We've temporarily survived the 2011 debt ceiling extortion of the Tea Party Republicans. At least President Obama doesn't have to face that tactic again until after the 2012 election. Now we can get back to the most important issue at hand: jobs and the economy. As Robert Reich and others have pointed out, a 'jobs agenda' is the most important 'next step' to tackle, and the result spawned by the debt ceiling extortion wrangled by the Republicans has created a worse atmosphere for job creation than before that battle.
The corporations are sitting on billions of dollars in profits. Many of them have paid little or no taxes on those earnings, either due to tax credits or because, due to the antiquated tax structure, they aren't taxed if they've moved their businesses off-shore (either physically to a foreign country or to a mailbox address in a tax-haven location like the Cayman Islands). What is most important is that the corporations are not hiring new workers in substantial numbers. On top of this, due to the federal cuts in subsidies for state government services, many state and local government workers are losing their jobs.
The result has been that more and more Americans are becoming unemployed. The 'official' unemployment statistic is 9.1%, which means that around 14 million Americans are out of work. But what that statistic doesn't include -- as many commentators have discussed -- are the increasingly large number of former workers who have joined the ranks of 'discouraged workers' and simply stopped looking for work. And who can blame them: the latest jobs available vs. number of applicants ratio is around 1 to 6. Millions of Americans have now been unemployed for 9 months or more, with many, many Americans having been unemployed for 2 years or more. (This writer, for one, has been without a full-time professional position that equated to his academic credentials, training and experience for more than 9 years, in spite of thousands of resumes sent out.)
An article that I read recently pegged the 'real' unemployment statistic at 16% (or more than 25 million Americans) and, frankly, I believe that is even too low; the more likely unemployment statistic is around 20% or more. Teen unemployment is around 40%, unemployment for African Americans and other minority groups is far greater than for whites (which has historically been the case, but it's even worse now), and about the only 'job' that many people can acquire consistently is to join the volunteer military (which is hardly 'volunteer' when it is one of the few choices available, even for people who have no desire to risk dying in warfare for the doubtful chance at career stability). We may not currently have an official military draft, but when a job in the military is one of the few choices available to many applicants, it becomes a 'military draft' by default.
Many articles have been written pointing out that, in the best possible scenario, the 'official' unemployment statistic won't drop to 5% until 2016 or later. Millions more Americans are being born and millions are 'coming of age' and want to join the workforce; yet, there weren't enough jobs available for those already looking for work, much less for new applicants 'coming on line' into the nation's workforce. I read a statistic in the Harper's Index last month that 85% of current college graduates are returning home to live following graduation because they can't find work with their college degrees and can't survive economically on their own.
Robert Reich and other writers have suggested that the country engage in 1930's style Civilian Conservation Corps programs, to help rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of the nation and provide jobs to millions of the unemployed in the meantime. But with all the cuts demanded by the debt ceiling 'deal', that is an unlikely possibility -- there is simply no funding available for it. Added to this dilemma, there have been numerous articles in the media of late about how corporations are furthering the pain by refusing to hire people who are currently unemployed, and are only being willing to hire workers who currently have jobs and are looking to transfer. While this tactic is clearly a violation of existing federal laws, legally proving that this has occurred in any particular employment situation is difficult, and clearly beyond the financial ability of most unemployed workers.
I keep being brought back to a somewhat 'pathetic good news/bad news joke' that I tell my friends (which I believe I coined): "The Good News -- and mind you this IS the good news -- is that it's only going to get worse before it gets better. And the Bad News is that it may not get better." Yes, a rather depressing attempt at humor, but though I began telling that joke when the recession started in 2007, it has become more and more true this past year as the number of layoffs and corporate downsizing has increased. The other cliché that I feel applies here is: "It's a recession when your friend loses his job, but a depression when you've lost yours." And more and more Americans are facing that daunting prospect.
Added to the pain is the demand from Tea Party Republicans that no new revenues be added. They want to reduce the federal deficit solely by slashing Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and other social safety net entitlement programs, while increasing the military budget (or at least not cutting it down concurrently). The result is that the pain for individual Americans has increased, the wealthy are paying a lower rate than most middle-class citizens, and the economic disparity between the top 1% super-rich and most Americans is increasing. Warren Buffet's recent article, wherein he points out that he's paying a smaller percentage of his income in taxes than his own staff, reveals much about this insanity. As he noted in the article, he wants to pay more, because it's the only fair thing to do.
In most countries, in past historical time periods, and even currently in many nations, this kind of deepening unemployment combined with increasing economic disparity between the social classes has resulted in profound social unrest. I don't wish that upon America. I am a liberal reformer, not a revolutionary, and want us, as a caring nation, to help those least able to help themselves. But the trend in our country, currently, is moving in the opposite direction, toward ensuring that the social unrest is magnified due to increasing economic disparity. We need a caring and cooperative bipartisan government that can reach out and care for and about its citizens, not one that casts its citizens further into the gutter, from which extraction will be more difficult to achieve, even when the economy 'turns around', whenever and if ever that occurs.
