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TechnoratiStimulus Is For Suckers
President Barack Obama (how sweet those words) has already transformed American politics. The GOP is in crack-up. Obama's coattails in Congress give him leverage, and his vast public support gives him power. There is an economic crisis and a demand for action to deal with it. More than at any time since Ronald Reagan in 1981, what the president wants, he will get.
So, what should he ask for? How big and far reaching should changes to the economy be? Nearly everyone in Obama's circle agrees that more public spending and tax cuts are needed: a "stimulus package." The cautious say $150 billion (about 1 percent of gdp), while the bold and the worried say $500 billion (or just more than 3 percent of gdp). Both focus attention on what is needed in 2009-as if the economic problem can be solved in a year.
That is almost certainly wrong.
When the free fall began, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke argued that the problem with the economy was frozen credit. Banks were unable to lend, they said, because they could not get the funds. This was not true, as we discovered when Treasury gave the banks the funds, only to realize that banks had no wish to lend them out. Instead they used the money to build capital and on dividends and executive pay. (Goldman Sachs, which received $10 billion as part of the bailout, got good press when it announced its top seven execs would forgo their year-end bonuses. But a government ban on bonuses was likely coming, and by limiting the sacrifice to top managers, the company retains leeway to spend the estimated $6.9 billion set aside for bonuses on slightly lesser employees.)
In any case, banks did not wish to lend, and ordinary Americans, desperately cutting costs, did not wish to borrow, and with their homes underwater many had little collateral to borrow against.
What began as a housing collapse will not go away soon. Empty houses wreck home values for their neighbors. The ratings agencies are discredited, the investment banks are gone, and high finance is in debt deflation. Foreign investors won't soon trust the market for US private debt, even for blue chip corporations, so long as they remain saddled with toxic health care costs. Regulation will have to be rebuilt. In short, the money wells have been poisoned, and it will take time and patient effort to clean them up.
The historical role of a stimulus is to kick things off, to grease the wheels of credit, to get things "moving again." But the effect ends when the stimulus does, when the sugar shock wears off. Compulsive budget balancers who prescribe a "targeted and temporary" policy followed by long-term cuts to entitlements don't understand the patient. This is a chronic illness. Swift action is definitely needed. But we also need recovery policies that will continue for years.
First, we must fix housing. We need, as in the 1930s, a Home Owners' Loan Corporation to restructure failed mortgages on sustainable terms. The basic objective should be to keep people in their homes by all necessary means, except where borrowers committed willful fraud, so as to stop the spread of blight and decay. Government can use its power over banks to make this happen, as it has with IndyMac, the California bank that is now, as a federally owned company, revising unsustainable mortgages. But this is no small endeavor: The fdr-era holc operated for almost two decades and at its peak employed 20,000 people.
Second, we must backstop state and local governments with federal funds. Otherwise falling property (and other) tax revenues will implode their budgets, forcing destructive cuts in public services and layoffs for teachers, firefighters, and police. And when these public servants are laid off, guess what? They have trouble paying their mortgages. General revenue sharing-unrestricted federal grants to states and towns, a program invented by Richard Nixon and killed by Ronald Reagan-is required. Luckily it can be reintroduced quickly on a large scale.
Third, we should support the incomes of the elderly, whose nest eggs have been hit hard by the stock market collapse. We can't erase those losses case by case (nor should we), but we can sustain the purchasing power of the group. The best way is to increase Social Security benefits. Useful steps would include boosting the formula for widowed spouses, ensuring a minimum benefit for retirees who worked their whole lives in low-wage jobs, and allowing college students to receive survivors' benefits up until the age of 22. But let's go further and raise benefits across the board, which has not been done for a generation. I'd say raise them 30 percent, and let the federal government make the contributions for five years. This would be good for the elderly, who could retire; good for working-age people, who would replace the retiring; and good for the economy, since people who need money spend it when they get it.
Fourth, we should cut taxes on working Americans. Obama proposes to effectively offset the first $500 of Social Security taxes with a refundable credit. It's a good idea, but can be expanded. If the economy continues to spiral downward and a really large fiscal boost is needed, let's declare a payroll tax holiday, funding Social Security and Medicare directly from the treasury, until the economy gets back on track. Workers would get an immediate 8.3 percent raise to help meet their mortgages; employers would have the same amount to spend on wages, job creation, or investment. (Not all efforts to jump-start the economy deliver so much bang for the buck. See chart below.)
