Paul Krugman: "what happens when influential people exploit a crisis instead of doing something about solving it."
Write on this or something else.
10 comments:
Karen Garcia
said...
One of the usual suspects doing nothing about the jobs crisis is the Suspect in Chief himself, President Obama. At a campaign event in Michigan Wednesday, he blamed Congress for gridlock, and muttered the usual vague stuff about infrastructure, green energy and trade deals (which, by the way, would offshore even more jobs and provide even more tax shelters for profit-hoarding corporations). He doesn't want Congress back in session this month, because he thinks "we" (not he) should put the pressure on them to do something.
Funny that he didn't mention a specific and very excellent emergency jobs bill introduced on Tuesday by Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky. It provides for immediate job creation in school building improvement, a Job Corps for students, a "Neighborhood Heroes Corporation" that would provide funding for thousands of teaching, law enforcement and firefighting jobs... the list is long and detailed. It would be paid for by Schakowsky's other bill (stalled in Congress, ignored by the White House) which would cure the deficit by taxing the rich and doing away with loopholes and subsidies.
So why is the White House ignoring this great Congressional idea? Well, for one thing, it doesn't include his Grand Bargain of cutting Social Security and Medicare. It just isn't austere enough for the Chief Suspect. It doesn't require poor people, aka the middle class, to tighten their belts. It's not "balanced" enough. It doesn't jibe with the Business Roundtable and Wall Street's recipe for success: to complete the looting of our national treasury.
Speaking of looting... I hope Mr. Suspect and his Band of Usuals are keeping an eye on what's happening across the pond. These austerity measures have a way of having unintended consequences. The humanitarian crisis of 20 percent real unemployment, 50 million uninsured, 46 million people on food stamps does not a Triple-A nation make. It's more like a Land of the Lost.
Bill Gross, who created the mega-investment firm PIMCO, wrote in an op-ed yesterday that the debt and deficit that so captivate the Very Serious People is a symptom, not a cause, of our economic woes: "It is not the debt ... but the lack of global aggregate demand that is at the heart of the crisis.... Washington hassles over debt ceilings instead of job creation in the mistaken belief that a balanced budget will produce a balanced economy. It will not. The president and Congress must recognize that an AA-plus country, to remain AA-plus, must focus on growth, not debt reduction, in the short term."
What Gross doesn't mention is that in the U.S., there will never be adequate "aggregate demand" as long as most wealth remains in the hands of a few -- a few like Gross. Gross is one of the richest people in the world with a net worth of $2.1BB. How many washing machines and lawnmowers will Bill Gross buy?
As long as income disparity remains as high as it is in the U.S., there aren't going to be people to buy stuff or create that "aggregate demand" Gross longs for. As long as an estimated 16 percent of Americans are out of work or underemployed, they're going to be shopping at yard sales and Goodwill, not at Macy's. (I see Nordstrum's is doing well, though!) Changing tax policy is the way to reduce the disparity.
Meanwhile, our "responsible" President was in Michigan yesterday touting batteries again & repeating his mantra that the federal government is like a family that needs to tighten its belt in hard times. My blood pressure goes up every time I hear him repeat that Republican lie.
So here's an idea I'd like Prof. Krugman to address/shoot down. What if we lowered the standard work week from 40 to 35 hours? Wouldn't most corporations hire more workers? And wouldn't all those workers have more leisure time to, you know, spend money? And wouldn't everybody (except maybe professional Republicans) be happier?
If Rick Perry's prayers haven't brought rain, they haven't helped Texas poor people and children much either.
According to CNBC, under Perry's leadership, Texas ranks 30th in the nation for educating its work force.
Well, who needs to be all educated when the available jobs don't require you to know much? Though Texas has been a job-creator compared to other states, the jobs aren't necessarily ones you'd like to have -- they're mostly low-wage, low-skill jobs. If you want a bad job, go to Texas," says Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Texas).
Even those lousy jobs are hard to come by. The Texas unemployment rate, lower than in many states, is still at 8.2 percent & in one county it's 12 percent. An estimated 45 percent of Texans live below the poverty line. That's right, nearly half of Texans are poor.
