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by GRITtv was published on November 18th, 2009
The Nation's
John Nichols , author of
Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy
calls the unemployment crisis a "social, economic and political threat," writing of the growing sense of urgency within an administration facing a purported recovery that hasn't extended to everyday people. Around the country, decaying manufacturing towns and communities are suffering in ways that are hidden by the statistics, and a rising GDP doesn't do much for Main Street.
Economist
Dean Baker of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of
Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy
wrote:
Even with the prospect of extended benefits, unemployment is still a crisis for the families affected, as they struggle to pay their mortgage or rent and cover other essential expenses. Millions will end up falling behind, losing their home — in some cases leading to homelessness and/or family break-ups.
Since Obama is convening a jobs summit and soliciting suggestions on how to put people back to work (that don't involve the dirty word "stimulus"), we had Baker and Nichols put their heads together and talk about ways to create good, meaningful, well-paid jobs and rethink the way Americans look at work.
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www.grit.com.
Dean Baker and Jon Nichols are right. I know there are several things being floated by Progressive members of Congress. This current Health Care bill as it stands in both houses is basically a joke unless they move up the start up date, the Dems needs to be SEEN as DOING SOMETHING, you know CHANGE.
There is so many infrastructure projects that need to be done. In California they are talking 2012 to break ground on High Speed Rail.
How come we can move that up to 2011?
Thom Hartmann wrote we should break down the age requirement for retirement, that would open up the job market and also increase SSI so people can actually LIVE on it.
I’ve been working reduced work hours for 2.5 years. I live with my parents so I’m protected for the large part, but I recently had my prized show/race car repo’ed 16 payments from full ownership due in part to a further reduction in hours, I even qualified for unemployment assistance.
Some countries in Europe have 41 paid vacation days! Could you imagine that in America? Of course not that would allow more people to say march on Washington for Single Payer Health Care…
This gives a bunch of money to other industries and countries in Europe that depend heavily on tourism.
So what if US is more productive, I was hired to do 1 job, I now do 2 jobs and get paid for 1 at a reduced rate! How’s that for Productivity and I don’t get paid time off, I get what amounts to a week’s pay (actually less) just after the first of the year.
Just by giving more time off, vacation time and shorting the work week we could hire millions of more people to cover the holes. That’s easy and cheap to do. It would also come with a small by federal budget standards price tag.
Call me shiftless if you want, but I would welcome more PAID time off, its not like I would get rich or something…
By djfourmoney on November 20th, 2009 at 4:50 am
Our media is carefully parses, Bernanke smells ‘green shoots’ code talking to the street and sure enough the market goes up as the TARP funds are gamed, nobody cared about unemployment or business loans only the market and the bank-brokers were saved. Rahhh! Then unemployment (actively UEI’d) broke 10% and the media smelled just enough blood for some embarrassing Goldman, Geithner and Bernanke pieces and a few teabagger marches, but already it’s back to ‘next year the economy will improve’.
This is ludicrous. Everyone I know is either making less or reduced hours or laid off with no callback. When the commercial mortgage ratchet up in 2010, those commercial property owners will ‘pull a Trump’ and declare bankruptcy through their LLC subsidiaries, stiffing the millions of vendors, subcontractors, HVAC installers, window washers, janitors, security and IT service providers who keep those commercial properties going.
A subcontractor in our town actually went back and removed the balcony railings from a mixed-used condo, because he’d been stiffed to his face. There are millions of workers and billions of dollars of lien claims that will just be wiped out, and over the next two years unemployment will continue to increase, bank failures will continue to increase, and the war in Afghanistan, in case you haven’t noticed, will continue to increase.
It’s a jobs program, just like every other tax dollar you send to WADC. ‘Spend it, or lose it’, if you’ve never worked in public service, that’s what the managers go around saying at the end of the biennium. ‘Buy something expensive, anything, I’ll sign the purchase order!’
‘Spend it, or lose it’ should replace ‘In God We Trust’ on our money.
By chipher on November 21st, 2009 at 1:08 am