Is this the standard "liberal line"-borrow and spend? No. It is the situation, not the philosophy, that demands this action both grand and sustained. Economic recovery in an existential crisis like this means actually building a new economy. For that, we need investment-to restore our roads, rails, transit, broadband, and water systems, to build parks and museums and libraries, to protect the environment. Right now, states and localities can't borrow for these things. Creating a National Infrastructure Fund, using Uncle Sam's borrowing power to put money where it's needed, is one way forward. Federal capital spending should be bond financed and exempt from budget rules, especially pay-as-you-go. It makes no sense to finance projects whose benefits will last for 50 years solely from tax revenues of today.
Finally, we must change how we produce energy, how we consume it, and above all how much greenhouse gas we emit. That's a long-term proposition that will require research and reconstruction on a grand scale: support for universities, for national labs, for federal and state planning agencies, a new Department of Energy and Climate. It's the project around which the economy of the next generation must be designed. It's the key to future employment and future growth-and to our physical survival.
Energy transformation is key for another reason. Even during this crisis, the world has supported the dollar. Why? Because no alternative safe haven exists. Despite our faults, we have a well-designed economic system, the enduring fruit of the New Deal and Great Society. Thus Uncle Sam can borrow, at very low cost, whatever he needs-a terrific advantage over the competition. But in the long run, the world will support us only if we give something back. Ushering in new technologies that the rest of the world can adopt in order to save the planet is the right sort of gift. By helping to save the physical world, we may be able to save our currency, our credit, and our economy as well.
BANG FOR THE BUCK
What a dollar of stimulus puts back into the economy when spent on...
47 Comments so far
Show AllTalk about a worthless graph and worthless statistic. I have an even better plan: the government should buy a super duper brilliant economic rescue plan from me for the small price of $10 trillion! The GDP nearly doubles instantly on that government purchase! I will spend that entire sum into the economy by hiring people to do things that I want done, even if I'm just paying people to dig holes in the ground and filling them back up. That's a factor of 2.0x for GDP economy growth even before counting how the workers spend their new money. $10 trillion in a year is enough to give everyone in America a job, at $50/hr. Anyone making less than $50/hr can quit their real job and come to me, and dig holes and filling them back up for me. Why, of course the economy will be better when they quit their real jobs and come work for my hand-out at $50/hr. Can't you see the wage difference? That's what the GDP counts. Of course, I will pay my friends and family just a little more; after all, they can then spend more into the economy, too. LOL.
Goes to show just how intellectually bankrupt Keynesian econometrics is. The "Aggregate Demand" is a fraud when large components of it have no competitive market (as in government services). "Aggregate" means undifferentiate. That flies in the face Economics, which means the study of efficient allocation of limited resources . . . indeed flies in the face of all sensible economic activity. Under "Aggregate Demand," waste becomes econmic growth; thrift becomes econmic contraction. If you go to the grocery store and buy 2lbs of meat on sale for $3/lb, you increased GDP by only $6. However, if the goverment forces you to pay $20/lb for some rotten meat, you will have increased GDP by $40; if you get sick eating the rotten meat, the $2000 emergency room visit also contributes to GDP. Guess what happens when the officialdom and the population is brainwashed in this nonsense? Yup, you should all overpay for rotten meat and go to the hospital. $2040 expense must be better than $6. What a great enhancement in standards of living!
The graph is far from worthless, but it's incomplete. See my comment below.
Where are the best expanded descriptions to alternatives to GDP? The Green Party has been proposing this for some time.
The defense budget needs to be slashed. 500+ billion/year to kill people, destroy property, maintain bases all over the world and occupy foreign lands is sheer insanity. I fully agree with the arguments for supporting the people at the bottom - to finance small businesses, especially farming. This is how sustainable economies are built. We need a base of production, manufacturing. And we need to establish sound money, first by eliminating the private, for-profit Federal Reserve system and the debt-based monetary system it imposed on us.
Just a word from one of those "compulsive budget balancers". This is not a credit crisis, this is a debt crisis. EVERYONE in gov't with any responsibility is responsible in a very non-partisan sort of way (unless you count a group suck up to the banksters as a partisan act).
