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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
President Barack Obama invited leading economic thinkers to a job creation summit on Thursday to help combat the worst unemployment crisis in decades. The stakes couldn’t be higher: If Obama can’t build momentum for robust legislation that will create jobs, the unemployment rate could remain in double-digits all the way through 2011.
In Salon, Andrew Leonard highlights some positive comments Obama made at the jobs summit. In an exchange with The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner, Obama said that the long-term budget deficit is an issue, but that the best way to reduce that deficit is to spur economic growth. When the economy is growing, the same tax rates reap greater returns for the government.
If the U.S. dramatically slashes economic support programs to clamp down on the deficit in the short-term, the economy is going to shrink. About two-thirds of the economic growth in the third-quarter of 2009 came from intiatives related to Obama’s economic stimulus plan. If we cut back on stimulus, we lose more jobs and make the long-term deficit worse by hampering growth.
We’ve faced this kind of dilemma before and seen what happens when you focus too much on the deficit, as Katrina vanden Heuvel emphasizes in a column for The Nation. “In 1937, just as there was some recovery from the Depression, the debt hawks swooped in and there was a return to the deficit reduction model,” vanden Heuvel writes. “Things went south again. We don’t need a repeat of that.”
So Obama doesn’t want to attack the deficit at the expense of jobs, which is good. But it’s problematic that the President is still at the summit stage on the most politically pressing issue for Democrats, as Terence Samuel explains for The American Prospect. If the labor market doesn’t start getting better soon, voter dissatisfaction with Obama’s economic platform will impact other critical policy initiatives, from health care to climate change.
“The president is up against an unpredictable clock,” Samuel writes. “With his approval rating hovering around 50%, he can’t be sure how long Democrats in Congress will stick with him on anything if there is not some noticeable improvement in the jobs picture soon. The urgency on the job situation is not lost on Democrats in the House and Senate who must defend the seats of 18 Democrats in 2010.”
Most of the pressure Obama now faces is to create jobs, not just save them. That’s because his stimulus helped get the unemployment rate under control—we’re still losing jobs, but not as fast as we were in January. But as Aaron Glantz notes for New America Media, the risk of heavier job loss is still present.
State governments are up against very difficult budget constraints, thanks to tax losses related to widespread layoffs and foreclosures. If they don’t get help from the federal government, states will be forced to cut expenses, which means shedding more jobs. Glantz highlights a recent conference call with AFL-CIO leaders who warned that state and local governments could be forced to cut up to one million jobs in 2010 if Congress and President Obama fail to enact a major jobs bill.
David Moberg envisions an ideal jobs bill for Working In These Times. We need a major aid package to state governments, modernizing our schools and transportation network, a public-sector job program to fund important work in our communities, and a tax credit for companies that hire workers. The whole thing would only cost $400 billion and would create 4.6 million jobs. That could be enough money to move unemployment out of crisis-mode. Right now, about 15.4 million workers are out of a job. Half those workers have been put out of work over the course of the recession. Creating 4.6 million jobs would make an enormous difference.
And while the $400 billion price tag may sound like a big number, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to our $9 trillion fiscal deficit. Going back to The Nation: As vanden Heuvel notes, the whole package could be paid for with a modest tax on risky Wall Street securities trading.
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The only way to create enough jobs to have full employment in the U.S. is to dump the Religion of Free Trade, and try something like Fair Trade.
When the manufacturing base was outsourced, they told the people "You now live in a service economy"
When the service economy collapses because no one can afford the services, we will be told, "You will get used to living with less". That's fine if it starts from the top down, the good old Trickle Down Effect.
Unfortunately, Obama's plan to hand out money to campaign contributors under the guise that they will create jobs ain't gonna create many jobs.
If Obama was serious about job creation he would be pressuring the Senate to include Jay Rockefeller's idea to extend Medicare to Americans age 55-64 in the health care "reform" bill. Millions of Americans age 55-64 are delaying retirement solely to retain their relatively affordable employer-sponsored medical insurance.
Rockefeller's proposal would make those jobs available to young Americans as soon as the new Medicare coverage was implemented.
The nature of the jobs is as important as the number of jobs. Having people take cuts in wages in order to keep working so as to "Compete with workers in China" simply staves of an even worse collapse into the future.
