Weekend Economists Host a Moveable Feast October 10-12, 2014

[Demeter]

1. The US has a jobs crisis. Here's how to fix it

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/oct/05/-sp-unemployment-economists-lawmakers-solutions?CMP=ema_565

The US economy has a problem: millions of Americans are left out.
There are at least 7m Americans who find their lives stagnating, the work they desire just out of reach. These workers get various names from economists – “discouraged workers,” “part-time for involuntary reasons” – but their ranks are still strong. Can the US do better than this? Here’s a better question: could we do worse? Consider: of all the unemployed people counted by the American government, more than one-third have been without even a scrap of work for 27 weeks or more. That’s 27 weeks of stress and unpaid bills.

It’s possible to work for a giant global company like Amazon and get paid so little that a homeless shelter is the only place for your family. Unemployment is a fact of life for many baby boomers into their golden years without a cushion. The price of education is still forbidding, and for those who can somehow cobble together the money through loans, the debt will be far greater than income for years...

We asked a panel of experts to pick their best policy ideas for fixing the unemployment crisis in America. Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar and former Republican senator Olympia Snowe criticise the intransigence of Congress and highlight job training. So do two respected economists, MIT professor Simon Johnson and Keystone Research labour economist Mark Price, who also advocate immigration reform and minimum wage increases....

Mark Price

Mark Price is a labour economist at the Keystone Research Center. His areas of research include income inequality, trends in employment and compensation, the construction industry, and low-wage labour markets.

You want to fix the unemployment crisis? Repeat after me: Save the planet, raise wages and make sure the kids really are alright. In order to forestall the worst predictions of catastrophic climate change the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recommended that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by 40% by 2035. Robert Pollin and his colleagues from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in Green Growth layout an ambitious 20-year plan for America to do its part to meet that goal. One component of this plan is for the country’s largest landlord, the federal government, to fully fund a programme to make public buildings more energy efficient. With construction unemployment high the cost of construction is much cheaper now than it will be when the economy finally does fully recover. Act now and we can put people to work, save the taxpayer money and save the planet. Easy peasy.

Another side effect of America’s unemployment crisis is falling wages which is also sapping the economy of its most important dynamo consumer spending. David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute estimates that a minimum wage increase to $10.10 hour would boost the incomes of millions of workers while generating thousands of jobs.You got that, Congress? Repeat after me in your best Ben Stiller impression: dooo it! MORE

IMO, THE OTHER THREE ARE CLUELESS IDIOTS...ESPECIALLY THE PETERSON INSTITUTE SHILL WHO WANTS MORE IMMIGRATION.