As for Perry's fiscal responsibility, last October the Houston Chronicle editors wrote that "During Perry's tenure..., the state budget has grown by more than $12 billion. Meanwhile, state debt ... has gone from $5.7 billion in 2003 to $12.4 billion last year." State debt is up to an estimated $30 billion now.
If you get sick in Texas, good luck. The Chron editors wrote, "Texas ranks dead last in the percentage of its citizens who have health coverage.
Rick Perry boasts he and God have engineered a "Texas Miracle." Texas Miracle? Maybe Perry's prayer group should be asking, "Why doesn't God love Texas?" As for me, I wonder why Gov. Rick Perry doesn't love Texas.
The second season of The Wire is one of its best. It lays bare the plight of victims of our nation’s highjackers.
The location is the port of Baltimore. The focus is the hard times that have befallen its docks’ longshoremen. The main character is Frank Sobotka, the leader of the local dockworkers union, whose job is to ensure that his workers continue to have a decent life during a time of marked decline at the port. There isn’t enough work, not enough hours.
Understanding that microcosm – the impacts of globalization, deindustrialization and financialization, which doomed the Baltimore dockworkers, on our economy; the failure to create not just new jobs, but good jobs - is key to understanding our nation’s plight today. Hear Frank Sobotka's lament for the working class, "We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket."
In his desperation to save his union and the decent life it once provided, Frank, hoping to win support for a plan that will restore prosperity to the port, makes illegal overtures to local lobbyists and politicians, thinking the only thing that matters is money. It actually meant the opposite, they were totally replaceable.
The amorality, corruption, and failure within our institutions destroy the essentially decent individuals, like Frank Sobotka, involved with them.
CW: I can't figure out how to edit comments here, so I am reposting Denis Neville's last comment, in abbreviated form. As posted, it constituted a copyright infringement.
Marie says (in her comment to Krugman in today’s NY Times), “As long as an estimated 16 percent of Americans are out of work or underemployed, they're going to be shopping at yard sales and Goodwill, not at Macy's.”
Badtux the Snarky Penguin noticed another trend when cleaning out his garage.
“Today is "clean out your garage" day in my neighborhood. This is when you take all the junk that has accumulated in your garage over the past year that was too big to put into the garbage bins and put it out by the side of the street to be picked up by the city. I put the crappy plastic chairs and table plus three pallets out by the street.”
“The gleaners were out in force, in old trucks, in vans, and in crappy old cars, going through all the piles and grabbing anything that looked useful....
“In the future there will be two kinds of people: The filthy rich (the top 1%), and the rest of us, who will make our living as gleaners upon whatever junk they've thrown out....”
Welcome to Austeria, Land of Gleaners! Free enterprise for gleaners; socialism for the rentiers.
With all the troubles that you have had, the thought of someone tampering with your website had occurred to me earlier this morning. Then this news.
It is getting to be a scary world. The growing fringe really believes what they are doing is right.
Recalling Hill Street Blue’s Sergeant Esterhaus' trademark ending to each roll call session at the Hill Street station... “Let’s be careful out there.”
Sorry to hear you are having problems with security. Have you had your computers swept for spyware? If not concider it. http://us.norton.com/nortonlive/sem/svr/index.jsp?p=3&om_sem_cid=hho_sem_sy:us:gg2:en:b%7Ckw0000077139%7C15115711173
If it's cost prohibitive put a PayPal donate button on your site. I'm sure everyone will donate something, I know I will.
@ Richard. Thanks. I do have a pretty good security system on my computer.
This was not a matter of hacking. My domain name registrant shut down my site because of a complaint to a quasi-government non-profit (ICANN) that maintains information on Web domains. The complainant accurately charged that I had not updated my home address with the registrant, which I did not think was necessary or desirable.
Now how would this complainant know if my home address was up-to-date unless he had checked it out? Had he wanted to contact me for any reason (legitimate or otherwise), he would have written to my e-mail address which is posted on the front page of Reality Chex. He is a businessman whose line of work has absolutely nothing to do with the Internet, with investments or anything vaguely related to either, so his complaint was not a routine scan of Websites that might have been work-related. He doesn't live far from me, so it is more than likely he has physically visited Fort Myers looking for me. The information I have on the complainant suggests that it is best to let law enforcement deal with him. In the meantime, I've stepped up security on my home.