Jobs based upon more consumption of goods and resources will lead to a further deterioration of the enviorment and led to even more expensive "Resource wars" in the resource rich regions of the world. These costs will far exceed the gains made from more tax revenues.
Rather then ever more stimulus wherein the bulk of the money just finds its way back into the pockets of those Corporations as the average worker builds up more debt and sees another bubble created, a fundamental restructuring of the economies are needed.
This should be focused on ensuring the wealth of a nation is more evenly distributed. It should focus less on "drill baby drill" and the Strip mining of Coal mines in the Appalachians and more on preserving the enviroment.
Out of control growth and development is part of the problem here and should not be the focus of the solution.
Hampering growth need not be a bad thing.
You are correct in the nature of the work is as important as the numbers of jobs. I recall the Bushites touting the job creation rate as a success, ignoring the job destruction rate which puts net private sector jobs added as less than 1%. They also ignored that destroyed jobs generally paid over 30K a year whereas the created ones generally paid less than 30K.
However I disagree that growth is the problem. The problem is the strategy of growth. The trend of raising productivity and cost saving so as to fatten the rich in the hopes that the great spending splurge would make everything worth it has been shown to be a complete failure. They take profits and pay out shareholders; it doesn't trickle down.
The solution lies in tightening the job market and raising the value of labor. FDR's new deal saw the fastest rate of economic growth in American history. Wealth redistribution works!
A few common sense ideas: 1. drop retirement back down to 63. 2. Lower medicare eligibilty down to 50. 3. And the most important: QUIT LETTING foreign countries use tariff levels that don't match the tariff levels of the US. For example China has an average of 22 % tariff on USA goods going into China. While the Chinese goods coming into the USA have an average level of 3%. 4. Tax breaks for AMERICAN companies hiring in the US. TAX hits for those that export jobs - the exact opposite of what is happening today. 5. Create a works program that actually employs and pays the person that does the work. After Katrina the average job was bid out at $185 an hour. It passed from 1 company to the next to the next - all taking their cut for CREATING NOTHING - and when the work was finally done the worker made $8-10 an hour. FDR and Harry Hopkins hired 3 million workers in 6 weeks and paid them prevailing wages for 30 hours a week with 3% overhead - not the 90% overhead of Katrina. But hey then we'd cut into the multi-national corporations illegitimate profits - and therein lies the crux- and also why Obama will NOT DO ANYTHING approaching a sensible trade policy/ manufacturing/industrial policy. Obama is a collossal failure as of right now in regards to the working people of this country that actually produce something of value - but if you are a vampire banker creating NOTHING of value Obama's your man. Which is why looking Obama's Job Summit Leo Gerard must have felt pretty lonely. Keep up the good work Mr Gerard! Heck maybe MR GERARD should run for President of the USA not just the AFL-CIO!
mtdon 10:51 ----- very good suggestions ,and a massive renewable energy creation program would employ as many as you could pay for.
The article's author misses the point, Obomber is doing absolutely( except medical cannabis) nothing good for the world or nation.
He needs the desperate unemployed for corporate imperial cannon fodder.
This state got a drone command base from OBomber but no money for a green smart electical grid.
Looking to Obomber for good is a blind fools endeavor.
"drop retirement back down to 63"
Is the idea to *force* people of a certain age out of the work force? That would be age discrimination.
It is the possibilty of voluntary retirement at 63, nothing wrong with that.
But that is already the case, that people can retire at 63, or at any age for that matter.
I think that this article presents some noble and worthwhile endeavors and provides some ideas for addressing the economic collapse. That said, I also think that we are living in a period of history that parallels what happened in Europe during the 20's and 30's. Due to the financial collapse at that time, certain powerful banking cartels brought into power, Hitler and Mussolini, with the aim of population reduction otherwise known as eugenics.
Our Constitution and Republic has promoted the sanctity of human beings and we as a nation have been, for the most part, committed to uplifting the lives of humans through education, modern sanitation & energy, access to food and healthcare etc.
This may be hard to swallow for the average citizen who may have reaped the benefits of a once strong economic nation, but I honestly believe that what we are witnessing now under the Obama admin. (Bush too) is full on fascism with an intent to DEPOPULATE. The Obama admin. is pushing outright fascist austerity budget cuts in all areas of human needs.
The states are bankrupt and are in the name of budget cutting, cutting all sorts of social programs to the poor and needy. People are dying from this nightmare and with no practical solutions from our leaders to deal with this crisis the death rate will only increase.
