As long ago as December 13, when we were still shedding jobs like water, Larry Summers, the President's Director of the National Economic Council, declared that "everyone agrees that the Recession is over" -- the press practically swooned, and you got the sense that someone in the Executive had found and was about to again unfurl Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner.
Then just three weeks ago, on February 23, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the economic stimulus package has "created or saved" between one million and 2.1 million jobs, with another 400,000 or so to follow. This time the press went completely gaga over the implication that if so many jobs have been "created or saved", with a few hundred thousand still to come, then economic recovery must be nearly complete. USA Today in its lead editorial the next day went so far as to say that "the stimulus has been so effective...that it casts doubt on whether Congress should even bother with a new one."
Finally, the lead story on March 6 of the Gray Lady herself, the New York Times, blared: "[February's] Flat Jobless Rate A Sign The Worst Of Slump Is Past".
Well, with a nod to our nation's greatest poet Robert Frost and perhaps his most famous poem ("Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"): "[We still] have promises to keep, and miles to go before [we] sleep." For the sad truth is that the number of unemployed workers in February in all four categories of unemployment increased by an additional 487,000 to 29.7 million, rather than the Bureau of Labor Statistics' factors lower announced loss of only 36,000 jobs, and the real unemployment rate increased 0.2% to 18.6%.
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Inexplicably, people in the administration and elsewhere continue to look at the wrong numbers when they make their pronouncements, and easy evidence of this is found in two captions which also ran on the front page of the Times on March 6 (and were largely ignored): "The company has cut jobs and remains reluctant to hire", and "For towns with shuttered auto factories, a Washington envoy brings stimulus money and ideas, but few jobs."
In the White House, it's pretty obvious from their statements and writings that the economic indicator which matters most is GDP growth, even though this stopped being dispositive years ago because it only measures activity and not benefit, and because it can be so easily distorted by 'good news' at the top of the economy or, as has occurred in the last two quarters, by unsustainable business inventory adjustments. If any of us kept our personal checkbook the way the Executive uses GDP to measure the health of the national economy, we'd be 'just fine, thank you', since we would merely add all the money deposited into our account to all the checks we wrote - with no pluses and no minuses - and declare ourselves rich. But in fact, all we would know is the sum of the 'ins' and 'outs' of our household, and not at all whether we are doing well or poorly.
In fact, the only indicators that matter as we try to recover from the Great Recession are the real unemployment rate and the real average wage. And Mr. Summers simply doesn't know enough from two quarters of very misleading GDP growth to say that "the Recession is over", nor should anyone say that the 'worst of the slump is past'.
And no matter how much the Executive and the CBO might like it to be otherwise, THERE IS NO EMPLOYMENT STATISTIC COVERING 'JOBS SAVED'. If you're one of the 30 million American workers currently among the real unemployed, you certainly know the mountain of difference between a job created and a job saved!
I for one believe that last year's stimulus package actually created only around 500,000 to 1,000,000 jobs, which is a fraction of what the administration is claiming for the sum of jobs created and jobs saved, but regardless of what the precise number is, it was at least 22 million too few. This is the real problem - this failure to create all but a tiny percentage of the new jobs we need - and this is why the Recession is far from over.
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The two most effective large-scale jobs initiatives we could enact to find these millions of missing jobs - which would also give us the quickest outcomes - are (1) investments in infrastructure and 'things green', provided the spending is coupled with buy-domestic requirements and (ideally) enabled by a new National Infrastructure Bank, and (2) employment programs for the roughly 3 to 5 million unemployed out-of-school youth.
Each $1 billion spent on infrastructure creates on average 25,000 new jobs, and when the investments are for high-tech green things such as improving energy efficiency in manufacturing facilities, smart grids and smart meters, and large-scale building retrofits, the figure is much greater. And for those millions of unemployed out-of-school youth, which is a group that will burgeon in size again this summer when another 6.4 million young people graduate from high school and college, all we need to do is enact - and fully fund - programs like the National Youth Administration and, in earlier times, like VISTA, CETA and San Francisco Mayor (now Senator) Dianne Feinstein's very successful municipal youth employment initiative.
