The Real News on Jobs, Robert Reich.org, March 4, 2011, by Robert Reich, used with permission, quoted verbatim:
Are we making progress on the jobs front? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 192,000 new jobs in Februrary (220,000 new jobs in the private sector and a drop in government employment), and a drop in the overall unemployment rate from 9 to 8.9 percent.
We’re heading in the right direction but far too slowly to make a real dent in unemployment. To get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent by 2014 we’d need over 300,000 new jobs a month, every month, between now and then. Code for Music – flag lady link
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Overall, the number of unemployed Americans – 13.7 million – is about the same as it was last month. The number working part time who’d rather be working full time – 8.3 million – is also about the same.
But to get to the most important trend you have to dig under the job numbers and look at what kind of new jobs are being created. That’s where the big problem lies.
The National Employment Law Project did just that. Its new data brief (PDF) shows that most of the new jobs created since February 2010 (about 1.26 million) pay significantly lower wages than the jobs lost (8.4 million) between January 2008 and February 2010.
While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour.
In other words, the big news isn’t jobs. It’s wages.
For several years now, conservative economists have blamed high unemployment on the purported fact that many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech jobs market.
So if we want more jobs, they say, we’ll need to take pay and benefit cuts.
And that’s exactly what Americans have been doing.
Employers have demanded wage and benefit concessions from their unionized workers and often got them. Detroit is creating auto jobs again — but new hires are getting about half the pay that auto workers were getting before. Airline workers are taking home 30 to 50 percent less than they did years ago. And so on.
Conservatives say it’s not enough. That’s why unions have to be busted – and why some governors are seeking to abolish laws requiring workers to become dues-paying union members in order to get certain jobs. Hence, the fights brewing in the Midwest.
Meanwhile, millions of non-union workers have accepted cuts in pay and benefits just to keep their jobs. Health benefits have been slashed, pension contributions from employers dramatically cut, wages dropped or “frozen.”
Millions of private-sector workers have been fired and then re-hired as contract workers to do almost exactly what they were doing before, but without any benefits or job security.
The current attack on public-sector workers should be seen in this light. The charge is they now take home more generous pay and benefit packages than private-sector workers. It’s not true on the wage side if you control for level of education, but it wasn’t even true on the benefits side until private-sector benefits fell off a cliff. Meanwhile, across America, public-sector workers have been “furloughed,” which is a nice word for not collecting any pay for weeks at a time.
At this rate, the unemployment rate will continue to decline. But so will the pay and benefits of most Americans.
Conservative economists have it wrong. The underlying problem isn’t that so many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech labor market. It’s that they’re getting a smaller and smaller share of the American pie.
Robert Reich was the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Most Successful Cabinet Members of the century. He has written eleven books, including “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages. His recent book is “Supercapitalism.” For Professor Reich’s book page for Supercaptialism at Amazon, go here. Reich’s newest book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future has been released September 21, and is available for ordering at this link (Amazon.com). The above article is from Reich’s new blog, and can be viewed here.
In the next several days Evans Liberal Politics may well be forced off the air for nonpayment of my phone/internet bill. We have made emergency appeals before, but this one is urgent and there will be nothing I can do to bring you the news unless we get significant donations, soon. Please help me stay on air, and have fuel oil to heat my home, as currently my furnace is shut down and just a few, small electric heaters are giving us a little heat.
To Help, please send a money order to Paul Evans, 5396 Overton Road, Wooster, OH 44691. I’m saying a little prayer to God that some few kind and well-off souls will send us some help. Thank you to all my readers. ~ Paul Evans
In the next several days Evans Liberal Politics may well be forced off the air for nonpayment of my phone/internet bill. We have made emergency appeals before, but this one is urgent and there will be nothing I can do to bring you the news unless we get significant donations, soon. Please help me stay on air, and have fuel oil to heat my home, as currently my furnace is shut down and just a few, small electric heaters are giving us a little heat.
To Help, please send a money order to Paul Evans, 5396 Overton Road, Wooster, OH 44691. I’m saying a little prayer to God that some few kind and well-off souls will send us some help. Thank you and God Bless you. ~ Paul Evans
GOP budget cuts would kill 700,000 jobs: report, The Raw Story, February 28, 2011, by Sahil Kapur, used with permission, quoted verbatim: Evans Liberal Politics is pleased to partner with The Raw Story to bring you cutting edge news. (I know I said the blog below would be all today, but I just couldn’t pass up this little gem!)
