J-O-B-S

[prole]

Does either side have any good proposals for actually creating jobs? I hear them both talk, but all of their ideas seem too small to really do anything. DO they even know? I think we have systemic problems. I'm just a lay-person in this field, but it seems to me that this is quite a difficult problem.

 

What would you suggest, prole? How do you increase confidence? My gut tells me to do the exact opposite of what the republicans want. They're controlled by rich interests that just want more money. But, the Democrats are so castrated they don't seem like they are talking about anything serious either.

 

Fucked.

 

The political leadership is in quite a bind. The crisis is systemic, it is global, and it is occurring simultaneously, if unevenly. Politicians by definition are bound by their respective nations or states, and those in turn are bound to the dictates of the capitalist global economy. Hence you see what's outlined in the article above: competitive devaluation, a race to the bottom in terms of labor costs, and keeping the bond markets happy so you can borrow more money. All this is simply to maintain even the sickliest of growth rates.

 

In democratic states, maintaining power means selling this to the electorate either through inciting ideological class warfare or invoking the slightly less distasteful, if essentially identical "there is no alternative" or "we're all in this together". What isn't addressed is how intensifying the dynamics already driving us to stagnation: budget cuts, cuts in wages and benefits, jobs, and services and the multiplier effect from these, is going to stimulate the economic growth that's necessary to maintain stability in our political systems. There is a strange schizophrenic separation in the current narratives that suggests jobs and growth are separate issues from the politics of austerity and debt reduction. Obama's only begun to touch on this with the "invest in the future" stuff which capitalists should be rejoicing over but as most economists would tell you would be a drop in the bucket even if America's teabagging jihadis weren't hellbent on taking us back to the 18th century.

 

No, I don't think our politicians do know. For those who are interested in problem solving, Keynesian stimulus is essentially off the table either due to the Democrat's own shift to the right or the intractable political climate. For others, problem solving simply isn't part of the equation, those are the obfuscators, obstructionists, and petty kleptocrats who're either ideologues or they're filling their frat brothers' pockets or both (see Burlusconi). For them, maintaining power simply means appealing to the electorate's reptilian fear and pleasure centers in varying measure in what's now a permanent campaign season.

 

In term's of strategy, I'm not sure I buy the notion that Obama and the Dems are on "our side". If they are, they need to mobilize their base, go on the offensive, change the trajectory of the story that's being told. They've done well when they paint the opposition into a moral corner as with the extension of unemployment benefits but have rolled over to the rigged cat food commission on its suggestions. They done plenty of "messaging" with regards to the budget balancing crap (as the New York Times interactive feature showed us). The framework we're being provided is short sighted groping in the dark for pols with short term ambitions. The stakes are higher than they know. Whether they're "problem solvers" or not, politicians should be recognizing that the uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere are about bread, butter, and jobs not religious fervor.

[tvashtarkatena]

This a battle royale between full employment and wealth concentration. The two are nearly always at odds. You can't simultaneously have a large middle class and large upper class. The idea that what benefits the upper class benefits everyone is, of course, absolute bullshit.

[Nitrox]

so where are the many millions jobs that need to be created to re-employ all the long-term unemployed?

 

Myth making about the laziness of the unemployed is more evidence of your belonging to the social Darwinist party.

 

I personally know a bunch of people who got laid off and took at least a year to find another job because of extended unemployment. While I'm sure there are areas that there just isn't work to be found that is not the case for the entire country, especially the Pacific Northwest. I haven't been unemployed a day in my adult life even though I've been laid off. Just because someone is unemployed doesn't mean they're lazy but 12 solid months of unemployment is a strong indicator that there may be a problem with the person.

 

 

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

It's probably a good thing that you hang your hat on being continuously employed as a badge of virtue, cuz you're a complete and utter tool otherwise.

[j_b]

so where are the many millions jobs that need to be created to re-employ all the long-term unemployed?

Myth making about the laziness of the unemployed is more evidence of your belonging to the social Darwinist party.

I personally know a bunch of people who got laid off and took at least a year to find another job because of extended unemployment. While I'm sure there are areas that there just isn't work to be found that is not the case for the entire country, especially the Pacific Northwest. I haven't been unemployed a day in my adult life even though I've been laid off. Just because someone is unemployed doesn't mean they're lazy but 12 solid months of unemployment is a strong indicator that there may be a problem with the person.

 

More anecdotal evidence but still no trace of the millions of jobs that would be needed to employ the millions of long term unemployed. I hope your job doesn't require more than fuzzy thinking.

 

I am not sure how much experience you have in your profession but taking a menial and likely temporary job isn't the answer to being rehired in a position consistent with professional experience.

[prole]

I personally know a bunch of people...:poofartsound:

 

Yeah, and I know ONE person around here that has ONE opening for ONE tech person.