Everyone in Congress is rightly concerned about the federal debt - as every citizen should be - but this doesn't mean we can run away from the major fiscal efforts needed to quickly and dramatically reduce real unemployment. To more than cover their costs, I recommend four revenue initiatives, aimed only at financial speculators, tax abuses, or the top 3% to 5% of individual taxpayers:
1. We need to adopt the financial transactions tax or FTT which Congress is considering imposing on the stock purchases, options, derivatives and futures of traders and extremely wealthy individuals. This FTT - while would exempt stock transactions undertaken by the middle class including their IRAs and mutual funds - would raise a much-needed $150 billion or so annually, meet the President's goal of moving "from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest", and move financings overall toward longer-term and thus more prudent time horizons.
2. We need to end "tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas" as President Obama promised during his 2008 campaign, which would raise at least $25 billion a year.
3. We need to classify and tax the 'carried interest' earned by hedge-fund and private-equity managers as ordinary income at a 35% rate rather than as a capital gain at a 15% rate, which would raise as much as $10 to $12 billion per year.
4. We need to raise the top - but only the top - tax rate on long-term capital gains back to the 28% rate signed into law by President Reagan, which would raise about $25 billion per year.
And while we move on all of this, please let's all agree on no more undersized, piecemeal job-creation bills like the small $15 billion ones that the Senate and House just passed, which will now only delay us more from having the properly-sized, multi-year, effective bill we've needed since December 2007.
So yes, Mr. Frost, we do indeed have "promises to keep", and they are to the nation's 159 million workers, of whom fully 19% are effectively unemployed.
Leo Hindery, Jr. is Chairman of the Economic Growth/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Currently an investor in media companies, he is the former CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), Liberty Media and their successor AT&T Broadband. He also serves on the Board of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
well...they GOT it and are using it AGAINST the VERY country that saved their greedy azzes, buying foriegn currency @ a profit while borrowing MORE @ zero % and collapsing the currency....ARRRGH
revolution is NEEDED !!
Easy solutions. Arguments made without political realities taken into account. I see too much of that. It's like, abracadabra, wave my wand and, "poof!", pump your magic finger, Froggie.
If we had done as many on the right insist, we would all be living in cardboard boxes. Republicans got us into this mess and now they think they know how to get us out. They must mean "out of one cardboard box and into another".
Fanned!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/13/wall.bush-obama/index.html
You guys really should've checked this guy's voting record and not just what he told you...
If Iraq proved one thing, it is that disarmed nations can go through hell. Yet, there is a question how effective our military is in fact. According to the CIA China has more troops and Russia has more planes. We do have the largest navy which is the most expensive arm, but it should seem that with more than double the expense of the second most expensive military and spending almost as much as all the rest of the world, why don't we have more everything? There is just so much waste even while what works is largely waste too.
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/071001-jobcreation.pdf
Regardless though, Hindery is dead on that we need to be carefully spending in certain sectors, not just blindly, as this administration's done. Focusing on the outsourcing is especially crucial, as our problem is not the millions of illegal immigrants but the billions of low-paid workers in other countries. Wal-mart can offer such low prices because of its factories in other countries where workers can be paid as little as 10 to 50 cents an hour. Wal-mart in 2004 alone imported $18 billion from China.
http://www.walmartmovie.com/facts.php
In praise of Cardigan and Raglan: Keynes wrote about aggregate expenditure which seems to justify spending "blindly." I suspect matters are more complex, but the modern world may have systemic tendencies toward chaos and recession because of the importance of corporations. Corporations lay off in bad times and hire in the good which would cause wilder swings in the business cycle and tend to make recessions really hard to get out of.
