"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.
But they're not. Instead, they express concern but resign themselves to the fact that, as White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee put it in an interview with HuffPost, the economy has "a long way to go." Meanwhile, we're being asked to accept years of underemployment, low growth and draconian cuts to America's social safety nets as the "new normal." Or, as Bill Clinton put it in a different context, the "tyranny of low expectations."
It's a testament to these low expectations of our leaders that we're supposed to take recent economic figures as some kind of good news. In March, the economy added 216,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell from 8.9 percent to 8.8 percent. Not bad. But not good, either. And if you take a closer look at the numbers, you'll want to keep that celebratory champagne on ice. Because while adding jobs is obviously better than shedding them, even if we continue to add 200,000 jobs a month, it would take until 2019 to achieve the employment level we had when the recession started. "There are still five unemployed workers per job opening," Heidi Shierholz, economist with the Economic Policy Institute, told HuffPost, "far worse than the worst month of the early-2000s recession."
What's more, much of the downturn in the unemployment rate was actually caused by people giving up and leaving the workforce. As the New York Times noted, participation in the workforce fell to 64.2 percent, the lowest mark in 25 years. If you were to factor those who have stopped looking for work into the official unemployment rate, it would be 9.8 percent. If you were to include those working part-time who would rather be working full-time, it would be 15.7 percent. "Being happy with the falling unemployment rate right now," said Wells Fargo's Jeremy Ryan, "would be like being happy that your team won because the other team's bus broke down on the way to the field."
April's numbers were equally disconcerting: even though the economy added 244,000 jobs, the unemployment rate rose from 8.8 percent to 9 percent. Even worse, the unemployment rate for African-Americans jumped to 16.1 percent. And for those over the age of 55, the average length of time spent looking for a job is now over a year.
Add to that an anemic GDP growth rate of 1.8 percent for January through March, down from 3.1 percent for the last quarter of 2010, and the fact that, according to U.S. Census numbers released last week, the percentage of young adults living with their parents has jumped to a staggering 34 percent, largely because of their limited job possibilities.
Then there is the chilling reality that more than 28 percent of U.S. homes were underwater in the first quarter of the year, and foreclosures are expected to rise 20 percent this year. "We get tired of telling such a grim story," Zillow economist Stan Humphries told Bloomberg News, "but unfortunately this is the story that needs to be told."
Told, but apparently not listened to. At least not in Washington.
It's no wonder then that, according to a recent Gallup poll, over half the country currently believes we're in a recession or a depression. Or that a New York Times/CBS poll shows that 80 percent say the economy is in fairly bad or very bad shape.
How are these not hair on fire numbers?
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.
At the New America Foundation's conference about the Federal Reserve, the Peterson Institute's Joe Gagnon said that the Fed's timidity is responsible for the loss of 1 million jobs. "Apparently," writes Mark Thoma, "the millions and millions of people who are unemployed, some of whom won't be reemployed until years from now if we do nothing to help, are supposed to be patient because people with power over policy are worried about inflation and higher interest rates."
Our elected leaders aren't any better -- less focused on the job crisis than on arguing about how to best divvy up harsh cuts to the social safety net and programs that benefit the middle class. Meanwhile, profits for the Fortune 500 jumped by 81 percent in 2010, to $318 billion. Clearly big things aren't out of reach for everybody.
It's not that we can't do something big about the economy -- it's that our leaders choose not to. Or, as Mark Thoma puts it: "We can't help to stimulate job growth if we don't try, and so far we aren't trying anywhere near hard enough."
President Obama himself connected the economy to his can-do speech about Osama. Immediately after declaring that "America can do whatever we set our mind to," he said, "That is the story of our history, whether it's the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggles for equality for all our citizens."
But, at the moment, that doesn't seem to be the story of our country. We are dangerously close to accepting a bifurcated economy as the new status quo. Yes, there are political realities. Yes, the parties are hugely divided.
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.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
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Once the Amercian infrastucture is sufficiently degraded due to lack of investment from bankrupt governments, the companies will simply abandon their american presence altogether....see ya suckas.
Many manufacturing jobs left the country when Clinton (a Democrat ) signed NAFTA. The more coercive organized labor is and the more unreasonable their demands the more likely the jobs will move to a location with less resistant less costly and more appreciative work force.
Technology has made the world smaller. Corporations compete globally and as such must keep their costs competitve or go out of business. If you want a secure employment with guaranteed annual pay raises and a 401K guaranteed to grow year after year then you'll have t find another planet. Despite what you may think, laying people off is not something corporations get alot of satisfaction from. It is painful for them too. Most of this recession was cause by poor government policy not corporate greed.
Republicans should love this because it's outside the government and voluntary. Democrats should love this because it helps those needing jobs. Independents should love it because it helps all with little sacrifice from any one corporation, group, or person.
1. Obama is not leading so much as he is merely reacting to the dummy agenda set by the GOP.
2. The real agenda of the GOP is to impoverish the middle class and to transfer all wealth to the rich. This gets harder to do if people have jobs.
3. The dummy agenda is what the GOP tells everyone else to try and get people to vote for them so that they can pursue their real agenda. The dummy agenda is whatever works, it does not matter, actually just so long as it distracts folks, including saddly Obama.
They stand four-squarÂÂÂÂÂÂe for the American home--but not for housing.
They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restrictinÂÂÂÂÂÂg labor's rights.
They favor minimum wage--the smaller the minimum wage the better.
They endorse educationaÂÂÂÂÂÂl opportunitÂÂÂÂÂÂy for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.
They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them.
They consider electrical power a great blessing--ÂÂÂÂÂÂbut only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
They think American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people.
And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it."
- Harry S. Truman 1947”
We are third for sepending on Education we rank 17 in the world on Education tests. Hows that working for getting your moneys worth?
“A smaller government workforce increases the available supply of educated, skilled workers for private firms, thus lowering labor costs.”
For those who have a slight grasp of economics this is astonishinÂÂÂÂÂÂÂg. Let me explain, labor costs = American wages. By increasing the supply of labor, wages decrease. This is basic economics of supply and demand. So the way the RepublicanÂÂÂÂÂÂÂs want to create jobs in America is to saturate the American labor pool with more workers, increasing unemploymeÂÂÂÂÂÂÂnt, and driving down the American standard of living.
This is on their website in their own words.
http://www.speaker.gov/UploadedFiles/JEC_Jobs_Study.pdf
If you ask me it boils down to our electoral stems from communications that is long since archaic . I much rather see shorter terms without limits than continue with this current model. Let’s take the current administration as example (who I did support) There was never a better time in US history for the next new deal! Creating jobs through energy would have been huge and made Obama a legacy! Instead he opted to Bush bash until we all pleaded for it to stop. His only deliverable was a pretty bad excuse for a healthcare reform until he did a hail mary pass to kill Bin Laden. Now we'll be off to our traditional pre-election fuel cost reduction before heading back to the campaign trail. On the trail we'll hear....'We've done so much" blah blah blah "We have so much more to do" blah blah and moved to a (staged) questions and (canned) answer session....Now back to business as usual because "Yes, we can!" :(
Governments can and do create jobs. FDR did it. It's well documented. Look it up.