Edited February 18, 2011 by prole

[tvashtarkatena]

Michelle Bachmann raised five babies and didn't need no government subsidized breast pump to do it!

[Nitrox]

so where are the many millions jobs that need to be created to re-employ all the long-term unemployed?

Myth making about the laziness of the unemployed is more evidence of your belonging to the social Darwinist party.

I personally know a bunch of people who got laid off and took at least a year to find another job because of extended unemployment. While I'm sure there are areas that there just isn't work to be found that is not the case for the entire country, especially the Pacific Northwest. I haven't been unemployed a day in my adult life even though I've been laid off. Just because someone is unemployed doesn't mean they're lazy but 12 solid months of unemployment is a strong indicator that there may be a problem with the person.

 

More anecdotal evidence but still no trace of the millions of jobs that would be needed to employ the millions of long term unemployed. I hope your job doesn't require more than fuzzy thinking.

 

I am not sure how much experience you have in your profession but taking a menial and likely temporary job isn't the answer to being rehired in a position consistent with professional experience.

 

You do remember the article from the first post in this thread don't you? Don't take my word, go back and reread the first page.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

For all his self reliance bluster, Nitrox sure whines like a little bitch when he gets banned.

 

No fair!

[Nitrox]

I personally know a bunch of people...:poofartsound:

 

Yeah, and I know ONE person around here that has ONE opening for ONE tech person.

 

Feel free to send me a pm, we're looking for warehouse staff in PDX, we can't find any because the usuals are riding out their unemployment bennies.

 

 

[Nitrox]

For all his self reliance bluster, Nitrox sure whines like a little bitch when he gets banned.

 

No fair!

 

You whine every day.

[tvashtarkatena]

THAT HURT.

[Nitrox]

THAT HURT.

 

Go put a penny on a train track and cheer yourself up.

 

 

[j_b]

More anecdotal evidence but still no trace of the millions of jobs that would be needed to employ the millions of long term unemployed. I hope your job doesn't require more than fuzzy thinking.

 

I am not sure how much experience you have in your profession but taking a menial and likely temporary job isn't the answer to being rehired in a position consistent with professional experience.

 

You do remember the article from the first post in this thread don't you? Don't take my word, go back and reread the first page.

 

Quit dodging! I don't need to re-read it to know there aren't millions of jobs available for the millions of unemployed or that nobody in it claimed that getting a job flipping burgers or picking fruit would help to secure a job demanding vast experience.

[Nitrox]

More anecdotal evidence but still no trace of the millions of jobs that would be needed to employ the millions of long term unemployed. I hope your job doesn't require more than fuzzy thinking.

 

I am not sure how much experience you have in your profession but taking a menial and likely temporary job isn't the answer to being rehired in a position consistent with professional experience.

 

You do remember the article from the first post in this thread don't you? Don't take my word, go back and reread the first page.

 

Quit dodging! I don't need to re-read it to know there aren't millions of jobs available for the millions of unemployed or that nobody in it claimed that getting a job flipping burgers or picking fruit would help to secure a job demanding vast experience.

 

Well, then if you remember the article you'll remember that some employers are only considering applicants who have employment history within six months. Obviously they have found a problem with the applicants who have been unemployed for more than six months.

 

As I said, this is becoming more common so maybe make a note to yourself so you can remember it.

[prole]

Obviously they have found a problem with the applicants who have been unemployed for more than six months.

 

See if you can spot the problem from this similar article from December.

[j_b]

Well, then if you remember the article you'll remember that some employers are only considering applicants who have employment history within six months. Obviously they have found a problem with the applicants who have been unemployed for more than six months.

 

if you actually remembered the article, you'd know about that part: "Deutsch said that a bias against the jobless is also a time-saving device for companies that may themselves be making do with less, thanks to the downturn. "If you've got a huge stack of submissions, and you want to get through them quickly, [you can say] 'OK, all the people who are not currently employed, forget them,' " Deutsch explained. "That's gonna cut down on your workload"

 

i.e. according to that guy your talking point is bunk and nothing more than a way for firms to not disburse the expense necessary to weed out tons of applicants when there are very few jobs anyway. Sheesh!

[JayB]

Does either side have any good proposals for actually creating jobs? I hear them both talk, but all of their ideas seem too small to really do anything. DO they even know? I think we have systemic problems. I'm just a lay-person in this field, but it seems to me that this is quite a difficult problem.

 

What would you suggest, prole? How do you increase confidence? My gut tells me to do the exact opposite of what the republicans want. They're controlled by rich interests that just want more money. But, the Democrats are so castrated they don't seem like they are talking about anything serious either.

 

Fucked.