There is no way to get out of debt except liquidate or pay it off. This includes the Federal Gov't. To follow Galbraith's plan (and I can't help wondering what his father would think--he's the man who, after the fact, acknowledged that Adlai Stevenson's campaigns were too cerebral and could not connect with regular people) you would have to borrow, tax and/or print money. Who will lend the money? China will soon be lining up for its pound of flesh and other countries are in the same boat. Tax revenues are down, and raising taxes on rich people will go only so far. We are already $10+ trillion in debt.
Printing money, which the Fed has been doing with abandon, will surely come back with an inflationary bite. So SS increases and you spend the whole increase on a loaf of bread.
The answer, if there is one, is in the comments here relating to support at the bottom--small business, co-ops, small farms, local/regional economic development. Love the hemp comment above. The biggest single thing is decentralization, break up these monster banking institutions, reinstitute Glass-Steagall et. al., etc., etc., etc.
The problem is BIGNESS. Unless your too BIG too FAIL u don't count in America.
Nice chart. Lotta discussion.
FARM production would be HIGHer than any of these.
At the time of the Steagall Amendment (1941) stimulus package the economic rationale was that $1 in diversified farming generates $7 throughout the economy, or one farm job creates 6 off farm jobs. (Organic farming would clearly be best here, as it sends far less money out to multinationals and invests much more in labor and management. In contrast, John Ikerd estimated that for every hog factory job created, three independent farmers would be lost.)
Charles Hampden-Turner, in a chapter on wealth creation, suggests values reconciliation instead of value added. In cars, you can't just add the value of high performance to low mileage. They tend to contradict each other. Also they added leanness and tenderness to pork, "the other white meat," through genetics and by concentrating and confining them so they couldn't exercise, (heated) indoors, meanwhile subtracting value due to increased costs for fossil fuel (externalized), antibiotic resistance, pollution from concentrated manure, destruction of communities (search Goldschmidt, Labao), and moral taint (reduced exports and consumer demand with overall massive bashing of meat). Humane, sustainable family farms reconcile many values, create much wealth.
See Common Dreams Articles and my comments there about multiplier effects and stimulus: "It's About America" by Willie Nelson September 24, 2008, originally published here September 6, 2003, ie. "Raw materials multiply-five-to-one. But, agricultural raw materials multiply seven-to-one;" "Family Farms Pulled Us Out of the Great Depression" by Jay Greathouse, 11/22/08.
The lead economist on this, I think, was Carl H. Wilkin. The National Organization for Raw Materials, normeconomics dot com emphasizes all of this. NORM has a piece by Wilkin posted at their site ("Look and Learn," /transcript dot html, Wilkin in 1943). Wilkin quote, "The average of the trade turn of the farm dollar in the period 1921-1940 was approximately seven times.... The drop in national income in 1930-32 ratioed approximately seven times the drop in farm income." He then goes into the New Deal, which did NOT start commodity subsidies like we have today, but used price floors to make agribusiness pay living wage or fair trade prices.
Dennis Kucinich has emphasized these very points as well. When interviewed on Iowa Press in 2004 he held up the book Unforgiven (Charles Walters), about NFO activism against the Mega agribusiness powers in the 1960s. I've spoken to him about this.
We moved away from all of this because of corporate pressure to lower wages and raw materials prices (ie. exporting farm commodities at a loss for decades, see USDA-ERS and IATP, dumping). The Committee for Economic Development (1962, "An Adaptive Program for Agriculture") called for lowering farm price floors in order to drive one third of U.S. farmers into cities within five years, to compete against labor and drive down wages.
I'm still studying all of this and I welcome comments of any kind. Obviously it needs to be updated. The old stuff was written in a different language, for a different time. Many agribusiness justifications have been made over the years, and need to be addressed.
I see that GAO, has "MULTIPLIER EFFECT OF THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR ON THE GENERAL ECONOMY," 4/17/84, online, (for 1978 and 1979). They find (value added) livestock production to be highest, 2.84 or 2.91. Next is food and kindred products, 2.71 or 2.72. These are still considerably higher than what Galbraith shows, and are higher than the few non agricultural sectors GAO shows.
Military spending. Build stuff and then blow it up, or warehouse it. What a drain.
Very Interesting commentary and quite inline with what I have believed and or suspected for a long time.
It seems to me that Multiplier effect of the small family farm has been deliberately removed so that the MULTIPLES flow directly into the pockets of a very very small few rather then remaining inside the economy.
pk
Economics has never been my forte so I have never understood why our system is built on aquisition and avarice.
Why not establish a reasonable profit cap? ... and in the equation, how about figuring in the cost of environmental factors so that every business is responsible for recapturing/eliminating pollution/waste?
