The truth about jobs that no one wants to tell

[one...two...tree 2,762]

If the feds don't spend money to put people back to work, the economy won't recover and politics will get uglier

By Robert Reich

Unemployment will almost certainly be in double-digits next year -- and may remain there for some time. And for every person who shows up as unemployed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey, you can bet there's another either too discouraged to look for work or working part-time who'd rather have a full-time job or else taking home less pay than before (I'm in the last category, now that the University of California has instituted pay cuts). And there's yet another person who's more fearful that he or she will be next to lose a job.

In other words, 10 percent unemployment really means 20 percent underemployment or anxious employment. All of which translates directly into late payments on mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans, and loss of health insurance. It also means sleeplessness for tens of millions of Americans. And, of course, fewer purchases (more on this in a moment).

Unemployment of this magnitude and duration also translates into ugly politics, because fear and anxiety are fertile grounds for demagogues wielding the politics of resentment against immigrants, blacks, the poor, government leaders, business leaders, Jews and other easy targets. It's already started. Next year is a midterm election. Be prepared for worse.

So why is unemployment and underemployment so high, and why is it likely to remain high for some time? Because, as noted, people who are worried about their jobs or have no jobs, and who are also trying to get out from under a pile of debt, are not going to do a lot of shopping. And businesses that don't have customers aren't going to do a lot of new investing. And foreign nations also suffering high unemployment aren't going to buy a lot of our goods and services.

And without customers, companies won't hire. They'll cut payrolls instead.

Which brings us to the obvious question: Who's going to buy the stuff we make or the services we provide, and therefore bring jobs back? There's only one buyer left: the government.

Let me say this as clearly and forcefully as I can: The federal government should be spending even more than it already is on roads and bridges and schools and parks and everything else we need. It should make up for cutbacks at the state level, and then some. This is the only way to put Americans back to work. We did it during the Depression. It was called the WPA.

Yes, I know. Our government is already deep in debt. But let me tell you something: When one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, this is no time to worry about the debt.

When I was a small boy my father told me that I and my kids and my grandkids would be paying down the debt created by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression and World War II. I didn't even know what a debt was, but it kept me up at night.

My father was right about a lot of things, but he was wrong about this. America paid down FDR's debt in the 1950s, when Americans went back to work, when the economy was growing again, and when our incomes grew, too. We paid taxes, and in a few years that FDR debt had shrunk to almost nothing.

You see? The most important thing right now is getting the jobs back, and getting the economy growing again.

People who now obsess about government debt have it backward. The problem isn't the debt. The problem is just the opposite. It's that at a time like this, when consumers and businesses and exports can't do it, government has to spend more to get Americans back to work and recharge the economy. Then -- after people are working and the economy is growing -- we can pay down that debt.

But if government doesn't spend more right now and get Americans back to work, we could be out of work for years. And the debt will be with us even longer. And politics could get much uglier.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/...opinion/feature

[ScottThuy 140]

I just saw a local news report about the fed dollars being wasted that were intended to stimulate the economy and create jobs... They redid a local park... city workers (alrady employed) installed new playground equipment (very very expensive) and the job was done in a couple of days... OK create jobs? Stimulate economy? not in this case... they need to take a closer look at the way the $ is spent... Rather than spending huge amounts of money to pad the pockets of a few powerful. and creating select areas that are overly extravigant. They really need to do more like was done in the past to create jobs... Rather than paying an individual company outragous amounts of money for plants and trees to beautify the highway.. whay are we not setting up areas that can be used to propogate plants and trees hat will be used by the government? I am not saying that the governemnt has o start doing everything itself, but when our taxes are being funneled into the pockets of friends of the politicians at the high rates that it has been, then at some point the well of $ will dry up.

Its sad to say but we have regulated ourselves into a very bad situation and at the same time deregulated those that are raping the economy so they can do it easier.

We are supposed to be a capitalist society, but we are so over regulated that if my kid wanted to setup a lemonaid stand he would not be able to get the permits, inspection, or license required to do it.

The way the system is setup, it will be too difficult for those that have lost thier jobs to start a business and get the economy back up to speed as was the case in Argentina not too long ago... When factories folded and businesses closed.. the citizens are what saved the ecnomy.. not he government...

Tell me if his sounds familiar?

In the meantime, government spending continued to be high and corruption was rampant. XYZ's public debt grew enormously during the ####s, and the country showed no true signs of being able to pay it. The International Monetary Fund, however, kept lending money to XYZ and postponing its payment schedules. Massive tax evasion and money laundering explained a large part of the evaporation of funds toward offshore banks.

Rather than the IMF.. we are getting $ from China.. for the time being... At what point will the US lose the confidence that it needs to stay afloat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_eco...9%E2%80%932002)

[scandal 951]

40 new full time jobs. Positive and long lasting ecological impact. Your stimulus dollars hard at work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/25fishnets.html

Cleaning of Puget Sound Brings Tribes Full Circle

By WILLIAM YARDLEY

Published: August 24, 2009

SEATTLE — When contractors were bidding for federal stimulus money designated to help clean up Puget Sound, a few skeptical competitors asked Jeff Choke how much experience his dive team had in addressing pollution here.

