Dean Baker, everyone’s favorite progressive economist (mine, too), has an interesting take on our unemployment problem.

Give more paid vacations.

Wealth and resources are not infinite; they are finite! Therefore, if some have too much, many others are left with little or nothing.

The full employment movement and all its affiliates and supporters need to support the passage of legislation that guarantees a living wage job for everyone who wants one. A step in that direction is Rep. John Conyers (D- MI), H.R. 1000, the Humphrey Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act.

However, anyone who thinks Conyers’ time has passed has not run around with him on his still frenetic schedule of meetings and actions.  He is as effective as ever and still runs the meetings with precise organization and energy driving to further action.

Conyers said this week, “My most important bill is the Full Employment Act,” and he convenes weekly meetings in his office with national and Detroit leaders on strategies to increase jobs by legislation, executive action, and pushes in the media.

You’ve probably heard of offshoring: the flow of manufacturing and service functions and jobs to countries outside the United States. Companies seeking to reduce the cost of labor and materials moved factories from Northeastern states to Southeastern states as early as the 1880s; by the 1920s, the New England textile mills had almost all been shut down. After the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994, hundreds of operations and as many as 700,000 manufacturing jobs moved to Mexico. During the early 2000s, many thousands more jobs moved to Southeast Asia and India and eventually to China.