What's Your Idea For Solving The U.S. Unemployment Crisis?

Nearly three years into Barack Obama's presidency, major solutions to the jobs crisis appear to be in as short supply as the jobs themselves.

Do you have an idea for how to create American jobs? Tweet at @HuffPostBiz with the hashtag #CreateJobs. We'll compile the best.

Yet for many Americans, getting the job market back in gear has been a top concern for some time. Indeed, with the unemployment rate stuck above 9 percent and the labor market unable to pick up steam, Obama's major jobs speech could not come soon enough.

Murmors of what exactly will be on the table vary, but possibly could include tax cuts for the middle-class, major infrastructure projects and a particular emphasis on dealing with the issue of long-term unemployment. One thing's for certain: Any boost to the job market would help the president's re-election chances.

So what to do? Those from the left, right and center have all proposed ideas for creating jobs. In June, for example, former President Bill Clinton, who enjoyed a strong record on jobs during his presidency, outlined 14 initiatives in Newsweek magazine. Clinton himself put particular focus on the growing sustainable energy sector.

Others say the scope of Obama's jobs plan will have to be huge in order to rouse Republicans out of their current resistance to Obama-led intitiatives. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, for one, said that Obama's plan should be "unimaginable," while The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn, emphasized big, thought-out and easily-implemented moves. In all, 67 major progressive groups urged Obama to "go big" on his jobs plan.

New ideas are still welcome. The White House says it will listen to any online proposal that can receive 5,000 signatures. According to our own Arianna Huffington, it's teamwork and dedication, like that seen in Hurricane Irene relief efforts, that might be America's best bet during this time of difficulty.

So how do you think America can work together to best solve the jobs crisis? Tweet us at @HuffPostBiz with the hashtag #CreateJobs!

Comments

[Elijah A Alexander Jr]

08:03 PM on 09/06/2011

The best way of creating jobs for US citizens is. as required by Article 1 section 8 require:
1) Making taxes equal nation wide for corporations and citizens alike with the only tax exception being when employers employ a taxed person, their pay will not be taxed like all gross incomes and use the extra money to create jobs.
2) Require corporations with jobs in other nations to employ US or they and their goods leave the nation.
3) With increased revenues many jobs could use manpower rather than machinery.
4) Tax any company employing undocumented aliens the difference in the paid wages and this nation's wages.
5) Cap profits by lowing costs, after all, companies are privileged to make a profit because of providing employment for US citizens.

[gerald4]

06:30 PM on 09/06/2011

Without extremely high (several hundred percent) USA import tariffs, businesses (and US workers) must compete with international foreign workers at very low foreign wage scales and very low foreign environmental manufacturing process costs.

INSTEAD OF JUST HANDING OUT US GOVERNMENT BORROWED CASH TO THE UNEMPLOYED, maybe the US government would/should/could build manufacturing plants to make various consumer products, in sequence, one product at a time, i.e. refrigerators, washing machines, clothing, TV's, electronics, tires, auto parts, hand tools, power tools, machine tools, appliances, and etc., and impose import taxes to make those imported products as expensive as products made by US workers.

How about also passing laws to prohibit the import of services (the same as exporting the jobs) such as accounting, telemarketing, customer assistance service, computer aided drafting, engineering, legal research, etc. that are now easily provided by workers overseas through the internet at a small fraction of the costs paid to US citizens to perform those services.

Maybe most all of the consumer goods that we import could eventually be made in the USA. The US government could impose extremely high import taxes that are high enough so that these US made products are always less expensive to the consumer than the same imported product.

[gerald4]

06:33 PM on 09/06/2011

These plants should periodically and/or constantly be for sale based upon periodic open public competitive bidding, but at a minimum sale price at least equal to as much as the government investment, and with terms of cash only without any creative financing.

There should not be any leveraged or other creative financing for purchase allowed by the government.

Only cash sales should be allowed.