“I’d say, ‘We’ve been doing it since the day the settlers first showed up,’ ” Mr. Choke said as he steered an aluminum skiff out of Shilshole Bay on an overcast afternoon recently.

Mr. Choke is a member of the Nisqually Indian tribe, one of many tribes that fished for salmon in Puget Sound for centuries before Europeans arrived and began aggressively fishing with large commercial nets that depleted populations of Chinook, sockeye and other kinds of salmon. Now the Nisqually tribe has a dive team that is part of a $4.6 million stimulus-financed effort to remove fishing nets that were lost or discarded decades ago but can still kill fish, birds and other animals.

Mr. Choke said that although having Indians get involved in the project might make for compelling symbolism given the longstanding tensions over how their way of life was altered by settlers, what the project really offers is a chance for the storyline to move beyond old debates.

“We want to diversify,” Mr. Choke said, referring to the tribe’s expanding business interests, which include casino gambling and the harvesting of geoduck clams in the sound, a pursuit that first led the tribe to start its dive team.

“Everyone has had a part in this,” Mr. Choke said, “and to clean this up, it takes both sides.”

The net-removal project is being organized by the Northwest Straits Initiative, a conservation agency authorized by Congress. The project is being held up by its supporters as an example of environmental restoration that creates jobs — about 40 in the next 18 months, many of them for divers — and has a measurable impact.

Before being awarded the stimulus money, the initiative had spent seven years piecing together small grants to slowly remove nets that were lost to rocky seafloors or artificial structures in the area’s historic fishing grounds.

“In many cases, it’s layer upon layer of net,” said Ginny Broadhurst, the director of the initiative.

With more than 3,000 nets believed to be underwater, the project was expected to take many more years to complete. Now, however, Ms. Broadhurst said the group is getting four boats up and running at sites like the San Juan Islands in the north of the sound to tribal fishing grounds in the south. The work should be finished by the end of next year.

“The ocean faces lots of problems, from acidification, the ocean becoming more acidic, to the water temperature rising and a slew of other problems, but marine debris is something that we can do something about,” said Nir Barnea, a manager in the marine debris program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that distributed the stimulus money. “This project, for example, we can complete the removal of just about all nets in Puget Sound.”

The project follows earlier net removal efforts in Alaska, Hawaii and other states.

In Puget Sound, the removal of the nets follows major changes; fish populations have declined, restrictions have increased and the fishing industry is a small fraction of what it was in the 1970s and 1980s.

Because the fishery is much smaller, Ms. Broadhurst said, the number of nets that will be lost in the future “is going to be really minimal as compared with that historic high.”

Her group has spent years surveying the sound to identify lost nets for removal. Jeff June, a field manager for the project, said the group has a database containing 584 locations of lost nets, with some locations containing several nets. Divers have found skeletons of harbor seals and porpoises tangled in nets; more often they encounter countless crabs, starfish and small fish trapped in the monofilament, which became more common in the 1970s. Those nets do not degrade the way older nets of hemp and other materials do.

When the nets are lost, said Mr. Barnea of the federal agency, “they keep on doing what they were designed to do.”

Steve Sigo owns the boat that the Nisqually tribe’s dive team has been using for its recent dives off Point Jefferson on the Kitsap Peninsula, across Puget Sound from Shilshole Bay in Seattle. Mr. Sigo, a member of the Squaxin Island tribe, said if he were not helping to remove nets he would probably be fishing for salmon, particularly given the strong runs reported this year. But Mr. Sigo, joined by his 12-year-old son, Andrew, said he planned to stick with the net-removal project as long as he could.

“My first year was ’74 fishing commercially, and so I’ve lost nets,” Mr. Sigo said. “I’ve fished up in this area, fished the San Juans, fished everything, so it’s kind of nice to be on the cleanup end of it instead of the losing-the-net end of it. It’s kind of neat because it’s kind of full circle to get this opportunity.”

[Pooky 3,878]

If the feds don't spend money to "put people back to work", the economy won't recover and politics will still get uglier

Just fixed that.

Money needs to be spent. I'm not questioning that part. I just wouldn't trust the Federal Government, regardless of political shade, to spend it in the right places to make the needed difference. Federal Government bows to too many vested interest groups to spend the money wisely. Both sides are guilty as sin in this regard.

Just my $0.02.

[alienlovechild 75]

Unemployment of this magnitude and duration also translates into ugly politics, because fear and anxiety are fertile grounds for demagogues wielding the politics of resentment against immigrants, blacks, the poor, government leaders, business leaders, Jews and other easy targets. It's already started. Next year is a midterm election. Be prepared for worse.

Let me say this as clearly and forcefully as I can: The federal government should be spending even more than it already is on roads and bridges and schools and parks and everything else we need. It should make up for cutbacks at the state level, and then some. This is the only way to put Americans back to work. We did it during the Depression. It was called the WPA.

You see? The most important thing right now is getting the jobs back, and getting the economy growing again.

