This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Things are good for the plutocrats. Stock market soaring, bonuses are big... Things are going mighty fine. So fine, in fact, that the urgency of extending unemployment, COBRA and programs to help the people harmed by the financial disaster is moving off the table.
But out here on Main Street we need jobs, jobs, jobs. And we need jobs, too. You just hear people say this over and over, and it's like we're told in response, "OK go to bed now, children."
Here's the deal: Say what you want about bailing out Goldman Sachs and AIG pass-throughs, and letting the FASB suspend "mark to market" accounting, it was unemployment benefits and the FDIC and the stimulus' job-creation that kept this economic crisis from turning int a full-blown depression. And it is still unemployment benefits and FDIC and the stimulus' job creation that are preventing it from happening. They may have hidden the bad assets on the banks' books by using a "mark to model" trick, but the bad assets are still there. The private-sector jobs are not.
We need a real economy, and real jobs for real people. If the plutocrats think they can have an economy without all of those people who are right now losing their benefits, losing their homes, losing their dignity, then we might all be in for a surprise. We need jobs. And that requires government action. If the available money goes instead to deficit reduction, you can't create the jobs. You can't create the green jobs that will drive the economy of the future, you can't keep the teaching jobs, and you won't keep the stimulus jobs.
Why isn't the Local Jobs For America bill on the front burner of the Congress?
We need a new WPA program to directly create jobs.
We need unemployment benefits and COBRA extended -- both the subsidies and COBRA itself.
What is the matter with these people? Do they really think an economy of, by and for the rich and only the rich can really work? It's been tried, and the results aren't usually pleasant:
Oh, did I mention that we need jobs, and we need government action to create jobs, and in the meantime we need unemployment and COBRA extended?