WASHINGTON – The Republican budget proposal to sharply cut federal spending would cost 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to the independent analyst Moody’s.
In a new report (PDF) obtained Monday by the Washington Post, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi analyzes the House Republican budget proposal cutting spending by $61 billion this year and projects that it will curtail job growth.
“The House Republicans’ proposal would reduce 2011 real GDP growth by 0.5% and 2012 growth by 0.2%. This would mean some 400,000 fewer jobs created by the end of 2011 and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012,” Zandi concluded.
The numbers challenge the GOP’s philosophy that government spending cuts help create jobs and grow the economy, a view that puts the party at odds with Democrats.
Republicans have invoked job creation as a top priority, vigorously campaigning on the issue and attacking Democrats for ostensibly being lackadaisical about unemployment. The House GOP majority labeled its measure to roll back health reform the “Repealing The Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”
The report notes that Republicans are exercising “modest” but “meaningful” fiscal restraint, but serves as a warning that cutting government spending can sometimes hurt job growth.
“While long-term government spending restraint is vital, and laying out a credible path toward that restraint very desirable, too much cutting too soon would be counterproductive,” Zandi wrote.
House Republicans passed their budget just over a week ago by a 235-189 margin, setting up a stand off with President Barack Obama and Democrats.
In the next few days Evans Liberal Politics will be forced off the air for nonpayment of my phone/internet bill. We have made emergency appeals before, but this one is urgent and there will be nothing I can do to bring you the news unless we get significant donations, soon. Please help me stay on air, and have fuel oil to heat my home, as currently my furnace is shut down and just a few, small electric heaters are giving us a little heat.
To Help, please send a money order to Paul Evans, 5396 Overton Road, Wooster, OH 44691. I’m saying a little prayer to God that some few kind and well-off souls will send us some help. Thank you and God Bless you. ~ Paul Evans
Acknowledging my Fans: My top nine cities for Sunday, February 27, in terms of the numbers of visitors were: Mountain View, California (200, Google, you are the best – tell your fellow techs about us!); Cabot, Arkansas (180 visitors, good to see you guys back near the top of the list, spread the word!); Redmond, Washington (113 visitors – Microsoft, we love you guys, too – tell all your IT friends about us!); Alexandria, Ohio (61 visitors – thank you and go Bucks!); Seattle, Washington (48 visitors – We’ve got 48 degrees and rainy here in NE Ohio, does that sound like your kind of weather?); Bloomington, Illinois, home of Illinois Wesleyan and nearby Illinois State, (42 visitors, thank you!); Mt. Laurel, New Jersey (38 visitors – how goes the Great Recession in the Garden State, I can just imagine!); Jakarta, Indonesia (35 visitors, many thanks!); and Beijing, China (31 visitors, thank you very much!). A Special Hello to my Friends in Brazil (145 visitors) and China (67 visitors)! Get YOUR city into the game: Please share Evans Liberal Politics with friends and contacts, using the icons at bottom of each post!
Quiz: Which of the 2012 presidential aspirants delivered the following words at the Conservative Political Action Convention, now underway in Washington?
We have seen tax-and-tax spend-and-spend reach a fantastic total greater than in all the previous 170 years of our Republic.
Behind this plush curtain of tax and spend, three sinister spooks or ghosts are mixing poison for the American people. They are the shades of Mussolini, with his bureaucratic fascism; of Karl Marx, and his socialism; and of Lord Keynes, with his perpetual government spending, deficits, and inflation. And we added a new ideology of our own. That is government give-away programs….
If you want to see pure socialism mixed with give-away programs, take a look at socialized medicine.
If you guessed Jim DeMint, you could be forgiven. He talks a lot like this. But you’d be wrong. Newt Gingrich didn’t utter these precise words, either, although he uses much the same language and offers the same themes.
You’d also be wrong if you guessed Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Tom Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Haley Barbour, John Thune, Mitt Romney, or Mitch Daniels. (Sarah Palin isn’t attending.)
But again, your mistake would be understandable because these words sound a lot like theirs. Any of them could have delivered this message – and all of them have, over and over again. It’s the Republican message of 2011.
The perfectly correct answer is Herbert Hoover.
Herbert Hoover didn’t deliver these words at this week’s Conservative Political Action Convention, though. He delivered them at the Republican National Convention in Chicago on July 8, 1952.
