Robert Reich's Blog : The Great Jobs Depression Worsens, and the Choice Ahead Grows Starker

[Mira]

Friday 03 September 2010
Robert Reich's Blog | Op-Ed

The Great Jobs Depression continues to worsen.

The Labor Department reports this morning that companies created ony 67,000 new jobs in August. That’s down from the 107,000 they created in July. And because the government laid off temporary Census workers, the economy as a whole lost 54,000 jobs.

To put this into perspective, we need 125,000 net new jobs a month just to keep up with the growth of the population and the potential workforce.

Think of it this way. The number of Americans willing and able to work but who cannot find a job hasn’t stopped growing since the start of 2008. All told, about 22 million Americans are now jobless. Add in those who are working part-time who’d rather be working full time, and we’re up to 25 million.

And because most families depend on two paychecks, the practical impact is almost double.

All this has a negative multiplier on the economy. If families can’t pay their bills, their mortgages become delinquent (that’s why mortgage delinquencies keep rising), their credit card bills go unpaid (we’re seeing a notable rise in credit card defaults), and they can’t afford to buy anything other than necessities (hence auto sales have plummeted, new homes sales are down, and retail sales are in the pits).

As a result, more and more businesses decide to lay off workers (or refrain from adding them) because they can’t sell the goods and services they produce.

The last time we saw anything on this scale was in the 1930s. The last time we did anything about this on the scale necessary to reverse the trend was in the 1930s and 1940s.

It is not that America is out of ideas. We know what to do. We need massive public spending on jobs (infrastructure, schools, parks, a new WPA) along with measures to widen the circle of prosperity so more Americans can share in the gains of growth (exempting the first $20K of income from payroll taxes and applying the payroll tax to incomes over $250K, for example).

The problem is lack of political will to do it. The naysayers, deficit hawks, government-haters and Social Darwinists who don’t have a clue what to do would rather do nothing. We are paralyzed.

If there was ever a time for bold government action it is precisely now. Obama should be storming the country, demanding the largest responses to the jobs emergency in history. He and the Dems should be giving Republicans hell for their indifference to all this.

Instead, Obama is all over the map — a mosque controversy, an Israeli-Palestinian peace talk (that may take years to complete if ever), a symbolic withdrawal from Iraq, and lots of little tax-cutting ideas.

Senate and House Democrats, meanwhile, are on the defensive. Polls even suggest Dems may lose the House and possibly even the Senate in November.

Business leaders have either gone silent or gone reactionary, as they did in the 1930s.

But the pain and suffering of tens of millions continue. Government revenues continue to drop, and the safety nets and public services they rely on are subject to even more cuts.

Ever wonder why the nation is turning isolationist and xenophobic? Why we’re lashing out at undocumented immigrants, even though fewer are here now than a few years ago; why the rise of anti-Islam feeling now, although 9/11 was nine years ago? Why the virulence and hate-mongering on right-wing radio, and the surliness in the blogosphere?

The practical choice we face is this: Either major action to reverse the jobs emergency or years of intolerably high unemployment coupled with demagoguery and scapegoating

[opihimoimoi]

1. The GOPers made the mess in the first place...then they stonewall Obama who doing his best to fix

and all them GOPers complain...where is the JOBS??

Instead of helping to fix...they want Obama to Fail,,,,jus so they can gain ground in the Pol scene...fuck them that pollutes the National Landscape with NEGATIVITY

They are BULLIES who lost2 elections and wanna regain the keys to the Bus they drove off the cliff...fat chance they have due to their Neg Traits....sore losers and bigots too

[lib2DaBone]

2. The answer is obvious.. we need a massaive WPA style jobs program...

Put millions back to work at a minimum wage of $15 an hour with full benefits.

We need to rebuild manufacturing in America while at the same time updating infrastructure.

China is pulling ahead of the USA at lightspeed. The only way to reverse this dangerous trend is to invest in and heal American Labor, and save what little is left of the family structure in the USA.

The American Worker is the best trained, most productive in the world. Washington D.C. and the Wall Street Vampires are blowing it..BIGTIME.

[chill_wind]

3. Reich gets the scope of the crisis we continue to face.

The practical choice we face is this: Either major action to reverse the jobs emergency or years of intolerably high unemployment coupled with demagoguery and scapegoating.


We're in deep shit that no simple amount of superficial partisan cooing and caustic taunting of the populace about "temper tantrums" is going to fix.