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Let's Get To Work on a Jobs Stimulus
Unemployment has soared above 10 percent, but that figure doesn't count those forced to work part-time, those who have given up in despair, young people who were never able to get hired. There are now 25 million people unemployed.
For African Americans, it is worse. African Americans are experiencing a silent depression. Unemployment is more than 18 percent; underemployment even higher. And among black teens, unemployment is more than 40 percent.
This is combined with a staggering loss of wealth among what was the emerging African-American middle class -- a group devastated by the collapse of the housing bubble. African-Americans were prime targets of mortgage companies peddling misleading mortgages, with low entry rates, hidden fees and exploding interest-rate escalation clauses. Having redlined urban areas for decades, mortgage brokers then targeted them for subprime mortgages. Too many families aspiring to own their own homes assumed that their jobs were secure and that they could always remortgage after their low entry rates expired -- and got caught.
Now foreclosures eradicate the value of neighboring homes, even when the homeowners pay their mortgage. Loss of jobs endangers more homes. As prices go down, homes are worth less than their mortgages, so families can't refinace. And increasingly, young men and women can't find jobs to help their families in the crunch.
"The untold story is that between unemployment, a significant drop in property values, the wave of foreclosures and a lack of credit, there is a whole generation of African-American wealth that is disappearing," said Jean Pogge, executive vice president of ShoreBank, a community bank serving minorities in Chicago.
Economists now project that unemployment will continue to rise next year, probably to more than 11 percent. That will mean unemployment rates of more than 50 percent for black teenagers. Worse, many believe the recovery will be a jobless one, with corporate profits, the stock market, and of course, Wall Street recovering years before the jobs come back.
The federal government must act. What we need now are direct employment projects: an urban corps that will employ young people and provide them with work in everything from cleaning parks to refitting buildings; a green corps that will employ people directly in reforesting America and fixing up national parks. Congress needs to expand the money going to infrastructure projects and put construction workers to work in repairing sewers and roads. States and localities should get aid on the condition that they sustain employment.
But more than that, we need a fundamental commitment to rebuild America -- and to make certain that the jobs are kept in America. The president should lay out a 10-year program to make America energy independent that includes public investment in the green equivalents of projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority and Hoover Dam. This also would include major investments in wind farms and solar energy, the refitting of buildings and modernization of America's electrical distribution infrastructure. These investments should be combined with buy-America provisions, ensuring those taxpayers' dollars are spent on putting people to work here. America needs to help lead the new green industrial revolution -- but we won't succeed without a clear policy to ensure that we make things in America again.
In the short term, we should finance this construction and put people to work. We should commit now to pay for it over time, taxing Wall Street with a securities transaction tax that would slow down speculation and generate more than $100 billion a year.
But these are details. What is needed is commitment and energy. Nothing is more devastating than a long-term depression that crushes hope, squanders skills and leaves men and women in poverty. We need action, experimentation and bold efforts now.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllI can't find anything to argue about in your piece, Mr. Jackson.
I have a question though...
Are you prepared to lead protests against President Obama to fight for the jobs and stimulus that's so necessary for the African-American community?
Just wondering.
It sounds good to me too.
And I was listening to WPFW here in DC last night, turns out there was the first all-black protest against President Obama this past weekend. Cindy Sheehan was there too, the speeches sounded great on the radio.
Can Jesse Jackson or anyone else think that President Empty Suit will ever create a substantial number of jobs? Not if they still own at least half a brain.
Obama doesn't even control, despite large party margins in both chambers of the legislature, whether his unconstitutional yet so precious to his pathetic sense of grandeur Let’s Create a new Bubble Economy with Health Insurance Act gets through without the abortion issue rearing its ugly head. I mean, Jesus Christ, couldn’t Obama have at least prevented abortion from making an already pathetic debate even more inane?
Actually though, in the interest of total disclosure, anything that scuttles the Health Insurance Support Act has to be fine with me, so I’ll hold my nose and hope the abortion thing ends Obama’s Folly once and for all.
Barack Obama doesn't control or even influence squat. We've gone from Worst President in History to Most Meaningless and Ineffective President in History.
Get a clue, Jesse. You missed the boat when you decided to not help develop a non-right wing party. You are just as irrelevant as Obama now, and if the young black boys riot anytime in the next decade it will be partly because you failed to understand just how far to the right the Democrats were becoming over your lifetime.
I would add that NAFTA and GATT agreements must be scraped as well; otherwise, prospects for long term employment will remain grim.
