Robert Reich: China is eating our lunch. Why? It has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for shareholders.
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.
The Great Jobs Depression Worsens, and the Choice Ahead Grows Starker
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Robert Reich: If there was ever a time for bold government action it is precisely now. Obama should be storming the country, demanding the largest responses to the jobs emergency in history. He and the Dems should be giving Republicans hell for their indifference to all this.
Central Valley Teachers and Parents Criticize Fiorina for Standing with Companies that Ship Jobs Overseas Rather than with California Students
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“These Senators visiting Fresno today don’t seem to care that Carly Fiorina laid off 33,000 Hewlett-Packard employees and now she is offering pink slips to more than 2,700 educators in the Central Valley who help our students learn in the classroom.”
The Jobs Emergency
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Robert Reich: We need a response proportional to the crisis. Obama, Pelosi, and Reed should summon Congress back to Washington for action on the jobs emergency.
We’re Even Deeper in the Hole
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Robert Reich: An extraordinary number of Americans are still hurting. It’s more important than ever for the US government to step in with a larger stimulus that puts more people to work and tax cuts for people who will spend them
Why We Really Shouldn’t Keep the Bush Tax Cut for the Wealthy
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Robert Reich: Restoring top earners’ marginal tax rates to what they were during the Clinton administration (36 and 39 percent) won’t inhibit their spending. That’s because they already save a large portion of what they earn, and already spend what they want to spend.
Why We Are Moving Toward a Recessionary Era
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Robert Reich: The biggest ongoing threats are chronic recession or even deflation, because consumers don’t have enough money to what the economy is capable of selling at full or near-full employment. Despite gains in productivity, little has trickled down to America’s middle class.
Why Economic Advisors Are Paid to Be Economic Advisors
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Robert Reich: Say you’re a high government official with some responsibility for advising the President on what he should be doing and saying about the economy. You know the economy is still in a deep hole, the deepest since the Great Depression.
Marcy Winograd Cares About Me
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Marcy Winograd: Harman, and countless others, have sold their souls to the corporations for reelection. I refuse to accept a single penny from any of them. Let’s show the rest of the country how a progressive grassroots campaign can triumph over one of the richest politicians to end corruption.
A Double-Dip Recession Coming?
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Robert Reich: The only reason the economy isn’t in a double-dip recession already is because of three temporary boosts: the federal stimulus (of which 75 percent has been spent), near-zero interest rates (which can’t continue much longer without igniting speculative bubbles), and replacements (consumers have had to replace worn-out cars and appliances, and businesses had to replace worn-down inventories). Oh, and, yes, all those Census workers (who will be out on their ears in a month or so).
The Future of American Jobs
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Robert Reich: The Great Recession has accelerated a structural shift in the economy that had been slowly building for years. Companies have used the downturn to aggressively trim payrolls, making cuts they’ve been reluctant to make before. Outsourcing abroad has increased dramatically. Companies have discovered that new software and computer technologies have made many workers in Asia and Latin America almost as productive as Americans, and that the Internet allows far more work to be efficiently moved to another country without loss of control.
Obomanomics One Year Out
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Robert Reich: The economic stresses of continued high unemployment and low wages are contributing to the growth of the “I’m Mad As Hell” Party – a rag-tag collection of Tea Partiers furious at establishment Republicans, left-wing Democrats angry at what they consider lily-livered Democrats in Washington, and Independents disgusted with everybody inside the Beltway.
Obama Needs To Teach The Public How to Get Out Of The Mess We’re In, But He’s Not
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Robert Reich: The economic lesson President Obama ought to be teaching is that targeted tax cuts, mostly for small business, are good to the extent they give businesses a nudge toward creating more jobs. But businesses won’t begin to create lots of jobs until they have lots of customers. And that won’t happen until lots more Americans have work. The only way to get them work when businesses aren’t hiring is for government to prime the pump.
Worrisome Thoughts on the Way to the Jobs Summit
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But the reality that no one wants to talk about is a structural change in the economy that’s been going on for years but which the Great Recession has dramatically accelerated.
Retail Wars, Urban Sores: A New Jobs Project
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If we can defend democracy overseas we can rebuild our decaying Main Streets. This could be a building stimulus project both political parties could respect if we see it as a restoration after a retail business war.
How Obama Can Convince Congress to Enact a Larger Stimulus, and Why He Must
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The Administration’s biggest economic mistake so far was to badly underestimate last January how bad the employment situation would become by Fall. As a result, it low-balled the stimulus — settling for a plan that, while avoiding even worse job losses, didn’t go nearly far enough.
Washing Dishes for Change
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The companies too big to fail have grown larger. The financial companies still run under the same model and free of much regulation like before.
The New Employment Numbers: Things are Worsening More Slowly
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So let’s be grateful that the economy is getting worse more slowly than it was. But don’t be lured into thinking we’re ever going back to where we were. Most of the jobs that have been lost are never coming back.
Construction Industry Fails to Insure Workers, Even in Boom Times: Jobs Created with Stimulus Money May Lack Health Coverage
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The construction industry, which stands to gain the largest share of new jobs generated by the economic stimulus package — 670,000 jobs nationally — has a dismal record of insuring its workers, even in the best of times. A study released today by the Center on Policy Initiatives, Construction: Working Without a Healthcare Net, found [...]
The Stimulus: How to Create Jobs Without Them All Going to Skilled Professionals and White Male Construction Workers
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The stimulus plan will create jobs repairing and upgrading the nation’s roads, bridges, ports, levees, water and sewage system, public-transit systems, electricity grid, and schools. And it will kick-start alternative, non-fossil based sources of energy (wind, solar, geothermal, and so on); new health-care information systems; and universal broadband Internet access. It’s a two-fer: lots of [...]
Bail Out the Big Three and Revitalize the Economy
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by John Paul Rossi – The other week, the appeal of the Big Three’’s executives for a $25 billion taxpayer bailout for their desperately ailing firms failed. Neither the fractious lame duck Congress, nor the Bush administration were willing to help.
Who Creates Jobs? Democratic Presidents Do!
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A recent poll asked whether private companies, Congress, or the president has the most to do with creating new jobs. I find it amusing when pollsters ask for opinions on something that is purely factual. Only 5% got the right answer and said it is the president. Look at the private sector job growth results [...]
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