Where's the will to get Americans back to work?

[jtuck004]

This column in the Post today asks the only important question out there.

-------------------
by Katrina vanden Heuvel

"Why isn't our government doing more to put people back to work?

Mass unemployment is a human and national calamity. It destroys families, crushes hopes. The longer it lasts, the more it cripples economic recovery and undermines democracy. Nearly 27 million Americans are unemployed or can't find more than part-time work. Yet legislators are reacting to this reality somewhat like the proverbial deer in the headlights, frozen, hoping not to get run over.

<snip>

Yet without a strong argument from the White House, and with a consensus building around the idea that deficit and spending cuts should be the priority, too little is happening on jobs. Last December, the House passed a $150 billion jobs bill. It can't get a hearing in the Senate. This year, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) introduced a $100 billion bill for state, local and public service hiring. It hasn't gotten a vote in the House. Even an extension of unemployment insurance and health-care protection through the end of the year faces conservative obstruction. Republicans tend to line up against any new jobs agenda. And when Blue Dog Democrats, worried about deficits, join them, there's not much hope. <snip>

Bad economics and suicidal politics. He got that right. Unemployed workers can't help the economy grow"

<snip>
________________

my thoughts...

Over 27 million people unemployed or underemployed today. Between 1980 and 2009 jobs created in the U.S. averaged 110 K a month. During Clinton's tenure it averaged 197K a month. (You don't want to know what it was under W, but consider how that lowers the average). About 125,000 jobs each month is used to employ people just entering the job market, so we will need more than that to begin to soak up the > 27 million walking wounded. Temporary Census jobs will be gone before the summer is over. So if you want the unemployment rate to be around 4, take a couple million out of that, and divide 25 million by the number of months you want to wait while teachers, firefighters, police, teabaggers, construction workers, state and city employees, and others are tossed aside for lack of revenue. Let's say we create 100,000 full-time jobs every month over the 125,000. That's 22 years folks. While families die.

Unless something new appears on the horizon to create jobs, such as government investment in big, big projects (ala WPA or the millions that were hired for WWI - I mean really big) we are quite likely to see 11-12% unemployment by next year. The only good news appears to be that of corporations generating profits overseas as millions of new consumers come on line.

On the other hand our president is making public remarks such as "The truth of the matter is that we're going to have to spend the next couple of years making some very hard decisions getting our deficit and spending under control," he said in response to a question about tax reform. "It's not going to be fun." Where were those remarks when he was insuring a huge income stream for insurance companies, or for investment banks, the new unlimited money for Fannie and Freddie? What spending are you talking about? Social security, the only lifeline many people have since their homes have gone belly up? Our administration knows these numbers, they know what shape people are in. They know we are not Greece, that we have a monopoly on the dollar, that we are not constrained by structure to worry only about the deficit when we are the ones that print the money. We could put people to work finding a new source of energy, designing and building light rail, funding thousands of small business incubators, abandon tuition and enroll millions of people over the Internet to learn to read, write, do algebra. Right? Right!

"Over the past week, top White House officials have been floating a trial balloon for their strategy on the economy. At its core is a decision to put deficit reduction ahead of job creation. <snip>
So the plan, modeled closely on the work of the Peter G. Peterson foundation and the anticipated report of the president's own fiscal commission, is a deal that includes cuts in Social Security plus a new Value Added Tax (VAT), in order to get deep cuts in the deficit. As a sweetener to get Republicans to back the VAT, White House officials would cut the corporate income tax."
-- http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_new_white_house_economic_strategy> --

HOLY CRAP, WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY? You want to quit spending when we need it so desperately and protect the corporations you have underwritten on the backs of people who can't earn enough to live? clueless

Doomed is just too weak to describe this.

[stray cat]

1. I suspect your will is there but how many JOBS are you creating with your will?

if will is the only thing required for job creation....

[jtuck004]

6. Actually I am teaching people how to use computers, and trying

very hard to focus on those who find it difficult - that is, those who didn't grow up with them. (I didn't either but I have always been a fix-it freak, which led to an early interest lo those many decades ago...), with my plan that it will help them become more employable, or better, more able to learn how to start their own business.

I am also spending some time trying to find a small manufacturing or agricultural idea which can be profitably run against lots of foreign competition and with enough demand that it could employ people who want to own it.

But my ability to affect this issue is minimal, and I don't think most people care what I think, or do. On the other hand, what Obama does with his powers of persusion and the office he was elected to can affect the lives of tens of millions of people.

In answer to the other part of your question I don't think I read that will was the "only thing required for job creation", but it is vital.

will 1 (wl)
n.
1.
a. The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action:

So this definition from the free dictionary indicates that the administration doesn't need to spend our money sitting in on meetings at the Reagan Building listening to seminars by Peter Peterson on how they can screw the 85% of the American population that only has 15% of the total wealth.

