By Vincent Safuto staff writer
May 16, 2003
They're closin' down the textile mill
'Cross the railroad tracks.
Foreman said "These jobs are goin', boys,
And they ain't comin' back."
"My Hometown"
Bruce Springsteen
We've patted ourselves on the back here in Florida of late, but we've had our share of economic pain.
The textile mills of New England, the Carolinas and even our state's Panhandle have shut down, and their work has gone overseas, where the minimum wage and pensions are the random rantings of socialists and trade-union types.
We benefit by being able to buy cheap undershorts and socks, and the loss of manufacturing and its well-paid jobs may seem very remote. It all happened somewhere else, we say, so we can go on living in the sunshine and watching the pelicans float by.
News that another factory or call center has up and gone to Mexico, China, India or the Philippines sounds like good news. Who could be against paying less for a washing machine, power tools or a car?
The tech industry, where all the jobs were supposed to be, is looking with longing at low-wage frontiers, where tech-support people and programmers can be hired by the dozen for what it costs to employ one American.
Microsoft is leading the charge in the outsourcing realm, I've read, and is pushing its subcontractors, which provide tech support for its products and services, to head for India.
We're told this is a good thing, one that will lower prices and create scads of American jobs. But there's a catch.
Those formerly productive, wage-earning American workers, having lost their well-paying jobs, health benefits and vacation time, won't be coming to Florida with their children to visit Mickey, see the other tourist attractions, eat, sleep and pay sales taxes on mouse ears.
Multiply that by the millions of jobs lost and to be lost if the trend continues and you have a hefty hole in our state's sales-tax dependent budget.
And when those good people stop coming to our state, Floridians in the tourism industry suffer. Those losses ripple through the economy, as unemployed workers still need schools, police, fire and other taxpayer-provided services, plus help with training and finding new jobs.
With our state budget in the hole, such services are being reduced, leaving Florida in a downward economic spiral.
Those without health insurance, and their children, insist on getting sick. They turn up at the emergency room or at the charity hospitals. The medical community needs to be paid, so if the financially bereft can't pay for services, the cost is passed on to the rest of us.
Someday, we who are now working and have health insurance may join those unfortunate Americans in the ranks of the unemployed, bankrupt and uninsured.
And we'll have those wonderful CEOs and other top executives and their toadies in Congress to thank for our fate.
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com.)
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