Nice to see CD is giving air time to Blue Dog Dems like Jackson. Yawn.
How is Jesse Jackson a Blue Dog Democrat? He is nothing like my representative Dan Boren. Are you sure JJ is Blue Dog ??
We need to act outside of the toxic box of Washington, D.C. The "government" of the U.S.A. is now merely a corporate tool used for the benefit of the greediest.
Here is a parable.
Many years ago, there was a great forest of unimaginable diversity. The forest was the source of great creativity and sustenance.
Gradually, people started clearing away larger and larger sections of the forest because they could "sell" the materials from the lessening diversity for items of self-adornment. At the same time, many people became bored by the the idea of having to live ON the land and decided that there should be a few large trees wherein they could build their houses to better display their own self-importance.
Over time, the belief grew that those who lived the highest in the trees were the source of the wealth and creativity and the larger their displays, the more it proved their importance.
Then, problems began to occur - both within the "significant" trees which were selected for certain growth habits (while ignoring a central decay) and within the environment surrounding the chosen trees (an increasingly LESS diverse environment). It was decided that more of the resources from around the pre-determined "significant" trees had to be used to build supports to keep these trees standing (and support the ever increasing weight of the displays of affluence) and more and more nutrients had to be taken from food growing and instead, had to be fed to the increasingly isolated and strained "signifying" trees and their occupants.
One of the amazing things about the treetop dwellers was their ability to create theories which showed how they could live further and further from the ground and have less and less interaction with the mass of workers who made their tree-top castles possible. They and their support "staff" continued to believe that without the most ostentatious display, there would be no meaning to their existence. In fact, most of the workers began to pay to be able to work on the support system. To have the most jewel-laden and illuminated tree was the main source of PRIDE.
Eventually, with the eradication of the former forest, there remained an ever-lessening number of significant trees. Tree-top dwellers raided each other and used the spoils of their raids to further their own displays. Frustrations increased with the realization that the lumber from the raided and dismantled trees was of very poor quality.
Then, the weather changed.
Wait a minute....didn't obuma state that his stimulus package "saved" hundreds of thousands of job? How can Jackson criticize the "messiah"?
Maybe all the people who voted for this fraud based on the color of his skin will realize he is incompetent.....this has nothing to do with race. He's as incapable of handling this job as is Pelosi, Barney Frank and a host of other politicans!
Y'all can always enlist in the US military if you want a job.
Why do you think that no WPA/CETA type solutions have been offered?
Why do you think we NEED the wars and overseas military installations?
Would you want to be held responsible for dumping at least a million more young, combat trained, PTSD on the current job situation?
But I could be wrong !
Don't forget all the new private prisons that have been built. Someone has to fill them. Who better than the unemployed that have broken a law and can't afford a quality attorney, and being helped by "tough on crime" with kickback in pocked from prison CEOs,(I mean wardens) who know how to fill 'em up! And, there ain't nothing like a PTSD fueled violent crime to get that gavel pounding.
The most urgent need is money circulating in the economy.
The best way to get there is a carbon tax that is then paid right back to the American people, per capita, every month.
Only by getting money to the people will we get through this terrible period ...
Creating jobs costs more than it is worth. Let the money do the talking in the economy once it is distributed per capita ...
~The other plan should be single payer. This would save businesses hundreds of billions, stop 50% of bankruptcies and get money into small communities and inner city economies ...
But this economy is not about doing what is right for America. This economy is about enriching the already rich while using tax payer money to pay for their bad bets on Wall Street.
sorry for the double post ... site had problems for me ...
Sounds good. Let's set those jobs to building things right, too: green construction and free public transport.
During my childhood days I remember 25% unemployment. FDR instituted the WPA which put millions to work building essential infra structure, subsidizing the arts and restoring hope.
What are we waiting for? Bailing out Wall Street is not putting people back to work.
There certainly has to be a "Rebuilding" of the economies of the World BUT.
If these economies are based on consumer spending and CONSUMPTION then we merely put bandaids over what will become an even bigger disaster.
Economies driven by the need to buy more cars, more plastic toys, more STUFF not needed, the latest fashions, the latest technology which is made obselete within months we are merely staving off an even greater collapse to some other generation.
If that Job stimulus puts 2,000,000 people back into factories building more THINGS wherein lands the world over have to be plundered for the resources to manufacture those THINGS and this THINGS end up in landfills or the ocoeans or the streams and rivers then nothing really has been gained.
Yep. That's why no solutions can be piecemeal. If they don't work together, then fixing one thing by itself is likely to make something else worse.