Sustainable Jobs

By John A. Murphy

Create secure sustainable jobs by investing in infrastructure and renewable energy sources

We must begin to think in terms of providing people with sustainable livelihoods based on sustainable production for sustainable markets to support sustainable lifestyles. By requiring equitable trade, investing in urgently needed local labor-intensive public works (infrastructure improvements), creating a new renewable energy efficiency policy; by fully funding education and redirecting large bureaucratic and fraudulent health expenditures toward preventive health care we can reverse this trend and create millions of new jobs.

FOR CREATING JOBS HERE'S WHAT I PROPOSE:

• Reducing taxes on labor. This will make labor more competitive with energy and capital investment.

• Solidarity with unions and workers fighting the practice of contracting out tasks to part-time workers in order to avoid paying benefits and to break up unions.

• Adopting a reduced-hour (30 hour) work week as a standard. This could translate into as many as 26 million new jobs.

• Subsidizing renewable energy sources, which directly employ 2 to 5 times as many people for every unit of electricity generated as fossil or nuclear sources yet are cost competitive. Also, retrofit existing buildings for energy conservation and build non-polluting, low impact transportation systems.

• Supporting small business by reducing tax, fee and bureaucratic burdens. The majority of new jobs today are created by small businesses. This would cut their failure rate and help them create more jobs.

• Opposing the trend toward "bundling" of contracts that minimizes opportunity for small, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses.

• Reducing consumption to minimize outsourcing - the exportation of jobs to other countries - thus reducing the relative price of using U.S. workers.