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Ear to the Ground

Don’t Look to D.C. to Help in Job Crisis

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Posted on Nov 30, 2009
Workers in Pain sign
Flickr / aficio2008

Talk of giving a much-needed jolt to the job market has petered out in the offices and chambers where something could actually be done about the country’s pervasive employment crisis. This priority problem in policy circles is unacceptable to economics whiz Paul Krugman, who proposes ideas to fill in the gaps.  —KA

The New York Times:

So it’s time for an emergency jobs program.

How is a jobs program different from a second stimulus? It’s a matter of priorities. The 2009 Obama stimulus bill was focused on restoring economic growth. It was, in effect, based on the belief that if you build G.D.P., the jobs will come. That strategy might have worked if the stimulus had been big enough — but it wasn’t. And as a matter of political reality, it’s hard to see how the administration could pass a second stimulus big enough to make up for the original shortfall.

So our best hope now is for a somewhat cheaper program that generates more jobs for the buck. Such a program should shy away from measures, like general tax cuts, that at best lead only indirectly to job creation, with many possible disconnects along the way. Instead, it should consist of measures that more or less directly save or add jobs.

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Hulk2008's avatar

By Hulk2008, December 1, 2009 at 9:58 am Link to this comment

P. S.  I am working on my own new fad like the insanely popular Zhu Zhu Hamsters.  I’m calling it “Kiddie Knurz” - it doesn’t do anything; it’s made of pocket fuzz and belly button lint; but it will be advertised at $5 per unit at CeilingMart and Toys-R-Useless and thus be immediately out of stock so that it sells for $150 per unit on eBay. 

Good business plan, huh ?

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Hulk2008's avatar

By Hulk2008, December 1, 2009 at 9:07 am Link to this comment

We can all agree that the first two “stimulus” programs were complete successes - namely they temporarily bailed out Congress and Wall Street and the special interest groups. 

  I recall an old cartoon depicting two vultures on a limb in a desolate scene.  The caption was “Patience Hell !  I’m going to kill something !”

  For the job market to pick up means that workers have to get creative themselves - we cannot rely on either the top one-percenters (the so-called “investor class”) or government.  We have to just start making things again, bottom up.  When the micro and mini and truly small businesses start creating real products again, the economy will take off.  Unfortunately, the investor class has tricked the deck to the point that all the rules favor them and quash creativity. 
  They have climbed up the ladder and cut off the rungs behind them.

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G.Anderson's avatar

By G.Anderson, December 1, 2009 at 7:09 am Link to this comment

Abandon all hope yea, who enter here…it should be obvious by now that those not of the 1% are expendable….

We have plenty of money for war to protect the interests of the oil companies, and plenty of money to protect the bankers.

Nothing else matters to those in charge, hell, in fact you might say this is the way they like things…if it were’nt for the daily body count, I doubt if those in the 1% would even notice, and then only because after a shooting people are more anxious about going out and shopping.

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By liecatcher, December 1, 2009 at 2:29 am Link to this comment

DON’T LOOK TO D.C. TO HELP IN JOB CRISIS

Unlike FED “magic”, creating “money” out of thin air,
jobs can’t be created after outsourcing manufacturing
jobs, especially by creating more debt, as with the
cash for clunkers hoax. Or turning food into ethanol to
free us from depending on foreign oil.
And how soon we forget that D.C. is owned & operated by
GOVERNMENT SACHS.

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