Ann Widdecombe Quotes
We also heard the usual old nonsense that banning hunting would affect employment if we abolished crime we would put all the police out of work. If we abolished ill-health we would put all the nurses and doctors out of work. Will anybody argue that we should preserve crime and ill-health in order to keep people in jobs?
Widdecombe, Ann. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Commons, 3 Mar. 1995, col. 1320.
Although aggregate employment has remained relatively stable as global free trade has become the U. S. policy, there has been major employment disruption with some types of people benefiting and others like blue collar manufacturing workers having their entire careers wiped out. Port cities like Seattle, Baltimore have boomed while Midwestern manufacturing cities have deteriorated greatly.
Uchitelle in writing about one of the nation’s economic recessions thought that it should be an interesting slant to do an article about Harvard alumni who had been laid off to show that education and training were not sufficient to have job security. Lelyveld, one of the greatest newspaper editors in the history of American journalism had also been a Harvard graduate.
During the three years of the George W. Bush administration the country lost many jobs.
In the Meltdown of 2008, the American Auto Companies were in dire straights and faced bankruptcy with no certainty that the industry could stay alive., They were running out of money and President Obama decided to make loans, take stock and control and force modernizing on the industry. As a result, and with some Toyota mismanagement, the companies returned to profitability and paid back their government loans early and as a result the bailout had not cost the taxpayers any money. Creditors however were outraged that the lost their preferred advantage had their been a bankruptcy.
The debate in America around jobs during the Great Recession in 2012 may have seemed like a new issue for many Americans. The government wanted to economize, but there was a very high unemployment. Should the government spend money to employ more people or cut back on government jobs. The same issue faced the British in 1848. Most of the politicians and the Parliament wanted to reduce government spending. The Prince (husband of Queen Victoria) and the Queen observed that the economy solution would fall more heavily on the working class. At this time, the British monarchy was far more liberal than most of the politicians.
One of the arguments in favor of machinery and automation has always been that new and better jobs are created for the people who run and maintain the machines. However as Marx observed in 1867 that is of no comfort to the person who is replaced by the machine. Also with the computer and modern robots, the control and operation is often done by another computer. Even much of the computer programming is done by computer.
Ann Noreen Widdecombe is a British politician, author and television personality. She served as the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone from 1987 to 1997 and for Maidstone and The Weald from 1997 to 2010. She also served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South West England for the Brexit Party from 2019 to 2020.