Instead, maybe they could spend their time figuring out how they could best invest a trillion dollars or so and improve not only the lives of people who don't have enough to eat and not even a chance at a WalMart greeter job, but pay for manufacturing upgrades that will create jobs to pay taxes to those states who have created budgets that rely on relatively full employment. So we don't have to live with the effects of actions in, for example, California, whose new budget calls for pink slips to nearly 22,000 teachers and the removal of roughly 1 million children from the welfare rolls.

And enough voices could encourage that change in their behavior.

thanks

[Zenlitened]

10. This reply to the OP truly is one of the dumbest posts ever to appear on DU.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

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[Newest Reality]

2. This feels like a write-off.

We are seeing some political and financial behavior that suggests that many of us "livestock" are being written-off as milked-dry, useless eaters now, it seems.

Of course, that is not going to be said out loud or clearly stated as any obvious policy or announcement. It is a figure it out for yourself situation. It is not a comfortable or desirable conclusion to approach.

Let's see, to date, we have seen draconian laws and enforcement creeping in and the Patriot Act and Homeland Security glued into our cultural infrastructure, like it or not. We have seen a free-for-all fleecing of anything and everything we had and our tax dollars going to the top of the septic tank we are in, where the wealthy and politically powerful have naturally floated to. We are watching states and municipalities go broke in increasing numbers. We have nothing substantial with which to have a REAL recovery that effects anyone but the well-entrenched fat cats, etc., etc.

Of course, this is an obvious recipient for a potential boiling over point with discord and even violence as a result, (though Americans are seeming to be some of the most docile and easily managed pets on the planet, so far) and that is what makes the current course of events and lack of any substantial will to do what is needed to get the people back on their feet seem so odd. Why would the obvious, impending turmoil be so easy to ignore rather than prevent?

You don't tell the people what they need to know, especially when the issue is systemic collapse. They must be managed well.

[Coyote_Bandit]

3. Human Nature is such that

(1) Everybodys gotta have somebody to look down on; and

(2) It is far better to ignore the plight of those less fortunate than us because acknowledging it is a recognition that it could happen to us.

Now take some humans, make them politicians and place them in positions of authority. Let them be wined and dined by corporate Amerikkka. Let corporate Amerikkka finance their campaigns.

Remember that it's those corporations that have made some of those people disposable and who have undermined the efforts of others to start small little businesses and compete with them.

It's really no surprise that the unemployed are ignored.

[DemReadingDU]

4. instead of cuts to Social Security,

there should be cuts to the Pentagon and military budget

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

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[jtuck004]

5. Here's the link to Katrina's opinion piece...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/18/AR2010051802218.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

meant to put it in the article.

[notesdev]

7. What's in it for Goldman Sachs?

I seem to keep saying this, but only because it's the only clear guideline as to what one can expect our government will take seriously.

[econoclast]

8. Putting Americans back to work requires one thing...

That is the desire by Americans to purchase goods and services produced by Americans.

Ask yourself...where was your car made? How about the computer you are reading this on? Your cell phone? Go to your closet and look at thr labels in the garments and shoes. Bet not one item in ten was made in America.

Want to know why Americans are out of work? Because of US! Industry continues to offshore jobs BECAUSE WE CONTINUE TO BUY THE IMPORTED STUFF!!!! It takes two to tango as the saying goes.

We believe in Keynes, no? Demand drives the market says Lord Keryes. As long as WE continue to demand flat screen tv's from Taiwan and cars from Korea and video games programmed in India and iPhones made in China ...that's what will be supplied.

[jtuck004]

9. I agree. Perhaps we need a targeted education program

which teaches people how to buy in their own best interest. Just because you and I have read and understand Food Inc or watched Moore's "Capitalism" and found ourselves nodding in agreement, a lot of people really don't understand this.

And when you couple that with a lack of income to pay more for American made goods or to support the local agriculture, you have an equation which is going to continue to destroy us economically. So this has to be coupled with something that puts money in people's pockets, jobs.

Perhaps just like we do price supports for corn we should do either price supports for manufacturers and agriculture so it can sell products at competitive prices?

I have the thought that as we increase our deficit the dollar weakens, which makes us much more competitive with other countries imports. So let's spend a trillion dollars on a jobs program. It puts money in peope's pockets and increases our exports, refurbishing our manufacturing sector. Inflation will rear it's head, but I would rather live with that than deflation and homelessness which is where significant portions of our country are heading.

thank you

[blue97keet]

14. Yea, I took at labels, don't wanna buy anything so I don't

Stimulus can't work under these conditions. It is like running water in the bathtub with the drain open. All economic theory fails in an unbounded system.

[LiberalEsto]

13. Hint: It's not in the White House

I knew Obama was a corporatist Democrat when I voted for him.
But damn, I thought he would do something about getting us decent jobs.
I was sooooooooo wrong.

[upi402]

15. All hail the UNIPARTY

Yeah, doomed sums it up. Obama will see to it that we give to the rich and rob the working class -ad infinitum.
Hope & change ... and unicorn farts.