The Time Has Come for Direct Job Creation
By L. Randall Wray
There. Exactly. It's said. By an economist, no less.
American policy makers have been dithering for years over The Problem of Jobs; they actually eagerly embrace the Bubbles, because during them employment has reached near-universality, at least temporarily, and so The Problem of Jobs doesn't have to be addressed for another interlude, and nothing is done.
But we have been in recession for over a year, and The Problem of Jobs is catastrophic, and nothing has been done about it.
Food stamps? Unemployment benefit extensions? Who am I to say "nothing is being done?" But the fact is, nothing is being done to get people back to work in any kind of job let alone one of those vaunted "good jobs" already shipped to China.
There was no net jobs creation at all between the end of the Clinton presidency and the end of the Bush Regime, and now we're down another 6-15 million jobs (depending on who's counting and what they're counting) besides. Policy makers should be running around with their hair on fire. Instead, they continue in languid indifference.
The overall jobs picture is really bleak for years to come, perhaps permanently. Europe adapted to this situation a generation ago; Japan is adapting to it. Perhaps Americans should do likewise? Well, yes, perhaps, but Americans aren't even doing that.
They are oblivious.
They're oblivious to the job losses, oblivious to the foreclosures, oblivious to the bankruptcies, to the store closures, to the bank failures, to the exodus of manufacturing abroad.
Nothing seems to move them.
Policy makers are just as happy it is so; you'd almost think they want it this way, a growingly unemployed proletariat, a shrinking bourgeoisie, continuing massive accumulations of wealth and power at the top, declining wages and benefits for workers who still have jobs, increasing debt loads on those who can still pay their debts, and strangely inappropriate price increases for basic supplies.
Others have pointed out that we will never get out of this recession until and unless middle and working class debt is relieved and jobs return paying decent wages.
This should be axiomatic, but for some reason, many so-called Progressives simply don't get it. The only form of "debt relief" they can fathom for the working and middle classes is bankruptcy and foreclosure. (Which, thanks to Joe Biden et al, does not necessarily relieve debts at all). Any number of trillions to the banksters to pay off their gambling debts, all of it loaded on to the working and middle classes -- on top of the debt they already carry -- is fine with most so-called Progressives. But even hint at debt relief for workers and the bourgeoisie, and the Scolds come out in force: "Well, I never got over my head in debt, and I don't want to have to pay your debt if you did. That shows your moral failing, and it's your problem, not mine." When it is pointed out to these cretins that they are paying gazillions of dollars for the "moral failings" of banksters, and it would be of far more benefit to the economy to use that money to pay down the debt of the working and middle classes instead, all they have in response is a blank stare.
It's beyond their ability to comprehend.
Of course many of those who don't get it are not actually "Progressives" at all; they're Propertarians who have put on a mask of Progressivism so as to foster their cause by subversion if you will. The primacy of Property and Contracts is all they really care about. Oh, and Power. Yes. Because Property and Contracts only work one way in their warped world view. Those who have Power have the right and duty to hold Property to whatever extent they can accumulate it; they also have the right and the duty to enforce contracts to the letter. Those without Power, on the other hand, are shit out of luck. Their Property -- if they have any -- can and should be taken at the will and desire of those with Power; their Contracts (ha ha, suckers!) can and should be modified and/or voided at the will and demand of those with Power.
The Puritanical aspects of Propertarianism are pretty obvious. But actual Progressives (if there really are any) have their own blind spots and Puritanical rigidity as well.
The upshot in the real world is that jobs are not being created and wages and benefits for those who still have jobs are decreasing, which means that for most people, the Recession is enduring, not ending at all.
And, of course, them that already has is getting more.
You don't address the problem by letting it fester. But that's what our policy makers have decided to do, and due to the astonishing apathy of American People, they believe they'll get away with it, too.
In my next post, I'll try to deal with the Kansas City Solution in more detail.
But I had to rant, again, about the negligence and greed that still motivates those at the top of America's economic pyramid.
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