Our nation is going fully fascist, there is a willful intent on the part of our leaders to comply with the globalist agenda to depopulate through wars, budget cuts, rising unemployment and poverty etc.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that all these warm and fuzzy viewpoints on how to get the economy on track are missing the point because there does exist an evil fascist globalist banker agenda stinking up the
Whitehouse.
Are "make work" jobs the answer? Sort of a "jobs for klunkers" program which is good only as long as the program's in play?
How about a 1 year Mortgage Holiday for everyone on the verge of foreclosure, including being behind on payments. This will give folks a chance to catch up, save, and get back to spending, hopefully reasonably this time. In turn, longer term demand will be created, which is the basis for jobs in the first place.
"...modernizing our schools and transportation network, a public-sector job program to fund important work in our communities..."
Great plan - 4.6 million temporary, low wage, low skilled 'jobs' with zero future.
If we Americans were even willing to do said jobs, we'd have long ago taken over all the 'jobs' we've outsourced to illegal, and legal, immigrants - like strawberry picking and kill-floor scrubbing and etc.
Can't wait to see how many 20somethings trade in their gadgets for shovels for 8 bucks/hr and no bennies...
In the real world electoral trenches Obama is defeated in 2012 due to the lack of jobs, as long as the Republicans don't dominate a total nut case like Palin or a southern Redneck like Huckabee. Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Virginia etc. were all states that elected Obama for one reason: to create jobs. None of these states will vote for Obama in 2012 if there are no new jobs to speak of, as long as the Republicans nominate someone who sounds sensible to desperate job-seekers, like Pawlenty from Minnesota or Romney from Massachusetts, as seems likely. Obama is toast as long as the Republicans don't nominate a complete looney bird.
And I am sorry, but regardless of how much money Obama rakes in after he loses in 2012, he still goes down in history as a one-term President, which is politically a failure regardless of anything else.
Jimmy Carter lost his re-election for basic economics reasons also; for him it was at least as much due to inflation as it was due to unemployment.
Unlike Carter who was swept away by forces beyond his control, with Obama being defeated in 2012 serves him right, because he alone decided that the banksters and the rich people in general were far more important than the tens of millions needing decent incomes from jobs.
It was disturbing when Obama started blaming black poverty on black people not able to maintain families and so forth. It became devastating when Obama started blaming white poverty on white people deciding they need a job because they can't make their own nicely profitable business out of thin air. It seems that in Obama's twisted, right-wing mind, you don't absolutely have to have a job, because you should be able to automatically generate enough income from your own business for you and your family to live on. It's your fault and your problem if you can't.
But as anyone knows who knows anything about business, and/or anything about the current state of the economy, Obama's real views (which he dares not spell out in full in public) are totally unrealistic and are utter garbage. So good riddance to Obama in advance; I'm tuning him out until his 2012 concession speech.
I don't have a clue why the author was taken in by the theatrics of the 1-day mini "summit"; why he states that Obama is open to real jobs programs. There were several reports coming from "well-placed Obama insiders" last week indicating that in January Obama plans to announce deficit reduction will, beginning in 2010, be far more important than any jobs programs. In Obama World, there are going to be a lot of dead people instead of employed people. Obama is literally killing off some of his own would-be voters.
As for progressives, if they don't realize they need to unite behind a new party now, I suppose they never will, so the US will be permanently a very right wing country. As with all permanent right wing countries of history, this means nothing but misery, death and destruction for increasing millions.
Previous: http://www.unity-progress.blogspot.com Y'all are invited.
Also Carter lost because the MSM headlined the Iranian hostages every single day for how many months? And his helicopter rescue mission was sabatoged before it left the carrier ( fire retardent weakened components and dust shields removed).
And the precise moment Reagon took the oath the hostages were released.
Nobody seems to want to talk about the additional jobs that need to be lost if we are to make this country a decent country again:
The people who make cluster bombs and land mines need to loose their jobs.
The people who make cruise missiles need to loose their jobs.
The people who make attack helicopters need to loose their jobs.
The people who make nuclear weapons need to loose their jobs.
The people who make fighter aircraft need to loose their jobs.