 

The political leadership is in quite a bind. The crisis is systemic, it is global, and it is occurring simultaneously, if unevenly. Politicians by definition are bound by their respective nations or states, and those in turn are bound to the dictates of the capitalist global economy. Hence you see what's outlined in the article above: competitive devaluation, a race to the bottom in terms of labor costs, and keeping the bond markets happy so you can borrow more money. All this is simply to maintain even the sickliest of growth rates.

 

In democratic states, maintaining power means selling this to the electorate either through inciting ideological class warfare or invoking the slightly less distasteful, if essentially identical "there is no alternative" or "we're all in this together". What isn't addressed is how intensifying the dynamics already driving us to stagnation: budget cuts, cuts in wages and benefits, jobs, and services and the multiplier effect from these, is going to stimulate the economic growth that's necessary to maintain stability in our political systems. There is a strange schizophrenic separation in the current narratives that suggests jobs and growth are separate issues from the politics of austerity and debt reduction. Obama's only begun to touch on this with the "invest in the future" stuff which capitalists should be rejoicing over but as most economists would tell you would be a drop in the bucket even if America's teabagging jihadis weren't hellbent on taking us back to the 18th century.

 

No, I don't think our politicians do know. For those who are interested in problem solving, Keynesian stimulus is essentially off the table either due to the Democrat's own shift to the right or the intractable political climate. For others, problem solving simply isn't part of the equation, those are the obfuscators, obstructionists, and petty kleptocrats who're either ideologues or they're filling their frat brothers' pockets or both (see Burlusconi). For them, maintaining power simply means appealing to the electorate's reptilian fear and pleasure centers in varying measure in what's now a permanent campaign season.

 

In term's of strategy, I'm not sure I buy the notion that Obama and the Dems are on "our side". If they are, they need to mobilize their base, go on the offensive, change the trajectory of the story that's being told. They've done well when they paint the opposition into a moral corner as with the extension of unemployment benefits but have rolled over to the rigged cat food commission on its suggestions. They done plenty of "messaging" with regards to the budget balancing crap (as the New York Times interactive feature showed us). The framework we're being provided is short sighted groping in the dark for pols with short term ambitions. The stakes are higher than they know. Whether they're "problem solvers" or not, politicians should be recognizing that the uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere are about bread, butter, and jobs not religious fervor.

 

Keynesianism's done wonders for Japan.

 

How does a Keynesian account for the massive economic expansion that occurred in the immediate wake of WWII when public spending as a percentage of GDP dropped by something like a factor of 5 and millions of servicemen returned to the private labor force all at once?

 

"When this war comes to an end, more than one out of every two workers will depend directly or indirectly upon military orders. We shall have some 10 million service men to throw on the labor market. We shall have to face a difficult reconversion period during which current goods cannot be produced and layoffs may be great. Nor will the technical necessity for reconversion necessarily generate much investment outlay in the critical period under discussion whatever its later potentialities. The final conclusion to be drawn from our experience at the end of the last war is inescapable--were the war to end suddenly within the next 6 months, were we again planning to wind up our war effort in the greatest haste, to demobilize our armed forces, to liquidate price controls, to shift from astronomical deficits to even the large deficits of the thirties--then there would be ushered in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced."

 

That's from Paul Samuelson's "Full Employment After the War," published in 1943.

 

 

[prole]

Holy shit, public spending as a percentage of GDP dropped when the World War ended?! Seriously Jay, come on. Doesn't mean there weren't tons of programs in place to orient the productive and infrastructural capacities towards peacetime use, GI Bill to get soldiers skills, priming the tattered economies of Europe and Asia (mercantilism!) to buy our products, facilitating the peace between labor and capital that ushered in the modern consumer society, etc., etc., etc. Are you fooling anyone anymore?

[ZimZam]

They aren't interested in job creation. That would make Obama more appealing. Failure is the only option available to them, thereby ensuring a complete takeover of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.

 

go lick sack

Edited February 19, 2011 by ZimZam

[rob]

They aren't interested in job creation. That would make Obama more appealing. Failure is the only option available to them,

 

+1. The economy turning around while a democrat holds the presidency would be the worst possible thing politically for the republicans.

 

The dems aren't any better, though, when a republishit is in office.

[ZimZam]

Birds of a feather. They're all indebted to their corporate masters.

 

[Lucky Larry]

I know someone that grew up post WW II in Germany--there wasn't much to eat.

 

This darn economy thing was all planned out and the really marginal people of the world are not included: they don't want 8 billion healthy and well fed people sucking up the few resources that are left, they want whats left for themselves and a few slaves.

 

Supposedly 500 families control everything; any truth to this?

[ivan]

Birds of a feather. They're all indebted to their corporate masters.

fahq'n'a

[prole]

So we're back to working towards getting concentrated wealth out of the political process. Fine by me.