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NYT Columnist writes about the haven’t got a clue-ness of Bush2 economics
policy, issues which I’ve posted and others have been discussing longer than
that. The administration’s
distance from the majority of people and arrogance in serving primarily corporations,
makes it easier for moderate Republicans in Congress to oppose the White House
back at home where they are hearing complaints and vote against re-election
based policy. Expect more
contentious legislative debate in the fall, especially given at least three
other issues that are heating up; favoring corporate privatization in
prescription drug plans, the Justice Dept ordering stricter reviews of judges
who hand down “too lenient” sentences and federal judges ordering federal
agencies to lower water in the Missouri River, a poster child case on environmental
policy where Bush2 is at odds with the majority of the US population. See Water Levels @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26211-2003Aug6.html
and Ashcroft @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25892-2003Aug6.html. When he
took office, I referred to Bush the younger as “le dauphin”. Now his administration really is playing
like French monarchs just before a revolution. See attached cartoon.
KWC Despair of the Jobless
The folks who put the voodoo back in
economics
keep telling us that prosperity is just around the corner. For the unemployed,
that would mean more jobs. Are there more jobs just around the corner? This alleged economic upturn is not
just a jobless recovery, it's a job loss recovery. The hemorrhaging of jobs in
the aftermath of the recent "mild" recession is like nothing the U.S.
has seen in more than half a century. Millions continue to look desperately for
work, and millions more have given up in despair. The stories have been rolling in for some time about the
stresses and misfortunes that are inevitably associated with long-term joblessness:
the bankruptcies, foreclosures and evictions,
the dreams deferred, the mental difficulties — anxiety, depression — the
excessive drinking and abuse of drugs, the
family violence. There are few things more miserable than to need a
job and be unable to find one. How bad is it? The Economic
Policy Institute in Washington reported last week that "since
the business cycle expansion began in November 2001, payrolls have contracted
by 1 million (1.2 million in the private sector), making this the weakest
recovery in terms of employment since the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] began
tracking monthly data in 1939." John A. Challenger, who runs the outplacement firm
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said it is taking an average of 20 weeks for
job seekers to find employment, and many are unable to match their previous
salary. "Employers have all the cards," he said. "Not only are
they sharpening their salary pencils, but the screening of candidates is
probably the toughest it has ever been." The official jobless rate, now 6.2 percent, does not come
close to reflecting how grim the employment situation really is. The official
rate refers only to those actively seeking work. It does not count the
"discouraged" workers, who have looked for jobs within the last 12
months but have given up because of the lack of offers. Then there are the
involuntary part-timers, who would like full-time jobs but cannot find them.
And there are people who have had to settle for jobs that pay significantly
less than jobs they once held. When you combine the unemployed and the underemployed, you
are talking about a percentage of the work force that is in double digits. That's an awful lot of lost purchasing power for a
society that needs broad-based wage growth among its consumers to remain economically
viable. Most Americans depend on their paychecks to get from one
week to the next. If you cut off that paycheck, everything tends to go haywire. Right now there is no plan, no strategy for
turning this employment crisis around. There is not
even a sense of urgency. At the end of July the Bush administration
sent its secretaries of commerce, labor and treasury on a bus tour of Wisconsin
and Minnesota to tell workers that better days are coming. But they offered no
real remedies, and the president himself went on a month long vacation. The simple truth is that the interests of the Bush
administration's primary constituency, corporate America, do not coincide with
the fundamental interests of workaday Americans. On the business side of this
divide, increased profits are realized by showing the door to as many workers
as possible, and squeezing the remainder to the bursting point. Productivity
(based primarily on improvements in technology) is way up. Hiring, of course,
is down. Part-time and temporary workers are in; full-time workers with
benefits are out. And then there's the ominous
trend of sending higher-skilled jobs overseas to low-wage places
like India and China, an upscale reprise of the sweatshop phenomenon that
erased so many U.S. manufacturing jobs over the past quarter century. Working Americans need jobs just to
survive. But the Bush administration equates
the national interest with corporate interests, and in that equation
workers can only lose. There are ways to spark the creation of good jobs on a large
scale in the U.S. (I will explore some of them in a future column.) But that
would require vision, a long-term financial investment and, most important, a
commitment at the federal level to the idea that it is truly in the nation's
interest to keep as many Americans as possible gainfully employed. |
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