Unemployment needs to skyrocket in places like Wichita Kansas, Fort Worth Texas, Marrietta Georgia, Denver Colorado, Groton Connecticut, Natick Massachusetts and Seattle Washington.
well said, tommy, but we need to provide necessities for these workers, even after they stop working...we will all need to consolidate resources, water, food, shelter, that we might all be able to lose our jobs, yet live on without money...
As Arnold said in T2, when the bad terminator's myriad bits were beginning to thaw and reassemble after having been frozen in nitrogen, shot, shattered and scattered: 'we don't have much time...'
Yup. Build the new in the shell of the old.
I was hoping that some help in this might be coming in the form of single-payer health care. Silly me!
We need -- somehow -- to prepare health care providers, food producers and others who do things that actually need to be done to continue after the dreaded "economic collapse." We have to demonstrate that we will give them the support they will need to continue and we need to acquire the skills to be of use in this.
Build Renewable power systems
Do not forget the Drones, which is the current hot stock portfolio investment pick.
Obama has placed private investment as his first priority for a healthy economy, which is plainly merely serving the interests of private investors over the needs of the public at large. In fact, private investment places the biggest strain on the economy because it seeks high profits and there are no higher profits than those provided by demand-driven whirlpools in the market. When these eddies get large enough to take down the economy they are called bubbles, before that they are called hot investments. The White House strategy appears to be to allow the economy to be drawn down by the riptide until it starts blowing bubbles before a rescue is attempted.
The Commondreams website is not the place to be berating American workers by incessantly repeating the hackneyed canard that "Americans won't do this kind of work."
The US has lost at least 3 million manufacturing jobs since 1998, and American workers were actually doing these jobs, and would like to still be doing them. Furthermore, millions of Americans still do jobs that some writers and commentators say that they won't do. Obama said he was going to help create millions of "green jobs." We are not holding our breath at this time for these green jobs to be created anytime soon.
1. Restore income tax rates to pre-Reagan levels.
2. Lower Medicare eligibility to 50.
3. Raise minimum wage to $15/hr over 5 years.
The backbone of the democratic party is the working classes that have been double-crossed by the Clinton Circus and Nafta.
When people complained of the loss of jobs to China and Mexico, Clinton told them that we will train you for the new jobs of the future, "Computers". Hillary was outsourcing computer jobs to India. Time for the working classes to get a wakeup call.
Let's vote all incumbents out in the year 2010.
As a number of posters have pointed out, economic growth in many cases will lead to increased pollution. We must be smart about this jobs bill. I would like to see the government subsidize an effort to put solar panels on every rooftop of America. The entry price right now for solar panels is way out of the range of the average American. Around $30,000 for the average home based on what I have read. Such an effort could put a dagger in the heart of the coal industry. More importantly, it would free Americans from the whims and wants of these big energy corporations in regards to their electric supply. I call that a win-win. Another initiative I would like to see implemented is the equivalent of our interstate highway system. Instead, we would invest heavily in the development of high speed mass transit systems throughout the country. Once again, reduced pollution, new jobs.
The EPA has declared CO2 emissions a threat to public health and welfare. This happened Monday and caused very little fanfare. That said, I view it as important step and yet another sign that our government is finally bellying up to the global warming table. Let us hope the government recognizes the dangers of indiscriminate economic growth and chooses wisely as they implement this jobs program. It increasingly appears that this admin will use TARP money for this jobs program and I applaud that effort. Now we need to make sure that this jobs program is coherent in the context of the other threats that this nation faces (e.g. global warming).
Sounds like the plan for jobs promoted by the Obama whitehouse is the exact same plan for jobs pushed with the stimulous bill--retrofitting houses, green jobs, small business. Tepid measures that can't be indefinitely repeated to prop up the collapse while insuring the well-heeled are still sitting pretty.
During the Depression, the suffering was shared--therefore the ruling class had incentive to act, but if their poition is subsidized by our want, the most they will do is throw bones. Obama is the dutiful servant to, what used to be called by Black radicals in the 60's- the Man.
Only way to create job is to give stimulus money to the people. Let do lottery style 1 million dollars grant to open small business, every citizen over 18 shall be include. Give these people 3 months to open business or they loose stimulus money. IRS will oversee spending, and every new business needs place (rent own), needs equipment (only American made) and needs employees.
Just like Oklahoma land rush in 19th century, overnight economy was turn. I already wrote to president and senators and many in congress, bur no reaction. They really think that we are too stupid to create jobs. Money is only for rich guys, and we gone get what will drop from their table.