Whenever I think of the
smiley-face icon, I think of Wal-Mart because of its once-ubiquitous ad
campaign. And when I think of Wal-Mart, I think of crappy wages and
insecure employees who probably live paycheck to paycheck. That
metaphor -- the happy face fronting a world of worry -- is the subject
of a new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America , by social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich.
We've all seen the dismal reports of this recession in the papers. We all probably know someone who's personally felt its effects. Job losses in September
reached 263,000, the worst in 26 years, and the real economy shows few signs of a near recovery.
Five days before taking the oath of office, Barack Obama called on the millions of people who had actively campaigned for him to be the engine for real change in America: "I don't want them to just sit around and wait for me to do something. I want them to be pushing their agendas."
He asked for it, so let's shove this agenda into his line of vision: jobs. Middle-class jobs. Jobs with a future. Jobs doing useful work that contributes to American progress and the common good. Lots and lots of those jobs.
President Obama's highly anticipated health care speech started on a totally different subject: The economy.
"When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," he told Congress and the people at home. "We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse."
One of the most powerful forms of stimulus we could apply to our economy right now would be to lower the current Social Security retirement age from the current 65-67 to 55, and increase the benefits back to where they were in inflation-adjusted 1960s dollars by raising them between 10 to 20 percent (so people could actually live, albeit modestly, on Social Security).
In most parts of the world, mass unemployment
brings the specter of mass social unrest. Not in the U.S., though,
where 13 million people have accepted joblessness with nary a peep
of protest.
Many reasons -- from Prozac to Pentecostalism -- have been cited to
explain American passivity in the face of economic violence. But
the truth might be far simpler: In America, being unemployed
doesn't mean you have nothing to do but run around burning police
cars. Unemployment has been reconfigured as a new form of work.
Juanita Borden, 39 and jobless, patiently waits as her résumé
methodically works its way, line by line, through a fax machine at a
state-run job center in downtown Philadelphia. Lying open before her on
a round conference table is a neatly organized folder. "This is my
résumé and everywhere I've been faxing to. This is how I keep track of
what day I've sent them on, so I can call and check back," she says,
leafing through pages of fax cover sheets.
President Obama's plan to stimulate the economy was "massive,"
"giant," "enormous." So the American people were told, especially by TV
news, during the run-up to the stimulus vote. Watching the news, you
might have thought that the only question was whether the plan was too
big, too ambitious.
Yet many economists, myself included, actually argued that the plan
was too small and too cautious. The latest data confirm those worries -
and suggest that the Obama administration's economic policies are
already falling behind the curve.
WASHINGTON - Julie Sizemore can only imagine what employers think when her resume crosses their desks.
After all, the Danville, Ky., native is an ex-convict trying to
re-enter the workforce during a severe recession after having spent
several years at home caring for her three children. Hardly the type of
credentials that would ordinarily help her rise above the throngs of
recent college graduates and middle managers with MBAs all clamoring
for the same jobs as baristas or restaurant greeters.
According to a recently released AP-GfK poll, 32% of Americans are crazy.
Oh, sorry. The poll actually revealed that 47% of those
asked worry "a lot" or "some" about the possibility of losing their
jobs. True, that's nearly twice as many as the same poll detected in
February 2008, when only 28% of Americans polled raised their hands and
acknowledged anxiety.