That was almost sixty years ago.
Republicans haven’t come up with a single new idea since. They haven’t even come up with a new theme.
Herbert Hoover, you may remember, didn’t have a sterling record when it came to the economy. As president, he presided over the Great Crash of 1929 and ushered in the Great Depression. He had no idea for what to do to help the nation out of the Depression except to balance the federal budget. By the time he was voted out of office in 1932, one out of four Americans was unemployed.
By 1952, Hoover had been proven irrelevant and hidebound.
After Dwight D. Eisenhower won the 1952 Republican nomination and went on to become president, he wisely disregarded everything Hoover had advised.
Under Ike, the marginal income tax on America’s highest earners was 91 percent. Eisenhower also commenced the biggest infrastructure program in the nation’s history – the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act, which replaced America’s meandering two-lane roads with 40,000 miles of straight four and six-lane highways. He signed into law the National Defense Education Act, which trained a whole generation of math and science teachers, and upgraded American classrooms for the future. The Federal Housing Authority subsidized home ownership. The Defense Department spawned future technologies in aerospace and telecommunications.
Did the U.S. suffer fascism, socialism, deficits and inflation, as Hoover predicted? No. The U.S. economy soared. The median wage rose faster than ever before. And the incomes of America’s working class and poor rose at the fastest pace of all.
Robert Reich was the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Most Successful Cabinet Members of the century. He has written eleven books, including “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages. His recent book is “Supercapitalism.” For Professor Reich’s book page for Supercaptialism at Amazon, go here. Reich’s newest book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future has been released September 21, and is available for ordering at this link (Amazon.com). The above article is from Reich’s new blog, and can be viewed here.
Republicans aim to end all “job-killing regulations” — especially those that, according to House Speaker John Boehner, are “strangling” business with detailed requirements over health, safety, the environment, corporate governance and finance.
Here’s another instance of where the White House’s attempt to preempt Republican rhetoric (the President said last week his administration would root out all nonsensical and inefficient regulation) ends up legitimizing it — and reframing the public debate around an issue that’s hardly central to what ails America.
The reason we have continued sky-high unemployment has nothing to do with excessive regulation. There was no sudden outpouring of federal regulation in 2007 before the economy tanked and millions lost their jobs.
If anything, the economy unraveled because of too little regulation. Wall Street went on a binge, remember? The Street could get almost free money from the Fed (which had reduced interest rates to near zero) and do just about whatever it wanted with it. Thirty years of deregulation, culminating with the dismantling of Glass-Steagall and the abject failure of regulators at the Fed and the SEC to use the authority they still had, enabled the Street to make bundles of money and expose the rest of the economy to unprecedented levels of risk.
The Fed had slashed interest rates in the early 2000s, by the way, because the corporate looting scandals at Enron, Worldcom, Sunbeam, and other major corporations had sapped investor confidence. Those scandals themselves wouldn’t have happened had securities regulations been stronger and better enforced.
No one wants unnecessary regulation. And rules ought to be clear and simple. But let’s be real. Most of the complexity and verbiage that finds its way into the Code of Federal Regulations is the result of industry lawyers and lobbyists who exploit every potential ambiguity to avoid doing what lawmakers intend — thereby necessitating ever-more detailed and picayune rules to close the loopholes. It’s an endless cat-and-mouse game that runs from regulatory agencies through the courts and then back again. And it’s occurring right now, as regulations are being drawn up to put the healthcare and financial laws into effect.
There’s no necessary tradeoff between regulations and jobs. Regulations that are designed well — that tell industry what to achieve by a certain date but don’t dictate exactly how (such as fuel economy standards) — can generate innovation as companies compete to find the most efficient solutions. And innovations can lead to more jobs as they spawn new products and industries.
Even where there is a tradeoff — where regulations are costly and those costs result in fewer jobs — it still makes sense to opt for regulation when the public benefits exceed the costs to industry. We could have millions more jobs tomorrow if we eviscerated all health and safety regulations and allowed our air to turn yellow and our rivers and lakes to become fetid stinkholes. But that would be dumb.
“Job-killing regulations” is a silly phrase that substitutes for real thought. And it’s a distraction from the hard work of creating more jobs in America.
Robert Reich was the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Most Successful Cabinet Members of the century. He has written eleven books, including “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages. His recent book is “Supercapitalism.” For Professor Reich’s book page for Supercaptialism at Amazon, go here. Reich’s newest book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future has been released September 21, and is available for ordering at this link (Amazon.com). The above article is from Reich’s new blog, and can be viewed here.
