If President Obama believes that government doesn't produce jobs, the private sector does, then he is as ignorant (and dumb) as those who mouth that statement.
Where should I start with the endless list of projects undertaken by government that created jobs and produced the longterm assets—like highways and dams—that have paid off many times over in greatly enhanced productive economic power for our nation? How about with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA)?
Even the smallest business borrows to buy some asset that brings in added customers that generate the revenue that pays back the loan and then some. For example, the government borrowing to create modern and more efficient energy systems isn't paid back out of our children's and grandchildren's pockets, it's paid back by the vastly increased (astronomically in the cases of the TVA and BPA) wealth of the productive economy ... an economy that can also afford a safety net for its participants ... a safety net that helps stabilize that economy, ironing out the more radical swings in its production of wealth.
Another no-brainer is that unemployment does NOT produce longterm wealth-generating assets. And—guess what?—unemployed folks cannot buy homes!
If you are going to revive "consumerism", we need homes for folks to furnish and remodel. When we are comfortable again with putting our savings into home-asset and related ownership, consumerism will revive. Cars, clothes, and travel to not store wealth for future need. Homes did and will again ... in fact, our national economic policy should be directed at maintaining the real value of our homes. (That would include dampening the speculative value of housing. Dah!)
There is nothing mysterious about this ... unless you are working with economic models for preserving the value of existing assets and the wealthy folks invested in them.
What's not to get, Mr. President?!
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
It's not having a job, stupid. THAT is the problem.
Unemployment is not having a job. Going 99 weeks on unemployment and still not getting a job is definitely not the same as having a job. And offering more unemployment is not the answer to not having a job.
What is so hard to figure out? Individual dignity in our cultural ethics is tied to earning what we and our families need, our livelihood.
The common denominator for everyone living in a family that does not own enough assets whose earnings provide the economic wherewithal for a satisfying life, needs a job to earn that economic wherewithal, and wants a job that offers the opportunity to earn it.
For those who need a job to earn a living for their family, no matter our religious beliefs, our sexual orientation, or our political persuasion, we can unite on the issue of needing work for everyone who can work and who needs it.
And when we are as wealthy a nation as we are, wealth that has been produced by the labor of our minds and bodies, there is no reason why everyone who needs a job shouldn't have one. We have both the resources and the need to provide these jobs.
What we don't have is a political party that articulates as a fundamental requirement—outside any other divisive issue—our common denominator as wage earners needing real jobs.
When we let the political parties divide us—the wage earners—over other issues, we let the those who own the assets of production drive the cost of labor down to below that of providing a living wage—which they now can do by producing goods AND services offshore—and further divide us over the fear of unemployment and poverty.
What is so hard to figure out? Individual dignity in our cultural ethics is tied to earning what we and our families need, our livelihood.
The common denominator for everyone living in a family that does not own enough assets whose earnings provide the economic wherewithal for a satisfying life, needs a job to earn that economic wherewithal, and wants a job that offers the opportunity to earn it.
For those who need a job to earn a living for their family, no matter our religious beliefs, our sexual orientation, or our political persuasion, we can unite on the issue of needing work for everyone who can work and who needs it.
And when we are as wealthy a nation as we are, wealth that has been produced by the labor of our minds and bodies, there is no reason why everyone who needs a job shouldn't have one. We have both the resources and the need to provide these jobs.
What we don't have is a political party that articulates as a fundamental requirement—outside any other divisive issue—our common denominator as wage earners needing real jobs.
When we let the political parties divide us—the wage earners—over other issues, we let the those who own the assets of production drive the cost of labor down to below that of providing a living wage—which they now can do by producing goods AND services offshore—and further divide us over the fear of unemployment and poverty.
See We are becoming a fascist state below.
Also, Needed: a new economic paradigm
By Joseph Stiglitz
Published: August 19 2010 22:18 | Last updated: August 19 2010 22:18
From ft.com (Financial Times) via huffingtonpost.com
By Joseph Stiglitz
Published: August 19 2010 22:18 | Last updated: August 19 2010 22:18
From ft.com (Financial Times) via huffingtonpost.com
Friday, August 13, 2010
Obama failed to be the leader we needed.
Read Paul Krugman's column, Paralysis at the Fed, published in The New York Times on August 12, 2010
And read Bob Herbert's column, Fire and Imagination, published in The New York Times on August 13, 2010
I suspect these are a couple of the "professional" liberals that Joe Gibbs was talking about.
