A lot of economist talk about a natural level of unemployment that is factored into the US economy, around 5%. In that sense during the boom years that was considered. At the same time I don't think its an issue of the employment numbers being inflated but the sustainability of those jobs. For example I think the amount of construction jobs a few years ago were not sustainable given they were based on a bubble in home construction. That type of boom and bust though might be due to that there may be no real steady state to the economy as a whole.
There are things that can be done - though they may be controversial and possibly expensive. Essentially, the problem boils down to the fact that in a labor vs technology debate, labor is losing - it's more cost effective and thus smarter for companies to decrease labor. As a society, we provide tax breaks to shape behavior - mortgage deductions to encourage home ownership, education tax breaks to encourage people to go to college, etc. If we decided that employing people has value to society, the logical strategy would be to subsidize employment: make wages of employees in the US deductible at 1.2x other expenses (numbers made up). Now, this is a huge tax subsidy - but it directly rewards employment. In the grand scheme of things, it makes employing people cheaper relative to where it is now. And in theory, those additionally employed people now provide tax revenues to help pay for the subsidies. There are lots of merits and drawbacks to such a strategy - but if you want to address unemployment, it seems to make sense to target the underlying cause. I certainly wouldn't make a permanent universal subsidy, but if you wanted to do something like this, you tie the level of the subsidy directly to the unemployment rate. As unemployment goes up, the subsidy goes up and vice-versa. That way, you're not providing a subsidy when you don't need to be.
just read a post by rimbaud on why the reason for him voting for obama is him being black. he says it really doesn't matter who the president is because the system will roll on so you might as well as get a benefit out of having the first black president and all the symbolism, to paraphrase. then i read major's post above. its a shame that ideas like major's are never floated to solve issues, and it directly relates to rimbaud's post which is the system will just roll on. i think that's a great idea major, too bad we don't have forward thinking like that in our gov't
Agreed. As a moderate go along to get along, the best advance made by Obama is the racial thing. Too bad Obama is not passionate enough about jobs to go beyond the Wall Street gheto of his economic team. Certainly corporations aren't particularly interested in high unemployment or tight labor markets. Profitability is their interest. It is true that overall demand caused by lots of employed people does help corporations sell stuff,but they tend to look at the immediate profitability caused by having a reduced work force. I like Major's idea (now almost radical under the anti-government/ worker era) of using the government to try to mold corporate behavior. Given almost unfettered corporate domination of gvoernment such plans are becoming academic. If the corportions can produce in slave factories in the third world it will be tough to provide enough tax payer money to subsidize employment here. I guess a start would be to stop giving them tax breaks to outsource. Again corporate lobbyists and campaign cash would block such audacity by polticians.
eventually somebody will figure out that private industry creates jobs and not the government until then......
That could have been written by Obama or someone in his administration. If it were cleaned up a little for eloquence, it could be the lead in his stump speech. In fact, it pretty much is. It is exactly what he has been saying for months. If you want to know why it's not happening, there's only one other place to look.
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You do realize that is a 3% decrease, right? I know the graph makes it look much more dramatic, but maybe that's how you operate? Trying to skew things in such an exaggerated fashion that it fits your agenda?
It's still a decrease. Just a few months ago Boehner was trying to convince the public that Obama had created hundreds of thousands of new, permanent government jobs.
so the stimulus didn't work but as soon as the compromise is made on the bush tax cuts, job creation slows?
LOL, Ronald, first off, I don't think it's a dramatic decrease (but that does represent billions of dolllars off the federal payroll, far more substantial than most pointless wingnut intiatives like "defund NPR!") Second, did you know it was a 3% decrease before I showed you that graph, Ronald? Or were you among the mass of mouth-breathers who either stupidly or shamelessly claim that he has launched an unprecedented expansion of the federal work force, which includes: The entire GOP Conrgresional delegation The GOP presidential field Fox News Channel Tea Party Medicare Scooter-riding Dupes Tons of non-GOP'ers as well
