It's a terrible calamity that those in charge never should have allowed to happened, it's doing incalculable damage that will last for generations, and even as the destruction continues to spread, the government seems powerless to stop it.
No, I'm not talking about BP and the Gulf. I'm talking about President Obama, the millions of unemployed Americans, and the gulf between what needs to be done to deal with the jobs crisis and what is actually being done. It speaks volumes about our country and our deeply dysfunctional political system that not only have we been unable to bring the unemployment rate down, we can't even pass a bill extending unemployment benefits.
As the Huffington Post's Arthur Delaney points out, by the end of this week, Congress' failure to act will bring the total number of long-term unemployed prematurely cut off from aid to 2.5 million. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' June 2010 numbers, the unemployment rate is currently 9.5 percent. Almost half of those out of work have been looking for a job for over six months. What's more, the only reason the unemployment rate went down .2 percent in June is because over 650,000 people had become so discouraged they left the workforce altogether and are no longer being counted. Also not being counted are the underemployed -- those hoping for full-time work who've had to settle for part-time jobs. When you factor them in, you have nearly 26 million people who are unemployed or underemployed. And, over the next few months, upwards of 700,000 Census workers will be looking for a job, their services not required for another ten years.
And yet our system seems incapable of doing the obviously right thing. Yes, some of the hold-up in extending unemployment benefits has to do with the intricacies regarding the replacement of the late Senator Robert Byrd. But the fact that something so necessary to the well-being of the country has to come down to arcane Senate procedures is a gigantic warning sign of how seriously out of whack our nation's priorities have become.
The White House has the ultimate PR weapon -- the president's bully pulpit. But he seems unwilling to use it on this issue. Why isn't his administration doing everything possible to make it impossible for Congress not to pass the extension? If you'd told the members of Obama's team during their first week in office that, come the summer of 2010, unemployment benefits, which were routinely extended under President Bush, would be allowed to expire for over 40 days and counting, they -- to borrow a phrase from Richard Clarke -- would have been running around with their hair on fire. And rightly so. Yet does anybody see that kind of urgency coming out of the White House? Not just about extending unemployment benefits, but about creating jobs.
Instead, the administration keeps reminding us how much worse things were before it took office. "Understand," Robert Gibbs said Sunday on Meet the Press, "the last six months of 2008, we saw an economy that shed three million jobs. The first six months of 2010, the economy has created 600,000 private sector jobs...We think if you take a look backwards and look forwards, there's no doubt that we're on the right path." We may be on the right path, but we're traveling down it at a snail's pace when we should be putting the pedal to the metal.
Maybe one of the reasons the administration is so reluctant to take on the ludicrous Republican economic arguments currently holding the country hostage is that it has adopted so many of them itself. Which is why we get nonsense like this, from Tim Geithner last week: "This president understands deeply that governments don't create jobs, businesses create jobs."
Has the Treasury Secretary never heard of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority? If so, why is he cynically mouthing GOP claptrap?
The two main Republican arguments against extending benefits -- that they will add to the deficit, and that they make people less likely to look for work -- are easily shot down.
Dean Baker makes quick work of the deficit argument:
"The latest extension of unemployment benefits would have added $22 billion to the debt by the end of 2011. This means that the debt would be $9,807,000,000 instead of $9,785,000,000 at the end of fiscal 2011, an increase of the debt to GDP ratio from 65.3 percent to 65.4 percent."
As for the claim that unemployment insurance keeps people from seeking a job, a report by Congress' Joint Economic Committee found it to be less than credible:
"The best evidence suggests that during this current economic downturn both the unemployment rate and duration of unemployment were minimally impacted by unemployment insurance benefits and the extensions of benefits. To the extent that the unemployment rate even rises, UI may be providing an enormous social benefit by preventing people not from taking jobs, but from dropping out of the labor force altogether (and often permanently), relying instead on more costly programs like disability benefits."
The report also notes that the average weekly benefit comes in at 25 percent below the poverty level for a family of four. So are we to believe that millions of people are not looking for jobs so they can maintain the cushy lifestyles enjoyed by those living well below the poverty rate? Shouldn't the president and his team be banging home the ridiculousness of these claims -- and the hardheartedness of those who make them?
Since the jobs crisis is clearly the most pressing domestic problem facing the country right now, it's hard to figure out what's worse: the fact that our system seems unable to do anything about high unemployment, or the growing acceptance that this is just the way things are in America today.
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I've heard others describing the hugely inflated requirements in job postings for otherwise mediocre positions. Here is one I recently ran across whilst looking for work in the face of an impending layoff.
It was an ad for a technical editor position. Now, I happen to be a technical editor, and most of my experience involves scientific subjects. As it happens, this job was a science-oriented position, and its required qualifications lined up perfectly with my own. With one exception: the education requirement.
Here's what blew me away: These schmucks actually listed their level of education requirement as a Ph.D. And not just any old Ph.D., but a Ph.D. in PHYSICS.
Now, as a technical editor who holds a Ph.D. himself (in English), I know that it is extremely rare for technical editor positions to require that degree; mine is completely superfluous to the work I do.
But to require a Ph.D. in Physics? I work with Ph.D. physicists, and they are in high demand and make twice as much as I do. What Physics Ph.D. would ever take a technical editing job, as opposed to working as a physicist! Are employers that deluded or drunk with power?
This is a way to thwart union fair hiring practices, a way to keep people from rising in the ranks so you don't have to increase their pay and position, and a way to practice simple nepotism. All job openings are not legit job openings. Employers sometimes have something a little shady in mind.
strategy for President Obama is the "McChrystal" strategy. Fire them. Chiding never
works.
This is the century of the American decline.
Too bad that a man that I thought actually cared about this country and the average person has turned out to be nothing more than just more of the same ole same ole that we have had since before 2000.
Has the Treasury Secretary never heard of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority? If so, why is he cynically mouthing GOP claptrap?"
Fire Geithner. Dump Friedman! Time for Keynes and government direct employment.
This is one of the few times that I do agree with you. I truly do think that somehing should be done to extend unemployment benefits to those who need it. However, it is hard for Congress to act upon this when you spent so much on earmarks in the stimulus and on other kinds of programs that doesnt have anything to do with creating jobs or providing a safety net for the unemployed.
Warm regards,
Michael Winters
This is one of the few times that I do agree with you. I truly do think that somehing should be done to extend unemployment to those who need it. However, it is hard for Congress to act upon this when you spent so much on earmarks in the stimulus and on other kinds of programs that doesnt have anything to do with creating jobs or providing a safety net for the unemployed.
Warm regards,
Michael Winters
but not one damn dime for the lazy unemployed bims....
He is clearly getting bad advice from the likes of Geithner.
The "great collapse" has yet to turn into the "greater depression".
The new economic model that found ever greater reliance on services that any reasonable person can do for themselves is a failure.
A consumerist economy that only buys and does not produce (except for weapons and food) becomes arrogant and fat.
Solutions exist, but President Obama seems terrified to offer them.
In Office the President has had three articulate goals: First, bail out banks, no how the damage to our long term currency and economy; Second, pass a universial health care system that may never be implemented because of our failing economic system; Third, pursue a war without clear objectives or rationale. His universally incapable subordinates have not one original idea except to pursue the same corruptible policies as the Bush Administration. They surround the President with only toxic and superfluous knowledge that is undermining his leadership and the Nation's future.
President Obama is being held responsible. His party must be held responsible too for operating without a blueprint for rebuilding a desperate organization.