Anyway, free enterprise is about small business that is more market driven, inspired by a person's need to earn his/her way, and not a "command" economy that is big enough to survive mismanagement. The government can mellow hard times by spending blindly, and in the small business model is where the vision takes place and the likely source of the solid recovery.
The dollar will decline in value since the ultimate basis of its value is the real things to be bought with it. As it declines, US manufacturing can rebound -- American goods will be cheaper abroad and foreign goods will be more expensive in our domestic market. This adjustment will accommodate whatever distribution of profits we have, but, as I say, a more egalitarian distribution is better both for investment and wage earners.
My theory if wrong, at least does not lead our country into developing world standards of extreme wealth and a wretched, ignorant and filthy mass class. I really do have a principled sympathy for the middle class however self serving I know that to be.
Brilliant!
Thousands for state jobs as park rangers. Lots of unemployed biology majors that never got into med school.
Ex wife is a manager for the state, hundreds for job openings was not uncommon BEFORE this current recession. God knows what its like now.
Republicans think defeating health care will be good for them politically and will trash the President.
Here is what is good for people, businesses, and taxpayers.
A Public Option in which users would never have to pay another insurance premium, medical service co pay fee, or any prescription costs and everyone who wants it could have it with no restrictions, if you show up for care you get it.
Public Option care would eliminate insurance companies by using sales taxes to pay for health care (collecting pennies on the dollar from everyone shopping in the US).
Health care would then be delivered free from government Public Option hospitals, using an evidenced based decision process (doing whatever it takes to keep you healthy).
The difference between evidenced based and profit based care decisions is that private profit systems(increase insurance profits by deigning care, or for hospitals, drug companies and doctors increasing profits by over prescribing procedures and treatments).
The second half of a dual system would be private only; consumers would pay to recieve private care, which would be delivered in private hospitals, no public funding would be paid to private insurers or providers.
While our esteemed representatives are scraping over who will rule we are going broke and dying.
"We do indeed have "promises to keep", and they are to the nation's 159 million workers, of whom fully 19% are effectively unemployed." Absolutely correct.
Money for Israel or Money to help someone keep his/her home. Easy Decision.
Money to save snails in some creek or Money to help someone feed their family. Easy Decision.
Money to move terrorists from Gitmo or Money to help keep the heat on, in some senior citizens home. Easy Decision.
Money for another perk for our Congressmen or Congresswomen or better care for our wounded war vets. Easy Decision.
Enough of the Horse Crxp. We really do know what needs to be done. We have the resources to do the Right Thing......we just don't have the money to do everything.
On the Bush-Obama Afghan War, only 60 Democrats voted to de-fund it last week!
When are we going to save lives AND money be implementing Medicare for ALL at the state or Federal Level?
http://www.pnhp.org/
The Dems have NOT been doing their jobs they were elected to do--they won on a mandate, yet all I see is the same old, same old Wall St./Military Industrrial Complex/ Big Pharma/Insurance cartel comes first as we did with the Republicans.
Meet the Democrats, they ARE the Republicans.
This Time It's Pregnant Women:
Another US Atrocity in the Bush-Obama War in Afghanistan
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/15-3
Obama might 'say' it's above his pay grade to address abortion. But he talks completely out the other side of his mouth when in front of Planned Parenthood. If you watch this video, you'll see he actually promised Planned Parenthood back in July 2007 that abortion would be front and center in the health care bill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUl99id2SvM
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/07/obama-abortion-.html
Even if all the tax increases mentioned by the author collected the maximum amount indicated by the author (which is doubtful because people change their behavior to avoid taxes when they can), then the maximum amount the U.S. would take in if all 4 measures passed would be 212 billion. These are the authors numbers. The author also indicated that he thought for every 1 billion expended that 25,000 jobs would be created and that we needed another 22 million jobs. Well...let's do the math. 212 (the billions raised via taxes) times 25,000 (the jobs created per billion) only equals 5.3 million jobs. So we're still short almost 17 million jobs.