If the complainant's aim was to shut down my site, it only worked for a few hours. In that case, he may think his little stunt was pretty funny, but I'd guess he won't think so for long. If his intent is to physically harm me, there's now a paper trail of who he is and what he was up to, & law enforcement officers are on it. Even if he succeeds in whatever dire plans he may have for me, he won't get away with it.
I haven't been posting lately because I wasn't sure that I knew how to use the "Annex." However, I'll give it a try now.
I don't know what the law says in Florida about how you need to register your site, but if the law allows, I think that it is important that you follow @Richard's advice as soon as possible.
We learned long ago from a friend in law enforcement that it is important to separate your home address from your mailing/business address insofar as possible.
So, like @Richard, we use a private mailbox at a UPS Store to receive ALL of our mail and parcel deliveries. (You can do the same with a United States Postal Service P.O.box, but many companies won't ship parcels to a USPS PO box.)
It's the billing address for all our credit cards, anything that we need to "register" for, tax bills, etc. About the only thing that you CAN'T do is use it as your address on your driver's license or passport, BUT you can have both sent to that address upon renewal.
OK, sometimes it's a pain to make the trip to the mail box, but on the other hand we have never had anything stolen that we know of, unilke our streetside USPS mail box.
So, if anybody is looking for you in the future, that's the address that they will likely find.
Our local UPS Store has other advantages, in that you can receive ALL deliveries there (FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc.) and they will hold them for you. No packages waiting on your doorstep when you are away from home. At least, that's the kind of service that we get here in New Mexico. Can't speak for Florida.
As a dedicated firearms owner, I might have additional suggestions on how to protect yourself but I don't think that you would like them, so I'll not go there.
10 comments:
One of the usual suspects doing nothing about the jobs crisis is the Suspect in Chief himself, President Obama. At a campaign event in Michigan Wednesday, he blamed Congress for gridlock, and muttered the usual vague stuff about infrastructure, green energy and trade deals (which, by the way, would offshore even more jobs and provide even more tax shelters for profit-hoarding corporations). He doesn't want Congress back in session this month, because he thinks "we" (not he) should put the pressure on them to do something.
Funny that he didn't mention a specific and very excellent emergency jobs bill introduced on Tuesday by Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky. It provides for immediate job creation in school building improvement, a Job Corps for students, a "Neighborhood Heroes Corporation" that would provide funding for thousands of teaching, law enforcement and firefighting jobs... the list is long and detailed. It would be paid for by Schakowsky's other bill (stalled in Congress, ignored by the White House) which would cure the deficit by taxing the rich and doing away with loopholes and subsidies.
So why is the White House ignoring this great Congressional idea? Well, for one thing, it doesn't include his Grand Bargain of cutting Social Security and Medicare. It just isn't austere enough for the Chief Suspect. It doesn't require poor people, aka the middle class, to tighten their belts. It's not "balanced" enough. It doesn't jibe with the Business Roundtable and Wall Street's recipe for success: to complete the looting of our national treasury.
Speaking of looting... I hope Mr. Suspect and his Band of Usuals are keeping an eye on what's happening across the pond. These austerity measures have a way of having unintended consequences. The humanitarian crisis of 20 percent real unemployment, 50 million uninsured, 46 million people on food stamps does not a Triple-A nation make. It's more like a Land of the Lost.
On Krugman:
Bill Gross, who created the mega-investment firm PIMCO, wrote in an op-ed yesterday that the debt and deficit that so captivate the Very Serious People is a symptom, not a cause, of our economic woes: "It is not the debt ... but the lack of global aggregate demand that is at the heart of the crisis.... Washington hassles over debt ceilings instead of job creation in the mistaken belief that a balanced budget will produce a balanced economy. It will not. The president and Congress must recognize that an AA-plus country, to remain AA-plus, must focus on growth, not debt reduction, in the short term."
