YOUNG PEOPLE ARE HURT THE MOST BY OBAMA’S POLICIES
Ironies are everywhere in the Obama administration. For one thing, young people and the high tech company executives came out amass to vote for Mr. Obama. Yet, in the early days, Obama openly laughed at those executives that they voted him in so they have to work with him. I am sure that the executives can adjust. Also, Senator Arlen Specter, who turned Democratic to give ObamaCare the necessary 60th vote and lost the Democratic primary election to Joe Sestak, because the White House would not come out to campaign for him, would do just fine in his retirement life. Mr. Specter did this due to political reasons (that he was not likely to win the Republican primary if he had not switched party). The young people, who were duped into voting for the Obama, the Rock Star, were sent to the gutters.
One of the most significant indicators that we are becoming an European country is that the young people’s unemployment rate doubles the national average. As the national unemployment hovers around 10% (comparable to the European level), young people (25 and under) are suffering the unemployment rate of around 20%, also a typical European level.
Young people makes up their lack of experience by their diligent work. When I was young, I often sleep only four hours a day. Now, I am older and work with much less intensity. However, my experience more than makes up that gap. When I wrote columns for The Cavalier Daily, it typically cost me 20 hours to write a single piece. It was an enormous work load to turn out a piece every week. Now, it takes me about one to two hours to do the same, with higher quality.
Young people’s high work intensity makes them learn faster than older people, which is the reason that, when completely new technologies are under development, young people worth more than the older people, because experience does not count much. During the dot com boom, I was in my thirties and worked as the director of development department for several dot com companies. Except the CEOs and CTOs who are essentially the sales people, everyone in the company were younger than me. The learning stamina in young people is enormous. In those days, the gym near the office was full at 3 a.m., because the young people take a break at that hour to get some exercise. Sleep was pretty much ignored to development the new product.
It is that kind of work ethics and innovative spirit that made all technologies obsolete after six months. The joke of the day was that if you leave the field for six months, you would return as a total outsider. Experience, such as management experiences, even in those days, certainly had value. I was hired as development department heads mostly because of my management experience in large traditional companies (called brick-and-mortar then). However, if the experience spirit was not combined with my keen understanding of the technical progress, sufficient to tell developers what to do precisely, my management experience would hold little value.
Those were the days when people in their 50s and even 40s are treated badly, because they cannot work till 2 a.m. seven days a week. The only people in that age group are CEOs and CTOs, whose job is to get investment and sell the products that we develop. Incidentally, while we, the young, did a marvelous job in developing technologies. They failed miserably for creating the so-called dot-com bubble.
Dot-com trained a stratum of young people, as older people were unable to hold cutting edge development and management positions. That experience made us believe that nothing is impossible in this world. Hard work would always be rewarded with great products and enjoyable experience. When the dot-com industry collapsed, I followed other managers to law school. Most of my Chinese friends thought then that I was crazy. However, the confidence that I gained in dot-com prevailed. Now, I get to combine my knowledge of law, my corporate management experience (in the practice of business law), and my technical and scientific background (as a patent attorney).
The driving forces of dot-com, either as principal developers or key technical managers, are in their 40s now. Thinking back, I am always amazed that “the boom” gave me, who come to the U.S. after graduating college in China on a physics scholarship, such an opportunity to build up my character. I have heard many people saying that immigrants can only live on the margins of the society. My experience contradicts that opinion.
Today, in the stagnate environment, experience can crush even the most indefatigable learning stamina, as I can produce better writing today with only 5% of the time in a mentally relaxed state. That is the reason that young people are neither needed nor wanted now. The macroeconomic indicators, e.g., unemployment rate, only reflect that reality.
The problems, certainly, do not rest with the young, but with the national policy. When Reagan died, I stood outside of his library from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. the next morning to show my respect, because his tax cut, his pro-business policies, his persuading of the American people that government is the problem, allowed me to have what I had. Under Obama, people believe government is the solution. I have to wait till November to see what people think that about Obama’s spending spree and ObamaCare. American people, without the likes of Reagan, are talked into the concept that the rich is evil and should be taxed to make the country fair. They don’t seem to look around to see who is giving them jobs. Obama is instituting a tax policy that 50% of the people do not have to pay any tax, and that public employees and entities, such as Fannie and Freddy, may freely use the taxpayer’s money to exert their influence on the government. It is the political game-playing that would suffocate the innovative spirit (i.e., if you lose, you take the loss; if you win, the government will redistribute it).
The U.S. is on a critical moment in history. If Obama is not stopped in November, massive government entities would be built under the laws that have just passed. Once these institutions are built, it is politically next to impossible to undo. That is the reason that Europe and Japan suffer from their perpetual economic anemia.
No American politicians dare to come out to explain the harsh reality to the people: the increasing inequality of earning abilities is caused by the fierce global competition. Those who can take creative jobs can demand their premium pay. But the earning ability of those who hold less creative jobs would be directly pressured by those who make much less in China. Allowing the creative people to flourish, so they can general work opportunities for those less creative, is the only possible economic path to success. Mr. Obama cannot wait to nurture the golden goose to lay eggs. He had a better idea: Let’s kill them for the eggs (government spending spree). Mr. Obama fails to think: after you killed the golden goose (i.e., high government deficit and a slow economy), then what? Greece is looming on the horizon.
Some may say: Government spending is ultimately translated to some form of spending, which should stimulate the economy. The answer is simple. That kind of stimulation is only valuable at the worst moment of the economic crisis to soften the blow. It cannot be turned into long-term entitlement. If the government persistently takes away the profit and redistribute it to the non-risk-takers for consumption, at best, it stimulates the traditional and existing economy, as, for instance, people buy cheap goods from stores. (Note: Government money is aimed at the low income brackets.) I am sure that China would be thankful, but it would not stimulate innovations, such as dot-com, which is the only way for the U.S. to compete. The worse scenario is that risk takers may take their business to other countries that actually encourage innovation. That would be the end of the American dreams as we know it.
There are signs that the American people have seen the mistake in electing Barack Obama. However, the Obama political machine, which obliterated John McCain, is hard at work and had its recent victories, as Democrats did much better than the Republicans to get out their votes.
The American spirit, a.k.a. the American dream, was to explore, to adventure, and to enjoy the fruit of hard work. FDR has used the Great Depression to deny the American people of that. Ronald Reagan turned the ride by reducing the government interference to people’s lives. Reagan’s power was so strong that, at one time, the opportunistic Bill Clinton claimed that the era of big government was over. Now, Obama is using the Great Recession to repeat that cycle. Although I am confident that the American people will ultimately see through all this and turn the tide again, the question is: Would it take another 40 years? Would the young people, who were betrayed and denied their innovative and confidence-building experience by Obama, vote Democratic again?
There are anecdotal reports from China that the Chinese youth are suffering from high unemployment. Although I have not seen any data, the root of the problem is the similar: the saturation of the manufacturing sector (which had been absorbing the Chinese youth because that was new to the Chinese workforce then) and the inability to build a creative sector. In the end, the government’s policy of stimulating the internal consumption parallels Obama’s spending. With a much weaker economy, the Chinese policy quickly kicked up the consumer product and food price. Now, food, which cost around 1/6 the U.S. price only a few years ago, is several times more expensive now. Some American educated people, upon returning to China, found that they cannot afford ribs in supermarket. Many Chinese business people visiting the U.S. complained to me about the unfairness of the world that Americans are making more and able to buy Chinese products that are much cheaper in the U.S. than in China.
Maybe the whole world is at a critical moment.
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