The business management should know about making the products, not creative accounting and/or creative financing.

The US made products could not compete with products made with foreign labor, so there would not be any US export of US products, unless these products are technically new innovations and not available elsewhere on the world market.

Yes, the consumer will pay many times the price for the particular US manufactured product than he would pay for an imported product made with foreign labor and foreign environmental manufacturing costs, but maybe this might avert a second bloody American revolution.

This might be better than the US government borrowing more and more money from the industrial nations in order to pay unemployed people not to work.

I know that this sounds like socialism, communism, and/or fascism, but it might be better than another American Revolution.

[sophie M]

05:43 PM on 09/06/2011

revamp our government.

[Martha Fair]

02:02 PM on 09/06/2011

Just one idea I thought of. Restore all peoples credit to the rating it was before Bush Dubya took office, since the old credit rating would be a much better indicator of whether they are a true credit risk. Force banks to quit sitting on their money. This would stimulate the housing market and keep those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own from being penalized.

[99er2049er]

03:03 PM on 09/04/2011

My ideas for bringing back jobs:

1. Tax reward companies that hire U.S. Citizens, while tax penalizing those that outsource

2. Pay an additional incentive (such as 6 months worth of unemployment insurance) to a company that hires the unemployed

3. Partner with corporations, a government/corporation mass media partnership, including a huge PR for patriotism, whereby we recognize and reward companies that bring back jobs from outsourcing back to the U.S. - take Dell Computers for example, you give them a massive positive PR campaign and tax rewards for returning the thousands of outsourced tech support jobs from India back to the U.S.

4. Create a manufacturing economy in addition to an automated and outsourced service based economy - create manufacturing back in this country again

5. Invest in alternative energies and high technology on a huge scale

[TomatoEater]

03:01 PM on 09/04/2011

Every state gets $1 billion a year for the next 10 years earmarked for jobs in solar or wind technology.

[olerealist]

01:23 PM on 09/04/2011

UNEMPLOYMENT, SWEAT SHOPS, ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION ALL PART OF THE SAME ENCHALADA.

In recent years, “outsourcing” of tasks to foreign overseas locations has been escalating rapidly.
http://www.savings.com/blog/post/Outsourcing-Jobs-and-the-Unemployment-Rate.html.

Until recently the non-manufacturing tasks outsourced have predominated but the current trend is in the opposite direction. The totality of this represents millions of American jobs lost.

One wonders if any additional governmental “stimulus” is going to alleviate our unemployment
if the result is simply to increase the spending by our people on goods and services directly or indirectly paid to foreigners. The latter may do some good to global economy but unemployment is a monumental crisis right here at home and home should be our focus.

One method of addressing this issue may be to institute an income tax incentive to US corporations to reduce the volume of outsourcing. The outsourcing is done predominantly by employers with income of a billion dollars or more.
(http://www.conference-board.org/pdf_free/TCB_CK-009_StratOutsourcing.PDF )

So it appears that the benefits of the “break” should go to employers with a substantial payroll. The deduction from taxable income would relate directly to the number of employees whose work is performed ENTIRELY within the USA.

The result would penalize those employers who go overboard on outsourcing. If this may be said to be “national industrial policy” so be it. The issue is existential.

[fortressfountain]

01:21 PM on 09/04/2011

Get rid of the big banking system and create smaller banks. No taxes for anyone for 2 years. Raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour and gaurantee a 40 hr workweek.
Make laws against nickel and diming labor costs by off-shoring.
If corporations go bust-so what more can be started and people will at least have money saved.
Quit basing the usa economy on debt.

[2011Patriot]

09:56 AM on 09/04/2011

Send all ILLEGAL Immigrants home by fining their employers $50,000 per violation.