That economic stimulous is best created by directly assisting working people seems a no brainer, putting the stimulous into circulation immediately.
Imagine an economic system that rewards sustainability, ethics, fairness, and community above aquisition, predation, and "creative accounting"...
Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live
.I failed to see military expenditures on that graph above. I would imagine it to be at the very bottom for return to the economy. That the chart so blatantly indicates that the so-called "social contract", so maligned and misinterpreted by the far right, between our government and our citizenry is actually good economic stimulus.
Screw bank bailouts, screw auto company welfare, help the working class and you automatically help the economic health of this nation. The banks and the big three auto folks profited in a major way from their cupidity, all the while destroying their own companies and our economy while the workers did nothing but work their jobs and suffer from the greed of others, those at the top in fact. Let them take their ill gotten wealth and disappear, welfare is for those at the bottom!
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Can someone name me one single stimulus package that was worth shit in the last 28 years? The term "stimulus package" is a Reagan phrase and it is completely idiotic of the Democrats to go overboard on using that phony phrase. Stop wasting taxpayer money and clean up the 10 trillion. Let Big Auto collapse already !
Jason Jordan
Sandpoint, Idaho
Sounds good to me.
Does this mean that giving hand-outs to rich predators hasn't worked?
But once you've got money back in the consumer/producer's pocket, how do you intend to prevent the investor/speculator class from confiscating it again?
Since we're on a roll here, why not go all the way and get rid of the privatized monetary system since it is this system and its corporatist free market ideology that has created this debacle?
Empowering the consumer/producer may stop this heinous deflation, but this is just the symptom.
Why not do something about the cause?
Many of these posts speak of the lack of manufacturing in the US and suggest it was caused by free trade. I think this would have been impossible without cheap oil. As oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, manufacturing in low wage countries, shipping parts and supplies from all over the world and then shipping the products to other parts of the world will become less cost effective. We will need to start producing a lot of the stuff we need locally again. I suggest it would not be a bad strategy to phase in tariffs on manufactured goods gradually so we could start to reinvigorate our manufacturing sector before the next 'oil shock' leaves us unable to produce what we need. We can't know the details of the next 'oil shock' but we know it will happen.
Food, of course, would be very important for us to produce locally. I suspect too few people have the skills to grow their own food, process and preserve it, should agribusiness fail due to oil shortages. Making homes, furniture and other goods from local materials are mostly lost arts. We could turn what seems to be a looming dark age into a renaissance of artisanship and community.
"I suspect too few people have the skills to grow their own food, process and preserve it, should agribusiness fail due to oil shortages."
It's not that difficult, anybody with a book on the subject can do it.
"Making homes, furniture and other goods from local materials are mostly lost arts."
I think you would be surprised. All it would take is small business loans.
Rickster
I agree entirely, but how would that profit the people who have the power to effect change? We gotta have a real change in leadership, ergo a whole new paradigm shift.
If the infrastructure work programs, citizen monetary aid programs, and retooling into a green technology economy conflicts with Obama's war and Wallstreet masters, guess what programs get kicked to the curb? Great proposals if Nader or Kucinich were President-Elect and we actually had a representative congress. Can you imagine what 8.5 trillion invested directly in the above mentioned programs would do? That is the amount the Federal Reserve and Treasury has promised and given to the Wallstreet boys and their banking co-horts with negligible benefits to the vast majority of the citizenry.
I wish Obama had the sense to appoint Galbraith as his treasury secretary. Oh well we'll be stuck with Geitner and his status quo for the rich, so much change you can believe in.
"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Why is this so difficult to understand? Has everyone been drinking Nafta Kool-aid?
When Bill Clinton teamed up with Daddy-Bush who was promoting "The New World Order"
and Nafta we gave away our industrial base to China. We produce nothing, zilch,
Bill Clinton recieved some $10,000,000 from Saudi Arabia, another $10,000,000 from
the corporatists during the Primary. Why have those people given the Clintons
jillions of dollars? I say it is compensation for the sellout..
The Senators and Cogressmen are mostly filty rich, with fantastic retirement
benefits..they don's seem to have a clue as to what is going on on Main St..
The women is this country still idolize Bill and Hillary. Will they ever wake up?
A stimulus is a diversionary tactic to get our minds of the real problem, we are
in a major depression, and nothing will get us out of it, unless we restore our
Industrial Base. The money makers who own the printing presses love this game of
starving us to death as they gain more power and more control of the money.