Acknowledging my Fans: My top five cities for Thursday, February 10 in terms of the numbers of visitors were: Cabot, Arkansas (564 visitors – who’d have thought it!); Redmond, Washington (208 – Microsoft, we love you guys, too!); Bellefontaine, Ohio (136 – thanks guys!); New York, New York (62 – let’s hear it for the Big Apple!); and Bloomington, Illinois (33 – thanks!). My top foreign cities were Beijing, China with 31 visitors and Berlin, Germany with 28 visitors. Get YOUR city into the game: Share Evans Liberal Politics with friends and contacts, using the icons at bottom of each post!
“We can, and we must, work together,” the President told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today. “Whatever differences we may have, I know that all of us share a deep, abiding belief in this country, a belief in our people, a belief in the principles that have made America’s economy the envy of the world.”
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Really? I’ve been watching (and occasionally trying to deal with) the Chamber for years, and all I know is it has a deep, abiding belief in cutting taxes on the wealthy, eroding regulations that constrain Wall Street, cutting back on rules that promote worker health and safety, getting rid of the minimum wage, repealing the new health-care law, fighting unions, cutting back Medicare and Social Security, reducing or eliminating corporate taxes, and, in general, taking the nation back to the days before the New Deal.
So what, exactly, is the deal Obama is pitching to the Chamber?
He said his administration will “help lay the foundation for you to grow and innovate,” by eliminating “barriers that make it harder for you to compete – from the tax code to the regulatory system,” and by completing more trade deals.
In return, the President said he wants businesses to hire more Americans. “Many of your own economists and salespeople are now forecasting a healthy increase in demand. So I want to encourage you to get in the game,” he said. “And as you hire, you know that more Americans working means more sales, greater demand and higher profits for your companies. We can create a virtuous cycle.”
Virtuous cycle? American businesses are doing quite nicely as it is. Their profits are soaring. And one reason they’re doing so well is they’re holding down costs, especially payrolls. So why would they ever agree to add more workers now?
From the standpoint of the nation as a whole more Americans working may mean even higher profits overall. But publicly-traded companies aren’t in the business of spending money to help other companies. To the contrary, they’re competing with one another to show high quarterly earnings in order to boost their share prices. They’ll “get in the game” and begin to hire large numbers of Americans only when it helps their own bottom lines.
And when will that be? Not long ago I debated a conservative economist who argued American workers had priced themselves out of the global labor market and would therefore have to settle for lower real wages and benefits before they’d be hired back in large numbers. By his logic, many health and safety regulations would also have to be compromised or abandoned, since they also make American workers more expensive.
If this is the tacit bargain the President is offering business, it’s not a good deal for American workers.
There’s no secret to creating lots of jobs by reducing the median wage, slashing benefits, compromising health and safety at the workplace, and, effectively, reducing the standard of living of millions of Americans. We’ve been doing it for years.
And it doesn’t lead to a “virtuous cycle.” It leads to the kind of economy we’ve had for years – including, right now, the most anemic recovery from a deep trough since the mid-1930s. Indeed, when the debt bubble popped in 2008, we discovered how many Americans no longer had the ability to buy enough to keep the economy going. In this and other ways, 2008 bore an uncomfortable resemblance to 1929.
The alternative is to create lots of jobs with high disposable incomes.
In the short term, this means expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit wage subsidy right up through the middle class, and cutting income and payroll taxes for everyone earning less than $80,000 a year – making up the lost revenues by raising the ceiling on Social Security payroll taxes and hiking marginal taxes on the rich.
In the longer term, this means investing in a world-class education for all the nation’s kids, including college or high-quality technical education beyond high school. Here again, we’d have to rely on the top 1 percent (who now take home more than 20 percent of all income) to foot the bill.
Might the CEOs and top executives who comprise the U.S. Chamber of Commerce go along with this? After all, they profess to be patriotic. As the President said, they “share a deep, abiding belief in this country, a belief in our people, a belief in the principles that have made America’s economy the envy of the world.”
I don’t mean to sound cynical but I doubt it.
Robert Reich was the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Most Successful Cabinet Members of the century. He has written eleven books, including “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages. His recent book is “Supercapitalism.” For Professor Reich’s book page for Supercaptialism at Amazon, go here. Reich’s newest book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future has been released September 21, and is available for ordering at this link (Amazon.com). The above article is from Reich’s new blog, and can be viewed here.