What Gross doesn't mention is that in the U.S., there will never be adequate "aggregate demand" as long as most wealth remains in the hands of a few -- a few like Gross. Gross is one of the richest people in the world with a net worth of $2.1BB. How many washing machines and lawnmowers will Bill Gross buy?
As long as income disparity remains as high as it is in the U.S., there aren't going to be people to buy stuff or create that "aggregate demand" Gross longs for. As long as an estimated 16 percent of Americans are out of work or underemployed, they're going to be shopping at yard sales and Goodwill, not at Macy's. (I see Nordstrum's is doing well, though!) Changing tax policy is the way to reduce the disparity.
Meanwhile, our "responsible" President was in Michigan yesterday touting batteries again & repeating his mantra that the federal government is like a family that needs to tighten its belt in hard times. My blood pressure goes up every time I hear him repeat that Republican lie.
So here's an idea I'd like Prof. Krugman to address/shoot down. What if we lowered the standard work week from 40 to 35 hours? Wouldn't most corporations hire more workers? And wouldn't all those workers have more leisure time to, you know, spend money? And wouldn't everybody (except maybe professional Republicans) be happier?
My comment on Tim Egan’s column:
If Rick Perry's prayers haven't brought rain, they haven't helped Texas poor people and children much either.
According to CNBC, under Perry's leadership, Texas ranks 30th in the nation for educating its work force.
Well, who needs to be all educated when the available jobs don't require you to know much? Though Texas has been a job-creator compared to other states, the jobs aren't necessarily ones you'd like to have -- they're mostly low-wage, low-skill jobs. If you want a bad job, go to Texas," says Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Texas).
Even those lousy jobs are hard to come by. The Texas unemployment rate, lower than in many states, is still at 8.2 percent & in one county it's 12 percent. An estimated 45 percent of Texans live below the poverty line. That's right, nearly half of Texans are poor.
As for Perry's fiscal responsibility, last October the Houston Chronicle editors wrote that "During Perry's tenure..., the state budget has grown by more than $12 billion. Meanwhile, state debt ... has gone from $5.7 billion in 2003 to $12.4 billion last year." State debt is up to an estimated $30 billion now.
If you get sick in Texas, good luck. The Chron editors wrote, "Texas ranks dead last in the percentage of its citizens who have health coverage.
Rick Perry boasts he and God have engineered a "Texas Miracle." Texas Miracle? Maybe Perry's prayer group should be asking, "Why doesn't God love Texas?" As for me, I wonder why Gov. Rick Perry doesn't love Texas.
The second season of The Wire is one of its best. It lays bare the plight of victims of our nation’s highjackers.
The location is the port of Baltimore. The focus is the hard times that have befallen its docks’ longshoremen. The main character is Frank Sobotka, the leader of the local dockworkers union, whose job is to ensure that his workers continue to have a decent life during a time of marked decline at the port. There isn’t enough work, not enough hours.
Understanding that microcosm – the impacts of globalization, deindustrialization and financialization, which doomed the Baltimore dockworkers, on our economy; the failure to create not just new jobs, but good jobs - is key to understanding our nation’s plight today. Hear Frank Sobotka's lament for the working class, "We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket."
In his desperation to save his union and the decent life it once provided, Frank, hoping to win support for a plan that will restore prosperity to the port, makes illegal overtures to local lobbyists and politicians, thinking the only thing that matters is money. It actually meant the opposite, they were totally replaceable.
The amorality, corruption, and failure within our institutions destroy the essentially decent individuals, like Frank Sobotka, involved with them.
CW: I can't figure out how to edit comments here, so I am reposting Denis Neville's last comment, in abbreviated form. As posted, it constituted a copyright infringement.
Marie says (in her comment to Krugman in today’s NY Times), “As long as an estimated 16 percent of Americans are out of work or underemployed, they're going to be shopping at yard sales and Goodwill, not at Macy's.”
