The Money Party is a very small group of enterprises and individuals who control almost all of the money and power in the United States. They use their money and power to make more money and gain more power. It's not about Republicans versus Democrats. The Money Party is an equal opportunity employer. It has no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests. Democrats are as welcome as Republicans to this party. It’s all good when you’re on the take and the take is legal. Economic Populist
Negative job growth for eleven years is the best evidence concerning our economic troubles. There were 135 million jobs in 2000 for a workforce of 144 million. Today, there are 139 million jobs for a workforce of 154 million. That represents negative job growth when you factor in population growth.
Have you noticed despite the never ending jobs crisis, Jobs are removed from the political dialog? The unemployed are no longer mentioned? Or if they are, we get absurd nonsense policy that will actually do the opposite? Ship more jobs overseas and lose jobs?
Paul Krugman calls out this sweeping the unemployed under the rug, in an op-ed, Against Learned Helplessness. Krugman calls for policies, that would actually work, to create jobs.
we could have W.P.A.-type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads — which would also, by raising incomes, make it easier for households to pay down debt. We could have a serious program of mortgage modification, reducing the debts of troubled homeowners. We could try to get inflation back up to the 4 percent rate that prevailed during Ronald Reagan’s second term, which would help to reduce the real burden of debt.
Right on Krugman and if only politicians would follow the call. What Krugman doesn't mention is the trade deficit or confronting China on currency manipulation, which once again, we get more inaction by Geithner on China:
The Obama administration on Friday declined to cite China for manipulating its currency to gain trade advantages against the United States but said the pace of the currency's rise against the dollar needs to be accelerated.
Nothing has been done to address the rapid increase of citizens in poverty. That would require jobs. The only jobs those in power produce are for themselves and their cronies. The Happy New Year Edition (with some good news about 2011)
Michael Collins The Money Party. Lots of fiddling while Rome and the rest of the world burned. Knowledge is power and among the ruling elite in the United States, the power was off. Somebody forgot to pay the bill or paid with a bad check, no doubt.
A Decade of Job Stagnation In 2000, 135 million citizens were employed. In 2010 there were 139 million Americans employed. Given the 9.7% increase in population since 2000, we would expect to see at least 148 million citizens with jobs. Nobody much wants to talk about this or the true unemployment figures produced by the US Census called "U6". That measure accounts for, "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force." Bureau of Labor Statistics
In the population of working age adults, the non employment rate is 26.9% (28,255,000 of 105,229,000). As a comparison to current levels, in 1998, the working age population growth was 80,662,000 and the non-employed in that population was 6,571,000 (8.15%).
Recently there has been several stories about 2000s being the Lost Decade of Jobs. No kidding. But what the stories fail to discuss is what are the reasons for the lack of job growth. Could it be because of economic policy? Heck, yeah - our current economic policy relies on wage suppression, cheap imports, more debt, abandonment of manufacturing sector (part of wage suppression strategy) and asset price inflation. But why don't we hear about this in the traditional media?
Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not. —Robert F. Kennedy
According to figures compiled by the America Society of Civil Engineers, a multi-year program of just repairing all existing U.S. infrastructure requires an additional $1.134 trillion dollars than already planned funding.
Using various employment multipliers specific to types of infrastructure (more discussion below), such a program spread over five years cen be expected to create 4.605 million direct and indirect jobs.
This last spring, I posted on how I thought that there were basically two recessions going on. That is that there were two sectors that made up a disproportionate share of the employment losses. From that post:
It is almost universally received wisdom that when the turn comes, we will have a "jobless recovery" where GDP turns up anemically, but unemployment stubbornly rises. Indeed the most controversial notion in some parts of the econoblogosphere is that of the "jobless recovery." as in, can it truly be a "recovery" if the number of jobless Americans continues to increase? Much moreso than dry GDP figures, wages and employment are what matter to the average American. I too have generally accepted the idea that any GDP recovery would be jobless, such that in April I made a graph showing what an unemployment spike will look like if the recession bottoms this summer, but a "jobless recovery" similar to 1991 and 2001 ensues:
The Money Party is a very small group of enterprises and individuals who control almost all of the money and power in the United States. They use their money and power to make more money and gain more power. It's not about Republicans versus Democrats. The Money Party is an equal opportunity employer. It has no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests. Democrats are as welcome as Republicans to this party. It’s all good when you’re on the take and the take is legal. 
The Money Party. Lots of fiddling while Rome and the rest of the world burned. Knowledge is power and among the ruling elite in the United States, the power was off. Somebody forgot to pay the bill or paid with a bad check, no doubt.
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