EMERGENCY APPEAL:From Paul Evans: It’s a miraclethat I am still able to bring you Evans Liberal Politics. I am in severe poverty and although the Salvation Army was good enough to grant me 100 gallons of fuel oil (God Bless you guys), this won’t last even a month. Please help us! CenturyLink, my phone company and DSL provider, was kind enough to give me a short extension on bill payment, but in fact, I don’t have the money to pay the electric bill. Folks, this won’t go on forever. We need your donations, ASAP. Please send checks OR money orders to Paul Evans, 5396 Overton Road, Wooster, OH 44691. Help keep free journalism alive and help my family have gas for my car and something to eat. If you can help though a direct donation, call me at 330-262-0571. Thank you and Bless you all.
Evans Liberal Politics, January 31, 2011, by Paul Evans: Here is today’s headline news about the news of interest from places other than Egypt, straight from my 100 channel YouTube RSS feed. I have had more than my share of struggles, the heat has been off, the electricity has been off, and it has been increasingly hard for me to pay my bills. However I am very grateful to God for what I do have. But I am in poverty and in general, the situation is such that we are asking you, our viewers, to please donate to keep us on the air. Send a check or money order to Paul Evans, 5396 Overton Road, Wooster, OH 44691. Please help me pay my back bills and keep Evans Liberal Politics on the air!
Senate Ft. Hood Report Critical of FBI, Pentagon
Census Estimates Show Big Gains for Minorities
Bernanke: More Jobs Needed for Real Recovery
Democracy Now! News Headlines for Thursday, February 3, 2011
Have Obama and the Dems Sold Out the People, Too? (Revised and Updated)
President Obama, Why Won’t You Fight For Us?
Evans Liberal Politics, January 16, 2010, by Paul Evans, wherein the author “has a little talk” with President Obama, even if I do all the talking.
Mr. President, I thought long and hard and reviewed much recent political history before I decided I had to write this article.
When you came into office, I expected something along the lines of LBJ’s Great Society, with a big public works program and healthcare for all with at least a public option. I was one of maybe five workers who canvassed the small towns and countryside here in northern Wayne County, Ohio. I also entered data for you on the state Democratic Party database.
Paul Krugman: Income Inequality and the Middle Class
This summary essay represents my decision to realize that you are – insofar as I can see – not the man I thought you were, that many in the progressive base idolized and fought for. Insofar as I can see, you are fully a corporatist. You are fully in bed with the rich and powerful in this nation. It must be hard for you, writing those great, liberal sounding speeches while you sell your soul to Wall Street and Big Pharma and now, in getting a few more months of unemployment benefits that you can point to, you are in bed with Republicans who brag about your lame duck accomplishment being an 85 percent Republican bill. How do you live with that?
You seem to be perfectly willing to watch the suffering of the working class and unemployed, while you run your nation’s economy with economic advisers and decision makers who are in bed with the banks and major corporations. You, sir, are no radical. You are not even what we used to think of back in the seventies as a mainline Democrat. You have made your bed with these leeches, and abandoned any pretense of fighting for the people. Insofar as I can see.
Bipartisanship? With RePUBlicans? Cozy up with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell??? Mr. President, your advisers may be terminally stupid and (most of them) conservative Blue Dogs, but I thought you were smarter than this. You need new advisers. You don’t give in to men like Boehner and McConnell, you attack and eviscerate them at every opportunity. Wouldn’t Rove if the shoe were on the other foot? American politics is not some kind of Harvard debate competition, and you have to get yourselves bloody. The time to reason with these people never existed. The people you reason with are the American public. Show them the Republicans as they are.
Pink: Dear Mr. President Why Does This Video Remind Me of You, Too, Barack??
It took me a long time to realize this. I tried to believe that it was necessary to compromise, I tried to believe that the bastard healthcare bill that you came up with, (in secret negotiation, you yourself eschewing the fight for a public option in submitting a final draft to Congress without an option), might somehow be better than nothing. And the healthcare bill is a great thing. IF you are making it in America. But I, my President, am not making it. The Street — the real street, the mean street, not Wall Street — is down and out. And apparently you are OK with that. At least, sir, it has for a long time become obvious that you will NOT go to war for the average American. It seems your constituency has 401K’s.