[2011Patriot]

09:52 AM on 09/04/2011

Level the playing field by taxing "them" more & US less. To get our jobs back from China who is booming, we must lower our cost by eliminating Corporate Taxes on US Companies & raise the same funds on a National Sales Tax which taxes domestic AND imported goods. Since Corporations then pay no taxes, they cannot lobby the government except as individuals. We will have to eliminate campaign donations by anyone other than registered American Voters to ever get anything really good for the people passed.

[olerealist]

01:34 PM on 09/04/2011

DEAR 2011Patriot:
I like the theme of your comment with a qualification.

A "SALES" tax would be extemely difficult to collect in that this tax, by definition, is imposed at the place where the sale occurrs. Normally, this would be at the seller's foreiegn location. We encountered this problem some years ago relating to the sales tax on "luxury" items and yachts.
You might note my comment of today on providing incentives to employers NOT to "outsource" jobs.

[Arts4u]

12:37 PM on 09/03/2011

Require that all off-shored jobs be returned to the States. Require that all manufacturers produce at least 85% of their product in the US. Tax all imports from China and other slave wage countries heavily. Stop the H1B Visa program. Remove all illegals from the country.

Regulate housing, insurance, banking, fuel, utilities markets to push them back into the range of what Americans are actually able to afford.

[99er2049er]

03:05 PM on 09/04/2011

I echoed some of your thoughts in my post above as well.

[Tom Servo]

11:11 PM on 09/02/2011

Send the baby boomer neocons to Somalia.

[olerealist]

01:37 PM on 09/04/2011

DEAR TOM

SHOULD WE start with a guy whose name rymes with LARceney?.

[mike90069]

10:02 PM on 09/02/2011

My idea for solving the U.S. Unemployment, Get rid of the EPA, as they are the real job killers!

[Tom Servo]

11:10 PM on 09/02/2011

huh?

[olerealist]

01:42 PM on 09/04/2011

DEAR MIKE:

Why not get rid of the U.S. House. That's where you find the JOB KILLERS. (caugh- cough, caugh)

[zelduh]

09:48 PM on 09/02/2011

After studying the timeline that preceded the Great Depression (See http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Timeline.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression), these are my recommendations:

☞ 1. Raise taxes on the very wealthy. They have received a disproport­ionate amount of benefits and blessings from this country as a result of their wealth. They should give back a little more - and many want to (See Buffet, Warren E. and see http://pat­rioticmill­ionaires.o­rg/.)
☞ 2. Increase the salary ceiling for FICA payments from $106,800 to $125,000.
☞ 3. Let the Death Tax waiver expire on all estates greater than $5 million.
☞ 4. Impose a 2¢ transaction charge for EVERY stock trade.
☞ 5. Tax Capital gains like ordinary income.

[Tom Servo]

11:12 PM on 09/02/2011

all good ideas

[luvobama]

11:32 PM on 09/02/2011

zelduh, you just got my one and only badge for the day.

Fabulous comment.  ::)

[fmello]

04:45 PM on 09/02/2011

Shut down the Department of Education. Use the 92 billion saved on a jobs bill. Give a $10,000 tax break to private business owners for each new full-time employee they hire. The salary of those new jobs needs to be $30,000 or higher in order to qualify for the tax break. That would create 9.2 million new jobs.

Then, cut a couple of other departments that we don't need & use that money to lower the Corporate tax from 35% down to 15-20%.

Finally, go through & find any stifling regulations or laws that kill jobs in each State & repeal them. There are literally thousands of them. Some examples of inane regulations & laws that need to be tossed:

Louisiana has a law that makes all flowers illegal once they are artfully arranged and offered for sale—unless the arranger holds a state license.

A recently passed law requires that Texas computer-repair technicians have a private-investigator license, according to a story posted by a Dallas-Fort Worth CW affiliate. In order to obtain said license, technicians must receive a criminal justice degree or participate in a three-year apprenticeship. Those shops that refuse to participate will be forced to shut down. Violators of the new law can be hit with a $4,000 dollar fine and up to a year in jail, penalties that apply to customers who seek out their services.