The Newspapers who are closing or close to it, have brought on their own failures.
They endorsed the phony excuses for invading Iraq. They bought into the Clinton and Bush Broohaha. Time for a Wake up call America. Ralph Nader did not address
the issues properly, he missed his calling.
Gaza? What the hell does Gaza have too do with Ohio?
"...Every man's death diminishes me for I am a part of all mankind..."
The way we treat our fellows, whether here in America or abroad, whether in an economic dispute , a war, or a dispute of any kind, shows what we are made of. Further it shows how much we need a change in thinking.
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We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
In all the discussion about getting the economy moving again, I don't hear discussion about good paying jobs which produce things requiring skilled and highly paid workers. That means Americans producing what a wealthy nation requires If we go to rapid transit, whose going to build the cars to run on it? Whose going to build the heavy equipment needed to set up and run energy saving projects? We're losing our manufacturing jobs so how do we sustain a productive economy besides increasing debt to consumers, and military and other homeland security jobs? That is how we have kept the economy going, spending and producing practically nothing of value. Maybe its protectionism, but it also serves our interests. Other nations want free trade because we have the largest market in the world. The bankers want free trade because it allows them to move their money wherever it earns the most. The politicians want free trade because they get their money from the bankers and free trade has a high sounding ring to it. I think restoring our manufacturing has to be on the table, or we're going to grow less and less wealthy and weaker and weaker. We know what is going on now is not in our best interest, and needs to change.
And how about making a profit on exports, instead of selling for a loss, when we dominate world markets (50%-90% shares over recent decades for corn and soybeans, but below cost production on program commodities nearly all the time, 1981-2006). No more farm commodity dumping!
You are absolutely correct. I'll get flamed profusely for this, I'm sure, but if you want to get things moving again in this country, slap a 100% tariff on all imported goods, along with price controls on domestically manufactured goods, limiting sale prices to 110% of the cost of production. Hey, its a bare outline, flamers, but the basic premise works.
-- EKATON --
.No fire lit here.
Even as late as the Civil War 50% of all government revenue was derived from tariffs. But that was when the nation was still not yet totally under the control of the corporatists.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
you are correct. but the country has NEGLECTED its populace through everhigher costs of proper education. making it impossible for people to 1) have the education and degrees WIHTOUTH the BURDEN of paying college loans, which FORCE them, within this financial structure to largely ABANDON that for which they have placed themselves in debt....and then they become "low wage" , over"educated" , useless to the "economy" -- which is geared towards consumerism, finance, and servicing DEBT...and that was because the conservatives kept shouting against "socialized education" -- and see what the people get? IMPOTENTLY , POORLY EDUCATED, or OVER burdened "educated" people with NO Place to go for a proper marriage between their real worth and the "job market" which is dictated by those that LOANED them the debts!
2) and in that process -- the americans are being left behind by countries that INVESTED , even to the point of "deficit spending" for the LONG TERM -- by allowing their citizens or residents to have HIGH POWERED education that can compete ANYWHERE and THEREFORE have citizens that are not only educated BUT free to enter the job market - WITH NO LOAN BURDENS and ready to begin lives accumulating experience, wealth, achievements . etc.
it's a fundamental error in american thinking -- trapped by its own overdevotion to the supposed "individuality of americans"...who ONLY END UP becoming COGS in teh machine of corporate culture with NO INDIVIDUALITY whatsoever!
IRONIC, isn't it? but americans got what they asked for or tolerate, let us put it that way.
thus are the fruits of capitalism rendered.
The way to help Uncle Sam to finance all these measures is to do what governments have traditionally done in such a crisis for centuries before the word “socialism” was invented: nationalize the retail and residential mortgage banking industries.
The single lowest-cost and wisest measure we could undertake would be to legalize cannabis and encourage homeowners to grow it. This would provide resources for alternative fuels and eco-friendly manufacture of many varieties of products without increasing the price of food or demanding vast new resources. It would provide homeowners at little effort on their part with a source of income in addition to their equity, which would provide motivation for lending until full housing capacity is achieved. It would stimulate a new nationwide processing industry at rock-bottom investment costs. It would lower costs for the search for dangerous narcotics because the demand would decline. It would drastically reduce the crime rate with a boon in savings in costs of policing and incarceration. It would lower expenses arising from safety issues because of an attendant decline in alcohol inebriation.