Or am I wrong? Are you listening to your base, Mr. President? Ask yourself what Roosevelt would do, or Harry Truman??
The healthcare bill that passed really is more of a burden than a help for the 31 million who are subject to it. So called Wall Street reform and bank regulation is a joke. Elizabeth Warren is being left to twist slowly in the wind. From the beginning, you brought people into your administration to “fix” the economy who were big name hacks and Wall Street insiders, viz, Bernanke, Summers and Geithner. You kept the foxes in the hen house to guard it and “do some repairs.”
Some were not impressed. I kept trying to believe in you and since I myself am something of a pragmatist, your cool demeanor and reputation as a compromiser and someone who at least got something done made me go along. Over at the Yahoo (News) Group Progressive, the disillusionment set in early. Here at Evans Liberal Politics, I was exploring the matter with articles such as the highly instructive video called "Income Inequality and the Middle Class, (last posted July 8, 2010), which consists of a lecture by Paul Krugman. The video shows that income distribution is fully controlled by and a feature of government policy (we show this must-see video, above).
Well I am not going to belabor this. Links to prove what I am claiming are all over the web, and I provide some of the best, below. I remain a Democrat for two reasons. No third party has presented itself which could make a serious run at toppling the two party system and actually representing the people. And, to some extent, the Democrats still are willing to give crack mothers and crack babies and the defenseless in America more than would the Republicans. By that non-negative fact, you have my marginal allegiance. Certainly not because you represent the unemployed, the underemployed, the working poor, or even the lower middle class.
To Obama and the Democrats in Congress, I say, you cannot fool your constituency indefinitely. Don’t pretend you are just going for the art of the possible. No, rather, you just aren’t representing your constituents. You have betrayed your base.
Whatever happened to just fighting like hell for what was right and letting the chips fall where they may? If you just followed that simple rule, Mr. President, then you Would win over the hearts and minds of the American People. But we should have known by your cabinet choices: You basically sold out. Fewer and fewer of your base are at all enthusiastic. Don’t expect us to go out and do your dirty work for you in 2012 unless you fight for the people.
Mr. President, where is the logical error in my reasoning? Why won’t you fight for us?? ~ Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans
Important Articles on Income Inequality from Around the Web, with Summaries
Traditionally, now is a season of joy and hope. For millions of Americans, however, it’s been another very rough year. Last year at this time, there were 15.4 million Americans officially unemployed, with at least 11.5 million underemployed or having given up looking for a job in the past 12 months. This year, 15.1 million are officially unemployed, and at least 11.5 million are still underemployed or have given up looking. And those numbers fail to account for millions who have not looked for work in the past 12 months even though they would take a job if they could find one.
Geithner was President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from October 23, 2003 until President Obama chose him as his Treasury Secretary. He was supposed to be the lead regulator of many of the largest bank holding companies. His failures as a regulator were a major cause of the “economy falling off the cliff.” Bernanke held prominent positions in the Bush administration from 2002 to the end of the administration and failed as a regulator an economist. Geithner and Bernanke failed to regulate even after the FBI publicly warned in September 2004 that (1) there was an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud and (2) it would lead to a financial crisis if it were not contained. Their refusal to take responsibility for the harm they inflicted on our nation as leaders of Bush’s financial Wrecking Crew adds to their unsuitability. Rewarding their perennial failures with a promotion and reappointment represents a dereliction of duty by the Obama administration.
Old but worthwhile on PBS NOW: Income Inequality (August 10, 2007): "In America, the top one-tenth of one percent of earners make about the same money per year collectively as the millions of Americans in the bottom fifty percent combined. "
“Mr. President, in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income,” Sanders said. “The top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income–more than the entire bottom 50 percent. That is apparently not enough. The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of all income. In the 1980s, that figure jumped to 14 percent. In the late 1990s, that 1 percent earned about 19 percent.”
The Final article I want to leave you with is on FDR and his proposed but never-enacted Second Bill of Rights. You should really see what FDR would have done if he had lived. See Open thread for night owls: FDR and the New Bill of Rights, Daily Kos, January 12, 2011, by Meteor Blades. An excerpt from the transcript is below:
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.
"Far Cry:" Perennial hard rockers Rush sing their recent minor hit off the album ‘Snakes and Arrows.’ — 5:18
"Far Cry:" Perennial hard rockers Rush sing their recent minor hit off the album ‘Snakes and Arrows.’ — 5:18
