Held to answer

Wealth doesn’t always trickle down, but poverty can metastasize in all directions.

People know that. It makes them fearful, which is why so many Americans on this Labor Day are careful to say, “I’m just thankful I have a job.” Never mind if the job serves a useful purpose, or if it pays less than half of what they used to make. Americans are being trained to settle.

After 9/11, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said one of the lessons learned was that if you never visit a bad neighborhood, eventually the bad neighborhood will visit you. As our middle class declines, even visiting a bad neighborhood may not prepare you for the new America.

Friedman’s colleague, Nicholas Kristof, has made a living out of traveling to some of the most destitute places on earth. So it was disappointing to read that he was surprised by what he found on a recent family vacation to Oregon.

“Like everyone in journalism, I had been focused on the debt ceiling debates, but what I saw in Yamhill was a different economic scourge: unemployment. It really puzzles me that 25 million Americans could be unemployed or under-employed, and yet the issue has never really gotten much traction,” Kristof wrote.

At last look, there were 412 comments to his blog on this subject, and many of the posters tried to set him straight. Did he really need to go to Oregon to meet someone unemployed? Are there no unemployed people in New York? Has Kristof  never talked to the doorman in his lobby? His doorman probably knows lots of unemployed or underemployed people. If the doorman has grey hair, he might very well have an MBA (or he might be a former newspaperman).

“You don’t have to go all the way to Oregon to find people losing sleep over whether they’ll lose their job, their health insurance, and the roof over their head,” wrote Walter in Brooklyn. “And you can find working-class people whose incomes and finances have been decimated right here, too.”

Perhaps Kristof lives in the same neighborhood as another media elite with Oregon connections: Ann Curry, the co-host of the “Today” show, who lives in Gramercy Park but bought a $2.9 million Upper West Side fixer-upper that she has been renovating for eight years. While being remodeled, it has become a haven for hobos.

The home has no heat or power, and neighbors have complained of vandalism and drunken disturbances. When the New York Post attempted to contact Curry last month, she could not comment. She was on her way to a humanitarian crisis in Africa.

“Last stop before our news team reaches the chaos of famine,” she tweeted.

Among the humanitarian issues Kristof has focused on is micro-loans to poor women in Third World countries. A chapter in his book “Half the Sky” is devoted to the subject. It might surprise him to learn that micro-credit for poor women is being used in Oakland, Calif.

One of the commenters on his blog described how Women’s Initiative for Self Employment helps low-income women start small businesses. “In 2010, recent graduates created 4,300 jobs in the Bay Area,” Esnook wrote.

The same week that Kristof wrote about Oregon’s unemployment, the Women’s Initiative for Self Employment held a press event to discuss how micro-enterprise development leads to job creation. “It was a good, positive story about women microentrepreneurs creating jobs – and there was little to no media coverage on the event,” Esnook wrote.

Other commenters also offered solutions. A sampling:

From Rh27, Calif.: “How about a stimulus offering business owners the following deal: Hire someone in the USA within the next year and the government will pay the employer’s contribution towards taxes, Social Security and state, etc. for the next three years. … It might just be the incentive needed to get businesses off of the ‘piles of cash’ we hear about.”

G. Boeshans, Portland: “You did not specifically name the company which fired ‘the old-timers, and hired younger workers’ for less pay. … These companies should be identified by name in columns such as yours and other media. Hopefully consumers, and the companies which do business with such vendors, would then terminate relations with these businesses and their immoral (though not illegal) practices.” Boeshans was recently fired by Vesta Corporation, which “seems also to be firing their ‘older’ workers (I am barely over 50) … .”

Jack Lanahan, Chicago: American companies out-source production jobs because the labor is so much cheaper in less-industrialized countries. However, labor is just one factor in the cost of off-shore production. Shipping is probably the second most costly aspect, and the security associated with that shipping is subsidized by the U.S. Navy. American companies will never return to producing in the U.S. unless the costs of overseas production outstrip the benefits. They have been getting a “free ride” on security costs, courtesy of the American military and the taxpayers. Quantify the benefit and adjust the tax burden accordingly.

From Bill Michtom, Portland: Eliminate the cap on wages eligible to be taxed. Right now, all wages above $106,800 are not subject to payroll taxes. Lower the retirement age, don’t raise it. This will allow business to stop employing people at the high end of wage scales without laying them off, because they will be able to retire. Then young workers will have jobs to go into.

Phil, Chicago: “I live in Chicago where one can travel the city and see the grand, block-square buildings which used to be this nation’s manufacturing base. Now those buildings which once were filled with thousands of employees sit empty, the jobs sent overseas where workers in Asia make pennies a day. No one has been able to explain one simple question I have: Why can’t we say to American companies, ‘If you want to make your goods in China, fine. But we’re going to slap a tariff on every single clock radio and toaster and shirt you bring back in this country. Don’t want to pay it? Make them here.’ After all, corporate America, if citizens don’t have jobs, they can’t buy your stuff!”

Commenters to Kristof’s blog are from across the nation, as well as overseas. People of all ages, educational levels and in all lines of work have been affected by outsourcing to other countries, including some that use child labor and slave labor.

On top of that, technology allows companies to produce more with fewer employees. Yet, world population continues to grow. Where will people work?

A commenter called Matustoya in Wichita, Kansas had an idea that some will find unpleasant. Matustoya is a nurse’s aide, and the work is so plentiful she has been averaging about 20 hours overtime a week.

“Many men do not make it in this line of work,” Matustoya writes. “We need more male nurse aides, but they must have a great respect for women, which means they need to quit doing any behavior that results in a lack of respect for women.”

If that’s where we are headed, a nation of men working as butt-wipers for elderly women, one of two things could happen: Salaries may go up for nurse’s aides, or we may have our very own Arab spring.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons