If "America Can Do Whatever We Set Our Mind To," How Come Our Leaders Won't Set Their Minds on Jobs?

[Better Believe It]

If "America Can Do Whatever We Set Our Mind To," How Come Our Leaders Won't Set Their Minds on Jobs?
By Arianna Huffington
May 10, 2011

"We do big things," President Obama said during his State of the Union speech in January. And, in fact, we do. Sometimes. Finding and dispatching Osama bin Laden certainly qualifies. "We are once again reminded," the president said after announcing the terrorist's death, "that America can do whatever we set our mind to."

But if that's true, why are our leaders so accepting of a stagnant economy? If they really focused on the havoc it is wreaking on the lives of tens of millions of Americans, they would, in the memorable words of Richard Clarke, be running around with their hair on fire.

Yet our leaders, who are supposed to be doing big things, seem instead to have made their peace with "the new normal." Take the Fed: it could be doing a lot more to create jobs, but instead it's guarding against the phantom bogeyman of inflation. "Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?" asked David Leonhardt. "After all, does the economy feel as if it's on the verge of overheating?" Hardly.

But if it's true we can do "whatever we set our mind to," then how about we set our mind to reigniting the American Dream for everybody, and not just those few for whom the recession is an out-of-sight-out-of-mind reality? There is no bigger Big Thing we can do as a country right now.

Read the full article at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/obama-jobs-economy_b_860026.html

[xchrom]

1. they're never talking about themselves.

they're always talking about the little people and how cool it is they make sacrifices and work real hard at two or three jobs.

[patrice]

2. Because they/their constituents think they are God and that they are separating the sheep from the

goats, right now.

[Coyote_Bandit]

3. Why?

Because the dumbshits in Washington don't give a fuck whether or not I - or my neighbor next door - have a job. All they care about are the Wall Street numbers - numbers which are not a reflection of the Main Street US economy. And they will do whatever they have to do to manipulate those numbers.

[thereismore]

4. They have theirs. nt

[Fumesucker]

5. Because the leaders all have cushy jobs?

Naah, that couldn't be it..

[Octafish]

6. Because you can make a bigger profit margin with a minimum wage workforce.

One must remember who our elected leaders work for.

[TheKentuckian]

7. They are ideologically opposed to broad prosperity.

High unemployment is destructive to wages, which is always on the PTB front burner.

[Romulox]

8. Isn't that the subtext of Ben Bernanke's obsession with "fighting inflation"

He means wage inflation.

[TheKentuckian]

9. Right on. No one cares about inflation of utilities, food, housing, health care, or fuel

Or in other words, all the shit "the small people" struggle with on stagnant and declining wages.

Inflation of labor costs is what they are worried about and have been for decades. It seems extra brutal because we are being wound down. It isn't about fighting wage inflation anymore, they are in the full court press to shrink wages and funnel those resources into their own pockets.