Badtux the Snarky Penguin noticed another trend when cleaning out his garage.
http://snarkypenguin.blogspot.com/2011/04/gleaners.html
“Today is "clean out your garage" day in my neighborhood. This is when you take all the junk that has accumulated in your garage over the past year that was too big to put into the garbage bins and put it out by the side of the street to be picked up by the city. I put the crappy plastic chairs and table plus three pallets out by the street.”
“The gleaners were out in force, in old trucks, in vans, and in crappy old cars, going through all the piles and grabbing anything that looked useful....
“In the future there will be two kinds of people: The filthy rich (the top 1%), and the rest of us, who will make our living as gleaners upon whatever junk they've thrown out....”
Welcome to Austeria, Land of Gleaners! Free enterprise for gleaners; socialism for the rentiers.
Good Grief!
With all the troubles that you have had, the thought of someone tampering with your website had occurred to me earlier this morning. Then this news.
It is getting to be a scary world. The growing fringe really believes what they are doing is right.
Recalling Hill Street Blue’s Sergeant Esterhaus' trademark ending to each roll call session at the Hill Street station... “Let’s be careful out there.”
Sorry to hear you are having problems with security. Have you had your computers swept for spyware? If not concider it. http://us.norton.com/nortonlive/sem/svr/index.jsp?p=3&om_sem_cid=hho_sem_sy:us:gg2:en:b%7Ckw0000077139%7C15115711173
If it's cost prohibitive put a PayPal donate button on your site. I'm sure everyone will donate something, I know I will.
Richard
@ Richard. Thanks. I do have a pretty good security system on my computer.
This was not a matter of hacking. My domain name registrant shut down my site because of a complaint to a quasi-government non-profit (ICANN) that maintains information on Web domains. The complainant accurately charged that I had not updated my home address with the registrant, which I did not think was necessary or desirable.
Now how would this complainant know if my home address was up-to-date unless he had checked it out? Had he wanted to contact me for any reason (legitimate or otherwise), he would have written to my e-mail address which is posted on the front page of Reality Chex. He is a businessman whose line of work has absolutely nothing to do with the Internet, with investments or anything vaguely related to either, so his complaint was not a routine scan of Websites that might have been work-related. He doesn't live far from me, so it is more than likely he has physically visited Fort Myers looking for me. The information I have on the complainant suggests that it is best to let law enforcement deal with him. In the meantime, I've stepped up security on my home.
If the complainant's aim was to shut down my site, it only worked for a few hours. In that case, he may think his little stunt was pretty funny, but I'd guess he won't think so for long. If his intent is to physically harm me, there's now a paper trail of who he is and what he was up to, & law enforcement officers are on it. Even if he succeeds in whatever dire plans he may have for me, he won't get away with it.
There are a lot of crazy people out there.
You are allowed to use a P.O. box as an address. I do. Because as you state there are lots of very strange people out there.
Richard
@Marie--
I haven't been posting lately because I wasn't sure that I knew how to use the "Annex." However, I'll give it a try now.
I don't know what the law says in Florida about how you need to register your site, but if the law allows, I think that it is important that you follow @Richard's advice as soon as possible.
We learned long ago from a friend in law enforcement that it is important to separate your home address from your mailing/business address insofar as possible.
So, like @Richard, we use a private mailbox at a UPS Store to receive ALL of our mail and parcel deliveries. (You can do the same with a United States Postal Service P.O.box, but many companies won't ship parcels to a USPS PO box.)
It's the billing address for all our credit cards, anything that we need to "register" for, tax bills, etc. About the only thing that you CAN'T do is use it as your address on your driver's license or passport, BUT you can have both sent to that address upon renewal.
OK, sometimes it's a pain to make the trip to the mail box, but on the other hand we have never had anything stolen that we know of, unilke our streetside USPS mail box.
So, if anybody is looking for you in the future, that's the address that they will likely find.
Our local UPS Store has other advantages, in that you can receive ALL deliveries there (FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc.) and they will hold them for you. No packages waiting on your doorstep when you are away from home. At least, that's the kind of service that we get here in New Mexico. Can't speak for Florida.
As a dedicated firearms owner, I might have additional suggestions on how to protect yourself but I don't think that you would like them, so I'll not go there.
Stay safe.
Zee
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