Where are angry mobs of unemployed people that Reich talks about? They aren't the middle class in townhalls so maybe he's talking about the violent G-20 protestors.

Reich knows most of stimulus money was never targeted for infrastructure or schools but let's continue to play pretend. Know anyone hired to work on roads a la WPA? I don't and I work in transportation. Some teachers have been hired but with the state of schools, it's like hiring more deck hands for the Titanic. Most people don't know that the bulk of money for education doesn't come from the Federal government but we can play pretend again.

The most important thing isn't job creation but healthcare reform. Doesn't Reich read the news? Healthcare somehow caused the recession so never, ever question the priorities of the Democrats. Don't have a job? Shut up or you will be targeted as a potential danger to the republic.

Edited October 3, 2009 by alienlovechild

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Taking money out of the private sector to turn around and "invest" the money in make work programs is an inefficient way to stimulate the economy. The only thing worse is spending money the people don't have on projects the people don't need, and expecting your children and grandchildren to pay for it. California is still paying the bills for Edmund G. Brown's follies 50 years later. The "Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct" has proven inadequate to sustain its design purpose, because of a two inch long fish, and the "California Master Plan for Higher Education" is collasping under its own weight.

[Ban Hammer 14,301]

how many "bridges to nowhere" and "airports to nowhere" do we need?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Schwarzenegger was very appreciative of the stimulus package and lauded the many projects and jobs it supports in the state he governs. Up until he decided to run for the US Senate in 2010, Charlie Crist of FL had a very similar take on the positive effects of the stimulus package. People on the right like to deny it, of course, but there are tons of jobs and lots of very useful infrastructure projects (investments) underway that wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the stimulus package. Is it perfect? No. Would we be better off without it? Absolutely not!

how many "bridges to nowhere" and "airports to nowhere" do we need?

What bridges and airports are you referring to?

[Ban Hammer 14,301]

how many "bridges to nowhere" and "airports to nowhere" do we need?

What bridges and airports are you referring to?

you've not heard of the bridge to nowhere?

airports to nowhere

http://us.bloopdiary.com/newsworthy/us-tax...orts-to-nowhere

ABC News visited Ouzinkie Airport, on a remote island near Kodiak, Alaska, which just hit the jackpot with $15 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- $100,000 for each of the town's 150 residents, even though there is another airport 30 minutes away.

The most well-known is the John Murtha Airport in western Pennsylvania, a monument to powerful Democratic congressman John Murtha that has received about $200 million in federal money in the past 15 years.

The airport averages 20 passengers a day for its three commercial flights to Washington, D.C.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

how many "bridges to nowhere" and "airports to nowhere" do we need?

What bridges and airports are you referring to?

you've not heard of the bridge to nowhere?

I have. And I wonder what that would have to do with stimulus money? That was long before then.

As for the airports, there's an odd federal program out there - I think it's called "The Essential Air Service program" - that needs to be scrapped. Problem is that Congress - no matter what the majorities - isn't scrapping it. Seems that the folks in rural fly-over country love their fancy little rural airports with little to no actual passengers.

[alienlovechild 75]

Schwarzenegger was very appreciative of the stimulus package and lauded the many projects and jobs it supports in the state he governs. Up until he decided to run for the US Senate in 2010, Charlie Crist of FL had a very similar take on the positive effects of the stimulus package. People on the right like to deny it, of course, but there are tons of jobs and lots of very useful infrastructure projects (investments) underway that wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the stimulus package. Is it perfect? No. Would we be better off without it? Absolutely not!

If these GOP types take the money they are hypocrites, if they don't it must be for political advantage. In any case, those are political moves not positive economic accomplishments of the stimulus package.

Tons of jobs? But not tons of sources or we would be reading about it constantly instead of hearing silly nonense how GOP politicians also have they hands in the cookie jar, too, as if that's some major revelation. Using projects for votes, I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

Still hard to believe most Americans think the stimulus package was for transportation infrastructure improvements. Only around $50 billion out of $787 billion went to transportation.

[alienlovechild 75]

Also this. . .

WHICH AGENCIES HAVE PAID OUT THE MOST MONEY?

Rank State Amount

1. Department of Health and Human Services $32,492,039,173

2. Department of Labor $26,304,687,495

3. Department of Education $19,588,109,131

4. Social Security Administration $13,226,386,752

5. Department of Agriculture $4,881,490,757

6. Department of Transportation $3,144,716,111

http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx

Tons of jobs, bullsh*t.

[anitacastillo 0]

I saw Robert Reich speak on Friday am -- great speaker, very depressing info.

Only stimulus $$ I know of being spent are a few signs on the highways I have seen around here - Northern CA.

Grateful for my parents planning well, so I won't have to financially support them. Grateful my husband and I are happily child free, so I don't have to worry the long term impact of this mess and the govt's debt.

[Heracles 417]

So are you guys still all for allowing the 20 million illegal aliens to continue to work here? While Americans remain dirt poor

[spookyturtle 9,466]

So are you guys still all for allowing the 20 million illegal aliens to continue to work here? While Americans remain dirt poor

We support your sorry butt.