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Jobless Non-Recovery
I hate the phrase "jobless recovery." If people are not getting decent employment, there is no such thing as a recovery. It doesn't matter if corporate profits go up, if the Dow Jones rebounds, if Goldman Sachs honchos got record bonuses, if the Gross National Product rises. What matters is whether regular folks are feeling any difference in their lives. And when you hear the phrase "but jobs are a lagging indicator," let's be clear: that's just another way of saying trickle-down economics.
About 20% of adult Americans are either officially unemployed, have given up looking for work, or are involuntarily working part-time or at temporary jobs. As long as that stays true, we can be very clear about what the consequences are:
- Foreclosure rates will keep going up, and housing prices won't start to recover
- State and local government will continue to be broke, and the federal deficit will continue to rise
- Our manufacturing base will continue to be in desperate shape
In other words, our economy -- the real economy -- will not start getting better. I know that the big banks' executives will be getting huge bonuses, and I'm sure they will be spending that money around like manure, making things grow and all that. But the real economy will not be getting any better.
I hope the president understands that, and understands very keenly how much his fate is tied to real people getting real jobs. His political project will be dead in the water unless the real economy -- not Wall Street profits, not the stock market, but real jobs for real people -- starts to get better reasonably soon.
The American people like President Obama so far. They know he inherited a big mess, and they know he's working hard to fix it. They are willing to be patient for awhile. But they don't want to be the ones who are the lagging indicators.
There are some very specific things our government can do to create jobs: invest a lot more in infrastructure projects and green jobs, for example. Give the same kind of help to emerging industries that virtually every other industrialized country does. Negotiate tougher with China on currency manipulation. This ain't rocket science, and it needs to happen sooner rather than later.
There is a populist backlash brewing in this country. Folks are going to blame somebody for this economy. I would personally rather it be the banks than President Obama, but that will only be the case if President Obama is making real progress on jobs.
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We either need to bring the jobs back or to replace them...Green energy isn't going to do it all alone I'm afraid.
Of course, there are always 435 jobs on the hill plus an additional 100 on the Senate side, and give or take a couple of people..all of them can go....
It never fails to amaze me how the specter of immigration is lost in this debate. As we continue to shed jobs and ship them to China we still import MILLIONS of aliens into our country who then create higher unemployment and lower wages.
Of course the ruling elite wants this.
The bottom-line is: Continued Corporate PROFITS & the Continued SUPREMACY of the WEALTHY, while the PEOPLE continue to get "trickle-down"!
This will doom Obama's presidency & the future of the middle class!
There's nothing the corporate class likes more than a large unused worker pool, drives down wages you know.
Let's Build a New Real Economy with Real Sustainable Jobs Starting Right Now
It's getting clearer every day that Congress and the White House are going to continue shafting the American people and whittling away the job base with their trickle down policies favoring big corporations and big banks.
It's also getting clearer every day that we're going to have to rebuild the economy from the bottom up using our own resources and entrepreneurial ingenuity.
David Korten and Sarah van Gelder of Yes! Magazine, provide a blueprint for this rebuilding:
Sarah van Gelder, The New Economy Won't Be Like the Last One, YES! Magazine and Common Dreams, June 25, 2009.
"The new economy is built on new forms of money, and on democratic finance and business. In the summer 2009 issue of YES!, we report on worker-owned cooperatives that distribute the benefits of hard work to employee-owners who call the shots in democratic workplaces. These co-ops spend locally and are rooted locally, so they are long-term boons to their local economies. And they don't close down in favor of sweat shops in low-wage regions."
"In the new economy, credit is provided through local banks rooted in the communities they serve. Credit unions, community development banks, and other democratic institutions also serve, rather than cannibalize, the real economy."
See also, David Korten: Why This Crisis May Be Our Best Chance to Build a New Economy, YES! Magazine and Common Dreams, June 6, 2009.
Chinese currency manipulation? They have all those dollars in their reserves and the Obama administration is busy printing all sorts of new dollars (trillions) to make it look like there's a recovery. China's in a hole; they need to unload their dollars without it looking like they're unloading their dollars
so that they don't get caught with a lot of worthless dollars when the dollar collapses in great part due to all the dollars that the administration is printing. What do you expect them to do?