Moreover, it would be immediately supported by about 60% of the public – both on the left and the right, and there would be every prospect that approval would rise to near unanimity once the benefits started to arrive, within about two years.
I don't see any evidence to support your utopia. I hear the hemp argument all the time. Where's any peer reviewed science. Value added production, yes. Hemp as better than any other, no.
The definition of a neurotic is that they cannot see the obvious. Truth has a price, but it pays the best dividends of all.
While I think most of strategies cited in the article are decent, it's still not getting to the root.
Yes, the financial system was abused and needs to be revamped.
But you also have to look at the situation as an INCOME, DISTRIBUTION, AND SECURITY CRISIS. In addition you have to look at the mismatch between what is being produced and what people really NEED.
In short, the economy is not working for regular people.
Can't we consider a housing policy that is not centered on financial institutions or instruments?
trying to save the capitalist system is, no, change that, HAS always been the problem . IT IS BUILT INTO ITS DNA to always arrive at ever more bloated and disastrous crises and effects...IT is the problem and trying to "save it" or aspects of it is only prolonging the agony. it is like a a person with boils all over the body...putting bandaid on one boil does not stop other boils from coming up and spewing the poison that is withing the body itself. the body IS diseased and there is no cure...only episodal "comfort" pads....that are at times called "prosperity" and BUBBLES , and followed by BAILOUTS..and back to the same old diseased body.
that is capitalism in essence. it is a ROTTEN system, PERIOD.
exactly....the foundation of the american economy is:
HOARD the wealth, today translated as HOARD the BAILOUT within the finance class....and ONLY let it "trickle down" to the people who need it and who ARE the economy -- by making THEM PAY with an arm and leg for the "honor" and 'privilege' of being handed help ....while in the meantime the finance class is given its OLD parasitical powers with the patchup work to save it from its own skullduggery disastrous schemes. that's the american way. so -- how are people really going to get out of it even if they "did get out" with the BUILT IN "trickle down" economics at work , this time in "bail out" fashion -- all over again?
Another Galbraith, another excellent plan to get US going again.
Putting money in people's pockets who are going to spend it, is they way to go.
As the great Keynes said,in times like these "it even good to pay one person to dig a hole and pay another to fill it up." Not a lot different from what the clown Wall Streeters do/did all the time: shuffle paper, click on a mouse, take in toxic mortgages at one end and sell them as (fool's) gold at the other end. But increasing food stamps or social security will have a better economic punch !
Dr Wu, the last of the big-time thinkers
The core event precipitating the financial crisis was the housing collapse and unsustainable mortgages. So why are symptoms being dealt with rather than patient's fundamental disease? Galbraith is one of the few voices calling for HOLC.
"The GOP is in crack-up."
The Gangsters On Parade loathe and despise losers. George Wanker Bush and Cheesedick Cheney have turned out to be two of the biggest Republican losers of All-Time. Let's hope that many of those who served The Wanker and watch as even now he continues to bounce the rubble, turn against him and spill their darkest secrets so he is forced to stay hidden out in Preston Hollow, snorting cocaine, flogging his pud and watching college football in his master bedroom's walk-in closet. When and if Obama actually makes an attempt to straighten out this country and do something for ordinary people, constant reminders of the brutality and corruption of his predecessors will be a big help. That's a stimulus we do need.
I think it's coming. I would never have dreamed that indictments of the Blackwater killers would come down, or that the U.S. would agree to give the Iraqi government jurisdiction over crimes committed by Americans.
Yet another proposal by an "expert" that includes not a penny of sacrifice and/or cuts and/or real budget re-prioritizing.
God-forbid "we" stop all corporate welfare programs, or halve the ridiculous Pentagon budget, or close all off-shore tax shelters and other wealthy-only tax loopholes, or demand immediate payment on all oil-lease royalties...
And here's a question that needs answering - who the hell is actually gonna work on all these infrastructure projects? In case the experts haven't noticed, the blue-collar generation is heading for retirement, and those filling the spots are immigrants, both legal and not. What's the expectation - that millions of Gen Nexters are gonna toss the college degree for a $12/hour shovel? Or swap their McD's apron for hard labor out on the construction site?
