If Robert Reich were President

When I first learned of Robert Reich’s comments regarding President Obama’s infrastructural stimulus proposal, I was sceptical and stunned.  (You will recall that Reich is the former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, and currently serves on President Obama’s Economic Transition Advisory Board). He didn’t really say that, did he?   Surely he was misquoted, or taken out of context, or merely the target of another of my overzealous conservative colleagues tossing a grenade behind enemy lines? SO I went to his blog and there it was:

“…if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most — women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed — will be shut out.”

Wait….did he REALLY just say that? “Out loud???” Were these truly the thoughts of the professor from Harvard, Brandeis, Cal-Poly, and one of Time Magazine’s Ten Most Successful Cabinet Members of the century? He DID say it out loud, and he has made millions of Americans feel all the much smarter in doing so.

While perceived racial implications cannot be fully qualified by anyone who doesn’t know Mr. Reich personally, his comments raise some obvious questions to all but the dimmest of readers:

1. If the jobs are not given to those already highly skilled in the various crafts and professions required to complete those projects, but to those “low-trained” and “long-term unemployed” instead, don’t the highly skilled then become the unemployed?
2. As we train this new, non-white, low-skilled, long-term unemployed workforce to understand and accomplish their respective duties, at what point do they become “highly-skilled enough” to be let go?
3. Aren’t we merely shifting unemployment from non-white, inefficient, long-term unemployed, untrained workers (lacking that training which is cost-prohibitive to governmental, corporate and small business investment) to white, male,  highly-skilled, currently employed, and sufficiently trained workers?
4. From an economic standpoint, does the demographic composition of 7.7% unemployment make any difference at all? Is it better to have “white, male, trained unemployed” as opposed to “non-white, non-male, untrained unemployed”? Is it 6 of one, or half-a-dozen of the other?

I don’t get it. Maybe it is because I am white, trained, employed, and not easily impressed by most of Time Magazine’s “10 Greatest Whatever” lists anymore. Maybe its because I am a capitalist, and willing to reap exactly what I sew. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe Mr. Reich is smarter than me. or I than him. Whatever the reason, I just don’t get it.

I am trying to imagine a society with Mr. Reich as President. I suppose it would be include some sort of National Hockey League where all of the players are Native-American women, a Corps of Engineers where everyone wears a Taco Bell uniform and offers to supersize each new bridge and tunnel, hip-hop music written and performed exclusively by white or Asian males featuring lyrics about stock quotes and javascript, and gang members running NASA, “bustin’ a cap” towards Neptune.

Maybe there would even be a Time Magazine with the “Top 10 Deluded Cabinet Members of All Time” list, or something similar.