As Congressman Alan Grayson said (to paraphrase), "Gibbs is a Bozo, a clown", while Krugman and Herbert have been right on the money since the beginning of this catastrophic collapse of our economy.
It's simple, we needed a job creation program that was "a call for shared sacrifice and a great national mission to rebuild the United States in a way that would create employment for millions and establish a gleaming new industrial platform for the great advances of the 21st century," to quote Bob Herbert.
Obama failed to deliver, and now it's too late. It will take another two years to get to the next "leadership" election, and then at least another year to enact the substantial change we need—if it happens at all—during which time we will have condemned millions of families to the poverty and despair of joblessness ... and the accompanying setback in the skills development of our labor force that work provides ... on our way to becoming more like Mexico than Canada.
And read Bob Herbert's column, Fire and Imagination, published in The New York Times on August 13, 2010
I suspect these are a couple of the "professional" liberals that Joe Gibbs was talking about.
As Congressman Alan Grayson said (to paraphrase), "Gibbs is a Bozo, a clown", while Krugman and Herbert have been right on the money since the beginning of this catastrophic collapse of our economy.
It's simple, we needed a job creation program that was "a call for shared sacrifice and a great national mission to rebuild the United States in a way that would create employment for millions and establish a gleaming new industrial platform for the great advances of the 21st century," to quote Bob Herbert.
Obama failed to deliver, and now it's too late. It will take another two years to get to the next "leadership" election, and then at least another year to enact the substantial change we need—if it happens at all—during which time we will have condemned millions of families to the poverty and despair of joblessness ... and the accompanying setback in the skills development of our labor force that work provides ... on our way to becoming more like Mexico than Canada.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Virginia's lawsuit on health care can proceed ...
Did anybody really read the federal health care "reform" legislation before it was passed? Except the small clique who wrote it, that is.
I don't think so.
Politics has become all about winning, forget substance, as in "win" a victory on something, anything that can be labeled "health care reform" ... and just keep mangling it until it can pass (aka win).
Is it a Potemkin village? (Which might not have existed either!)
The huge windfall for insurance companies and the slashing of benefits to senior citizens plus the increase in Medicaid costs at the State level ... coming down the pike ... after the 2012 election ... so it isn't noticed for now ... all so Obama could take credit for passing health care "reform"?
Are they kidding us?
There may be a huge windfall for we the people in the Virginia lawsuit whether it succeeds or not. We may get the in-depth review of the federal health care reform legislation that we should have had in the first place.
What the Obama clique lost sight of in the rush to have the federal health care reform legislation passed in the first year of his presidency, was that peaking too soon often leads to failure to reach the real goal. I believe the passage of his package—with the objective of having something, anything pass—dissipated the political force still growing behind health care reform ... and with the growing realization of how bad the reform that passed really is ... we may not be able to overcome the backlash against a federal solution for a long time.
Plus if deflation takes hold and structural unemployment and under-employment become the accepted norm, health care reform may recede into the fog of distorted history. (See "Defining Prosperity Down", by Paul Krugman in The New York Times, August 1, 2010)
I don't think so.
Politics has become all about winning, forget substance, as in "win" a victory on something, anything that can be labeled "health care reform" ... and just keep mangling it until it can pass (aka win).
Is it a Potemkin village? (Which might not have existed either!)
The huge windfall for insurance companies and the slashing of benefits to senior citizens plus the increase in Medicaid costs at the State level ... coming down the pike ... after the 2012 election ... so it isn't noticed for now ... all so Obama could take credit for passing health care "reform"?
Are they kidding us?
There may be a huge windfall for we the people in the Virginia lawsuit whether it succeeds or not. We may get the in-depth review of the federal health care reform legislation that we should have had in the first place.
What the Obama clique lost sight of in the rush to have the federal health care reform legislation passed in the first year of his presidency, was that peaking too soon often leads to failure to reach the real goal. I believe the passage of his package—with the objective of having something, anything pass—dissipated the political force still growing behind health care reform ... and with the growing realization of how bad the reform that passed really is ... we may not be able to overcome the backlash against a federal solution for a long time.
Plus if deflation takes hold and structural unemployment and under-employment become the accepted norm, health care reform may recede into the fog of distorted history. (See "Defining Prosperity Down", by Paul Krugman in The New York Times, August 1, 2010)
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