Robert Reich: Political elites are worried about thunder on the right and the left, but they show scant understanding of what these growing anti-establishment forces signify. Meanwhile, the nation drifts.
History and Double-Dip Recessions
By
Iwan Morgan: If America does manage to avoid a new recession and achieve stronger growth, it will be a testimony to the underlying strength of its economy. At present its political leadership in both the executive and legislative branches does not appear to have the same reserves.
Republican Double-Dip: What Must Be Done
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Robert Reich: Now that we’re slouching toward a double-dip recession, the only hope is voters will tell their members of Congress to stop obsessing about future budget deficits and get to work on the real crisis of unemployment, falling wages, and no growth.
Vicious Cycles: Why Washington Is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse
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Robert Reich: The only way out of the vicious economic cycle is for government to adopt an expansionary fiscal policy — spending more in the short term in order to make up for the shortfall in consumer demand.
Don’t-Raise-Taxes-on-the-Rich Crowd Getting Desperate
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Robert Reich: In truth, the most important variable explaining the rise and fall of tax revenues as percent of GDP has been the business cycle, not the effective tax rate.
Why Washington Isn’t Doing Squat About Jobs and Wages
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Robert Reich: The silence is deafening. While the rest of the nation is heading back toward a double dip, Washington continues to obsess about future budget deficits. Why?
The Wageless Recovery
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Robert Reich: The question on everyone’s mind: Will the Fed signal it’s now more worried about inflation than recession?
War and Workers
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Lydia Howell: Whether it’s debt-ridden college graduates working as baristas or small town youth with only fast-food and Wal-Mart as post-high school career options, high unemployment keeps a volunteer military ranks full.
Shock Wave Coming
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Brent Budowsky: The economic and political shock wave will be momentous as budget politics will increase joblessness and reveal with brutality that Washington is out of touch with heartland America and dominated by special interests that voters deplore.
Who Says Republicans Have No New Ideas?
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Robert Reich: Republicans haven’t come up with a single new idea in almost 60 years. Herbert Hoover was the last Republican president to introduce a new Republican theme back in 1952 at the Republican National Convention. Since then they’ve repeated the message. Of course, 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.
The Forgotten Jobless and Our Future
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Mark Vorpahl: As in the 1930s, today we must organize in a way that creates unity between the employed and unemployed. To start, we can organize the largest possible union-led demonstrations to realize this unity in the streets.
Why America’s Two Economies Continue to Drift Apart
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Robert Reich: Nothing is trickling down to the Average Worker economy. Job growth is still anemic. Unemployment won’t get down to pre-recession levels for 20 years. And almost half of October’s new jobs were in temporary help.
Seven Reasons Why Capitalism Can’t Recover Anytime Soon
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Shamus Cooke: To deal with working people more ruthlessly, the radical right is being unleashed. In normal times these bigots yell furiously but no one listens. But in times of economic crisis they’re given endless airtime on all major media outlets.
African American Youth Joblessness and the “New Normal”
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Carl Bloice: If it remains almost impossible for a couple of generations of young women and men to earn a decent living, it is calamitous for black people and the country. They cannot become the personification of the “new normal.”
Why Democrats Should Not Join In Economic Scapegoating
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Robert Reich: Democrats should admit America’s economic structure has become dangerously unbalanced — more unbalanced than it’s been in 80 years — and the imbalance is making it difficult if not impossible for the nation to emerge from recession. For these reasons, Democrats should recommit themselves and the nation to redresssing that balance.
The Tortoise Economy
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Robert Reich: The rich don’t spend nearly as much of their incomes as everyone else, and the $36 billion windfall they’d otherwise get could be better spent saving the jobs of teachers, fire fighters, and police officers who do spend almost all their incomes.
The Real Lesson of Labor Day
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Robert Reich: Face it: The national economy isn’t escaping the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. None of the standard booster rockets are working.
Why A Civil Society Extends Unemployment Benefits
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Robert Reich: A record number of Americans is unemployed for a record length of time. This is a national tragedy. It is to the nation’s credit that many are receiving unemployment benefits. This is good not only for them and their families but also for the economy as a whole, because it allows them to spend and thereby keep others in jobs.
The Stock Market Rally Versus the World’s Economic Fundamentals
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Robert Reich: The real economy is jobs and paychecks, what people buy and what they sell. And the real economy — even viewed from a worldwide perspective — is as precarious as ever, perhaps more so.
Forget Double Dip: We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper
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Robert Reich: It’s nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double dip when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We’re still in one long Big Dipper.
No Jobs – The Theory of “Structural” Unemployment
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Carl Bloice: With high unemployment and no jobs, the actions of those in Congress who hold up the extension of benefits to the unemployed are morally repugnant. making it. The fellow who said the jobs are not coming back failed to say where they went.
The End of the Great Moderation, the Bailouts of Freddie & Fannie and Wall Street, and the Tattered Safety Net for Everyone Else
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by Robert Reich — As we bail out Wall Street along with Freddie and Fannie and all the top financial executives who have been pocketing tens of millions a year, yet allow millions of homeowners and jobless Americans to sink, it’s worth contemplating what’s happening to the American economy and to our social safety nets.
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