution for all my actions?

Surely the American public would go for this in a heartbeat, but I do see a potential long-term problem with the concept. We're slowly running out of our most precious political resource: scapegoats. God help the re-election campaigns of those in government when that happens.

But for now let's relish our gluttonous, guilt-free lives and explore the many specious reasons we're not to blame for anything:

Let's start with the outrage du jour, gas prices. According to Hillary Clinton, the high price of oil is not due to soaring demand in places like India and China, and certainly not due to the fact that almost every car-owning person in the United States uses more gasoline then they should (myself notwithstanding) in pickup trucks, SUVs, and high powered sports cars; it's because of commodities traders and oil companies!
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=7354

But Hillary is far from the only politician choosing to grandstand on the matter, her colleagues in the House and Senate have proven that they can sabre-rattle with the best of them!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/business/22oil.html?scp=3&sq=oil%20companies,%20executives,%20congress&st=cse

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121139083084211051.html

What bothers me so much this is that there are plenty of things to scold big oil about in the context of a congressional hearing, but this isn't one of them. Between Congress and the Consumer, oil companies have been painted into a corner- since the Democratic majority came to power in early 2007, Congress has failed to put any semblance of a consistent, goal-oriented energy policy into law. They have neither allowed for expanded domestic exploration projects (which this Foggy Blogger does not support- though credit the Republicans for at least conjuring an idea, seeing as how even a bad idea is better than no idea at all) nor have they made anything other than a very lame and symbolic effort to increase fuel economy requirements of vehicles sold in the US:
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/cafe-standards/?scp=2-b&sq=cafe+standards%2C+congress&st=nyt

So while Congress holds hearings to chastise fish in a barrel like rich oil executives instead of setting real policy, and while us consumers are out there refusing to make the switch to more fuel efficient vehicles, the price of oil will continue to rise. (And don't tell anyone, but we have only ourselves to blame).

The next station on our Whistle-Stop tour of PANDER-monium takes us to the midwest, where NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement, negotiated, enacted, and championed by Bill Clinton) is public enemy number one. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were at one point this year locked into a month-long pissing contest to see who could scapegoat our two largest trading partners (Canada and Mexico) the fastest.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10766009

Despite the fact that NAFTA did pave the way for significant outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to lower-cost Canada and Mexico, NAFTA has been an overwhelming success for our nation's economy, and indeed in Ohio in particular (over 50% of the states exports go to Canada or Mexico, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit). And at least one of the candidates, Barack Obama knows how good it's been for the American Economy:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120459129718608871.html

Back in late February he was involved in a well publicized gaffe in which he tried to assure Canadian diplomats that his protectionist talking points were just a result of him trying to assure the bourgeois voters of Ohio that he is more their comrade than Hillary Clinton could ever be, and that in no way is he gullible enough to believe his own rhetoric.

Or is he? Given Obama's record of unblemished support for farm subsidies (and Ms. Clinton's for that matter) can either candidate truly claim to be anything but staunch trade protectionists? As covered in previous publications of this blog, farm subsidies have long been the main sticking point in every free trade negotiation this nation has ever been a party to. Supporting tax-payer funded farm subsidies is anathema to supporting free trade; to attempt to support both is inherently hypocritical.

Free trade always has winners and losers, and it's unfortunate that we have lost manufacturing jobs in this country, but NAFTA only deserves a small part of the blame. Labor unions must shoulder some responsibility as well. Labor unions have had perhaps the most important role in the development of this nation's middle class since the industrial revolution, but in the era of free trade they have hurt their members more than helped them. By constantly demanding higher wages and better benefits they have priced this nation's blue collar workers out of their own jobs. Can anyone provide a rational argument for an assembly line worker in an auto plant to be making $55,000 per year or more when someone not too far away will do it for less than half that amount?
Of course not, because anyone who would defend paying twice what the competitors do in labor costs is certainly not rational, they are more likely emotional. But fluidity in the employment market should not be shunned, it should be embraced! In fact unemployment in this country has hovered at incredibly low levels (under 5%) for more than 20 years, so there are clearly jobs to be had- provided you are qualified....

The problem is that instead of our elected leaders challenging us, they've coddled us. Instead of telling us the truth, that the jobs now being done in Mexico and China for $2 an hour are beneath us, and that we can do better, they prefer to placate us by making unfulfillable promises that they'll bring them back!

This issue dovetails nicely with another highly publicized scapegoat: immigrants. Immigrants flock here because they will do jobs that most of us refuse to do, like pick lettuce and clean toilets. The vast majority of them do not even have a high school education, let alone a college education and hence low-wage manual labor jobs are the only ones immigrants are qualified to do. So if you're someone who's pissed off because you lost your job to an illegal immigrant with no education, my question to you is why the hell did you choose lettuce-picking as your vocation of choice? Why did you squander the opportunity of growing up in the wealthiest nation on earth, where even the poorest of the poor have access to decent education for free, to clean toilets for minimum wage? Don't we owe it to ourselves- and our parents for that matter- to do something better with our lives? To seize the benefits of living in the land of opportunity and lay an even stronger financial, educational, and social foundation for the next generation?

What our politicians should be doing instead of playing the blame game is encouraging us to attain higher levels of education so we can get jobs that can't be outsourced to low-wage and low-education nations and/or low-wage and low-education immigrants here. One of the drawbacks (among the many advantages) of globalization is that a union job in some factory somewhere is no longer a guaranteed ticket to the middle class like it once was. As a result we all have to embrace the sprit of the American Dream by working hard towards improving our competitiveness as a workforce. No politician will ever be able to guarantee us our jobs, only we can do that... and until we do, we'll keep losing them to low wage immigrants and low wage nations (And shhhhh, can you keep a secret?: We have only ourselves to blame).