To: President Obama
From: The Looting of America
Re: Speech you should give to prevent a Republican sweep next fall.
"My fellow-Americans,
We face a true national emergency. More than 30 million Americans are without jobs or are working part-time because there are no full-time jobs to be found. The official 10.2 percent unemployment rate hides the true extent of the problem. The real jobless rate is at least 17.5 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. This is unacceptable. No nation and no President can allow this to continue.
After one year on the job, I had hoped my economic program would have put more people to work. Obviously, it hasn't done nearly enough. Yes, the stock market is up, GDP is growing and Wall Street is making record profits again. But the only true measure of economic health is employment. Our people are truly hurting.
Therefore, I am proposing the following emergency actions:
First, I am creating a National Teachers' Corps that will add one million new teachers by September 1. Each job will cost us about $50,000 so the total bill is $50 billion for this badly needed program. We will target these jobs for recent college graduates who are unemployed. I'm sure that our school districts will find room for them immediately.
Second, I call for a Charitable Non-Profit Jobs Creation Program to provide each non-profit organization in this country with a $100,000 grant if they hire two new employees within the next two months. We have approximately 500,000 charitable non-profits so this program would create 1 million jobs for $50 billion. Charitable non-profits will have no problem creating these badly needed positions.
Third, I will create an Energy Civilian Conservation Corps to weatherize every business and home in the country. Because these jobs would require additional supplies they are more costly: For 500,000 jobs it will cost $50 billion. However, this program is financially sensible in face of rising oil prices and the costs of ongoing global warming.
These three programs would put 2.5 million of our unemployed to work in a matter of months at a cost of $150 billion. And this doesn't include the multiplier effect that would follow and would lead to another million jobs as the newly employed earn and spend their incomes.
But how do we pay for it?
I know you are worried about debts and deficits. You don't want us to become even more indebted to foreign powers. Nor do you want us to pass on these debts to our children. And you do not want to see your taxes rise, either. Neither do I.
But some of us are much more able to afford to contribute. Those of us who have made hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions, have more than enough to repay this great nation for all that it has provided. This is the time for those with phenomenal wealth to help put America back to work.
Therefore I propose:
- A 5 percent wealth tax on all those with more than500 million in assets. This is temporary surcharge that would be removed once the unemployment rate goes below 5 percent). This surcharge would generate about75 billion in one year on just the 400 richest Americans, who collectively have 1.5 trillion in assets. The surcharge on the next one thousand wealthiest Americans would provide an additional50 billion. Surely these successful entrepreneurs want to put their fellow Americans to work in our schools, in our charitable organizations and in our energy efficiency programs.
It is time to put our people to work. No more trickle-down. No more billionaire bailouts. We need real jobs, right now and this emergency plan will do it.
The era of "greed is good" must end. This is the time for shared sacrifice toward shared gain. This is the time to pull together for the common good. Let us join together to put America back to work."
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It, Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.