Let's do more math. If 1 billion tax dollars produces 25,000.00 jobs then it cost the taxpayer $40,000.00 to create 1 job. Doesn't that seem like allot? Keep in mind somebody has to pay the new employee's salary also. However, get this the stimulas bill cost $797 billion (this doesn't include interest which will bring it up over the trillion with a "T") and according to the author it only created or saved 500,000 to 1,000,000 jobs. Divide $797 billion by 500,000 and it means it cost the Obama government over $1.594 million per job. Great job Obama. Hell, we would of been better off just giving these people $1 million each so they would never have to work again and saved 594,000 per job.
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How long did it take Reagan to reduce the unemployment rate to below 8%?
01/1981 - Unemployment rate 7.5% …. Reagan sworn in.
02/1981 - 7.4%
03/1981 - 7.4%
04/1981 - 7.2%
05/1981 - 7.5%
06/1981 - 7.5%
07/1981 - 7.2%
08/1981 - 7.4% * Reagan CUTS taxes for top 1% and says unemployment will DROP to 6.9%.
09/1981 - 7.6%
10/1981 - 7.9%
11/1981 - 8.3%
12/1981 - 8.5%
01/1982 - 8.6%
02/1982 - 8.9%
03/1982 - 9.0%
04/1982 - 9.3%
05/1982 - 9.4%
06/1982 - 9.6%
07/1982 - 9.8%
08/1982 - 9.8%
09/1982 - 10.1%
10/1982 - 10.4%
11/1982 - 10.8% * Unemployment HITS a post WW2 RECORD of 10.8%.
12/1982 - 10.8%
01/1983 - 10.4%
02/1983 - 10.4%
03/1983 - 10.3%
04/1983 - 10.3%
05/1983 - 10.1%
06/1983 - 10.1%
07/1983 - 9.4%
06/1983 - 9.5%
07/1983 - 9.4%
08/1983 - 9.5%
09/1983 - 9.2%
10/1983 - 8.8%
11/1983 - 8.5%
12/1983 - 8.3%
01/1984 - 8.0%
02/1984 - 7.8%
It took Reagan 28 MONTHS to get unemployment rate back down below 8%.
The group I most admire right now are the pro-life Democrats. They took a stand alone on conscience and that they've held even this long is very impressive.
Let's target a 20 hour week.
Define toil as work not freely chosen. Work we choose, no matter how difficult, can be considered play. Encourage reducing the time people spend -- at work not chosen -- to twenty hours weekly.
Income needs to be replaced with sound investment income not dependent on savings.
Imagine two ten hour days – with five days each week to employ and enjoy. The positive (and negative) implications are obvious.
Most are trapped by mortgage payments, car payments, etc., in jobs they do not love. There is a simple test: Would they do the same work without pay?
Only a few fortunate individuals enjoy genuine freedom. See articles at: http://www.aesopinstitute.org “Getting Obama Right & My Comment” and "The Brooklyn Project".
Expanded ownership opportunities, initiated by the late Louis Kelso and the Center for Economic and Social Justice, open doors to substantial second incomes. As a consequence the toil component of the work week can gradually diminish. See http://www.cesj.org/”
Human Investment Tax Credits are designed to generate 3 to 6 million jobs and help up to 4 million begin a business.
Water is likely to replace oil, surprising many and generating millions of well-paid jobs in a revived automobile industry.
That was sarcasm BTW
GREED and SLAVERY have KILLED the good ole U.S.of A.
I did an interesting study that supports that point this week. With the uproar over College cuts, I compared the starting salaries for comparable jobs from when I left School in the 70's to those of today. The starting salaries have increased 5 times since then. Tuition has, however gone up 28 times. Why? The availability of student loans that were not so prevalent in the 70's. This is unspecified money available being spent by unconstrained or undirected college administrations; equivalent of Government.
Only my opinion.