I am not convinced you are right. The decline in housing values and the decline in retirement from the stock market meltdown add up to more than 10 trillion dollars. The dollar has generally been going up during this crisis and prices have been going down. It seems to me the reason for that is because fewer dollars are available because of the lost values. Additionally, more people are losing their jobs and housing prices keep declining. I am simply not convinced that the Fed printing money, which goes to replace money that has been lost, is going to cause inflation and currency devaluation.
Under normal circumstances, if the economy were not in a slump, and home and retirement values hadn't been slashed, yes creating more money might cause inflation. But during times of deflation and wealth destruction I am just not convinced you are right.
Finally, China has hitched their horse to our wagon. If they sell dollars and the value goes down, they will lose a boatload of money. It is not in their interest to watch America sink.
If they sell dollars and the value goes down, they will lose a boatload of money. It is not in their interest to watch America sink.
True. But long before China's USD foreign currency reserves loses all its value the US will be bankrupted several times over. Its not a game you want to play.
The old jobs never come back. There is nothing special about this depression in that regard.
The real question is "Will we be able to replace them?".
And the only answer to that is, "Yes, but only if we get energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy under way."
There really is no choice here. No other industry at this moment has a demand for significant numbers of humans. Pretty much everything in industrial production can be automated or outsourced and there is nothing to stop that. But energy can not be. We should take that as a sign of the Gods. Of course, instead we are bickering, as usual.
Trickle down?
I apologize for the crudity, but it's more like pissed on.
Clever oxymorons they are, with "jobless recovery" the official excuse; see also, "empty bank account".
Trickledown is a "fat zero"!
The American people are in an economic war against them by wall street, bankers, global corporatists, pharma, insurance companies and even congress. Our country, the United States of Amrica, began because our ancestors decided to flee the financial and religious hardships by a King and power hungry bishops. Here we are ,in the 21st century and the majority of our people are in dire economic hardship We don't have a king, but we have power hungry elititsts who have acted like kings. This is intolerable for us and our families. TRICKLE DOWN=BERNIE MADOFF.
Unfettered capitalism unleashed on a democracy gave us behaviors befitting of Kings. Why weren't you listening GREENSPAN? Chaos has ensured and millions of people are out of work and the same old bromides are given to the public. Your specifics for steering us in the right direction for healthy and real democracy are right on the mark. " No more currency manipulation by China ", more money for infrastrure projects( China has), more money to green technology, and yes helping emerging technologies like other countries have .( that should be a no brainer) Bankrupting Main street was the most vile and short sighted policy of our DEMOCRACY, if mainstreet doesn't start seeing some of the money we lost in our savings than we're no better than a corrupt, third world country and the word DEMOCRACY is just another empty word tossed around. Time to make our revolutionary ancestors proud and take back our country from the royalists.
Finally someone who sees what I see. NO JOBS. I see the Dow going up, I don't care. I also see my friends who are not as well off as I am suffering still. I see the people I pay asking for more from me cause they are losing jobs with other clients.
I have some friends, and clients of mine, with almost no money at all, still, and with no hope of improvement. They are about to lose homes. They have lost hope.
I know Obama has been in office only a short time, but I don't see him going after ways to employ individuals who are less skilled, or are able to adapt to new industries getting any help at all.
What I do see is the same kind of unemployment I have seen from all the recessions I have lived through so far. Permanent unemployment by many.
The American public have been, are being, and will continue to be screwed by both political parties and those who own them. We have been sold down the river to favor the interests of Big Pharma, Big Energy, the insurance syndicate, the AMA, Big Banking, and those thieves on Wall Street. The same entities who put this country and the rest of the world into our present dire straits continue to suck our precious resources down into their ever greedy maws while most of us are doing without. And the man we elected to stand for us continues to capitulate to their wishes. The vast majority of us out here are represented by no one, and if our leadership continues down its present path, this nation stands for nothing and and will wither away into being even more of a third world country. Our leaders should show even half the courage the people of Iran are exhibiting
So true otis. Everyone needs to join the Not Another Dime Club. Not another dime to either the Dems or Repubs.
Trickle down is not even close, have to face the fact that the democratic party has sold out the American voter....
Please be accurate. With a very few exceptions, congress have sold you out over the last 30 years.
Better productivity with less employees has been the mantra of business. Major companies have always seen employee wages and benefits as something that must be controlled and strategically reduced. Don't expect any significant numbers of new real jobs in this hoped for "recovery."
Unfortunately, the only thing that produces plentiful, decent-paying jobs is major-league war.
Or two simultaneous mid-league wars. As shown ...
Right on.
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