"And here's a question that needs answering - who the hell is actually gonna work on all these infrastructure projects? In case the experts haven't noticed, the blue-collar generation is heading for retirement, and those filling the spots are immigrants, both legal and not. What's the expectation - that millions of Gen Nexters are gonna toss the college degree for a $12/hour shovel? Or swap their McD's apron for hard labor out on the construction site?"
um, that is a part of the problem with our current system -- capitalists think that they alone can set the value of labor -- 'we feel that this job is worth $12/hour, take it or leave it' -- problem is, the law of supply and demand works here, too -- if you pay a person enough, they will gladly do the job -- if the job is necessary, and there are not enough takers, you need to raise the wage -- so sad that it might cut into your $12m bonus this year...
but also, we have a skewed attitude against physical labor today -- part of the problem is the capitalist, part of the problem is the pampered prols... together, they make a recipe for economic badness -- all real value comes from the conversion of raw materials into finished goods -- these wall street shell games are now being exposed for the shams that they are -- we need to return to the roots of economics, wealth creation not wealth accumulation
"And here's a question that needs answering - who the hell is actually gonna work on all these infrastructure projects?"
There's plenty of Americans out there who are willing to work and work hard. Just don't expect them to kill them selfs for minimum wages.
Rickster
You have a good point on the shortage of workers that are willing to work their asses off in physically demanding jobs, however there are quite a few construction workers that had been employed in residential construction available to shift to infrastructure improvements. As to the percentage that are legal or illegal? My guess is that in my area there are lots of illegals. There is also many who were employed in the manufactured housing-RV factories which are currently very slow with lots of lay-offs (There have been a few raids where nearly the entire work force at a factory were illegal.)
Also there are some workers from the auto industry that would be able to work on infrastructure projects.
"And here's a question that needs answering - who the hell is actually gonna work on all these infrastructure projects? In case the experts haven't noticed, the blue-collar generation is heading for retirement, and those filling the spots are immigrants, both legal and not. What's the expectation - that millions of Gen Nexters are gonna toss the college degree for a $12/hour shovel? Or swap their McD's apron for hard labor out on the construction site?"
I'm 51, have a two year electronics degree, born & raised in Washington (state) -- hell, I will! I worked two summers ago for $10/hr doing a house remodel. I agreed to get 1/2 my pay after the house sold. Then the housing bubble burst and to this day I'm owed $3,000 because the boss can't find a buyer.
So, don't be so 'elitist'. That shovel would, for me, be two dollar raise! There's still some of us that don't think that breaking a sweat would ruin our day.
How about all those guys working in 'intelligence' agencies? If they have nothing better to do than infiltrate environmental groups, legal protesters, and investigate peace-loving nuns - well, I say HAND THEM A SHOVEL instead !!!
Food stamps are a joke - how much food can an elderly person buy for $10/month??? Really??? This is a disgrace !!! Same goes for meager retirement benefits - remember, many people already lost their pensions, life savings, and 401K in previous bubble collapses and now depend on Social Security as never before - some reward for working, paying taxes, and saving for an entire lifetime !!! How much interest does YOUR bank pay on savings? (I get about 21¢ a month.)
Sioux Rose
ARMY BRAT: To qualify for a mortgage I had to keep $1000 in that bank as a savings account. I asked what the interest was, and was told .025. I thought that was a misprint, but when it turned out to be true, I said, "Why don't you just pass out candy bars?" And the banker looked at me like I had shot his sacred cow.
I was always amazed at the number of really poor people who are struggling daily to survive, yet believe their problems are caused by the liberals, or the republican workers who're dead-set again unions, refuse to become a member, or pay dues, yet accept all the benefits unions provide workers, including the decent paychecks.
Now I know the majority of ordinary citizens don't have a clue what either the liberal or conservative party stands for.
The chart above shows exactly what each of them stand for. Too bad those who really need to understand that never will.
Folks, never say never. These are NOT things it takes a rocket scientist to understand. Thank heavens for public spirited academics like Mr. Galbraith and Mr. Krugman who can convey such ideas and statistics in common and compassionate language. The incoming POTUS has the mandate to accomplish change and the times demand it. He is a master of the use of the Bully Pulpit, and like FDR he can get America listening and making the effort to understand. Believe!
Exactamente
That graph is telling , yet it amazing that the Friedmanites all support the porgams at the BOTTOM of the scale and are opposed to the ones that are in fact the most beneficial.
This should be a crytsal clear example that they have NO concern for the well being of the people unless that person already fabulously wealthy.
Remove income taxes and tax wealth and assets. Reward WORK and labor. Tax acquiring.
PK