This is What the Endless Recession and Endless Austerity and Endless Budget Cuts Gets You -- Guaranteed:

Joblessness pushed another 2.6 million people into poverty last year as 15.1 percent of Americans counted as poor -- the highest rate since 1993, according to 2010 statistics released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

"I never thought it was going to be this bad," said Celina Lopez, a single mother of two young children who has moved in with her grandmother in El Sobrante. "My situation is pretty scary, in terms of housing, kids and being able to provide for them. I didn't think it would be this hard to find a job."

The poverty rate rose from 14.3 in 2009, and it increased most dramatically for children and the youngest working-age adults -- those between 18 and 24 years old.

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_18884838

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Tent City made the news recently and while community leader Steven Brigham says the media attention brought in greater donations, it also brought unwanted attention from the local politicians.

After battling with the city for years to have access to the public land here, Brigham found a New Jersey lawyer to represent his case pro bono.

The attorney, Jeff Wild, argued that the homeless population are part of the public and should therefore have access to public lands. Rather than take the case to court, Lakewood City Council settled, and Brigham signed an agreement to put up no more shelters and allow no more than 70 people to stay.

But last winter the community put up three wooden structures to house everyone and keep them warm.

"We didn't lose anybody last year," Brigham says, "and nobody got sick."

This year could be different. After City Council members saw the shelters on TV, they sent demolition crews in. The walls were torn down around whatever was inside, and meager furnishings were left to the elements.

This year, the tent city's residents will have to put wood-stoves in tents and plastic shanties, increasing fire risk. Brigham says the town is making it impossible to survive there, hoping to get the homeless out, and he's concerned it will end up killing people this year.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lakewood-new-jersey-homeless-tent-city-2011-9#outside-the-town-of-lakewood-new-jersey-across-from-this-intersection-1#ixzz1XsXLBaII

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Denise had lived on my parking lot
for close to a year. Once, her mother
came all the way from Mississippi to
stay there a while. Can you believe
that? Can you imagine what her life
must have been, that sleeping in
a parking lot a thousand miles from
home could be an improvement? The
mother soon moved on; the daughter
stayed. She unfailingly wished me good
morning; we joked together; many
times I felt happy to be her neighbor.

One cold winter afternoon when I had
cooked some Chinese food, I took half
of it out to my parking lot to give to
Denise. She was lying on her side in her
sleeping bag, and her teeth were chattering.
“You mean, you cooked this?”
she said. “Thank you, honey.”

When they evicted Denise, she
screamed in rage and grief. A day later,
the neat tarp houses my friends had
made in their corner of the lot had all
been transformed into garbage. I paid
somebody fifty dollars to haul it away.

Would you like to know what Denise’s
house used to look like? I quote
from her police citation: tent constructed
on pallets, mattress,
sleeping bag, blankets, milk crate,
chair. Under violations the officer
wrote: unlawful camping, refused
shelter, ignored prior warnings.
He also checked: booking required.

I wondered why the officials of my
city were so stupid and cruel, not to
mention wasteful. How much public
money did they spend moving these
people from bad to worse? How many
schools, parks, clinics, and buses got
starved in proportion; how many violent
crimes went unsolved? I also wondered
what “private property” meant—
the right to go on paying property
taxes, I suppose. Then I went inside my
building and sat down because
I felt like crying.

http://harpers.org/archive/2011/03/0083334

This is the reality for more and more Americans, millions upon millions of whom are being pushed into poverty or deeper into poverty every year of this ongoing Endless Recession.

Every time another austerity measure is enacted, another few hundred thousand or few million are thrown off the cliff, to face whatever it is Those People face Down Below (poor devils.)

Keening and rending garments over it will not stop what has been going on for years now.

Change will only come when we make it come.

Anticipation!

Gosh, I thought it was Thursday already. So much buzz about the Big "Jobs" Speech, and here I thought it would be coming up this afternoon sometime, only to discover it's only Wednesday, and the leaked Obama "Jobs" proposal is about what was expected and it's utterly laughable.

But then, this administration has never had a real Jobs Program, nor will it have one for the rest of its term. As I've said many times, it was clear enough by the Inauguration that Team Obama had no interest in any kind of Jobs Program that would actually keep more than a few people working who might otherwise be unemployed, and that would actually put the unemployed back to work. High unemployment drives down wages and benefits for those who can find or maintain employment and this is a very pleasing state of affairs for the employer class. Unemployment, therefore, is not to be addressed with a Jobs Program.

We keep hearing the myth that public sector jobs are not "real jobs" when in fact they are, even if they are only make work. There is such an incredible amount of work to be done, however, that there is little chance that any public works program would be "make work" at the present time. Public sector jobs are "real jobs" that actually contribute to the overall economy and can significantly increase "demand" -- just as household debt relief can -- which in turn expands the economy. Even Nixon knew this -- and it worked.

So you can be sure that the Obama administration will never propose nor even entertain the notion of a public works jobs program now or in the future. They don't want anything that will demonstrate success in reviving the economy. They don't want a revived economy, they want to be able to talk about reviving it.

Instead, they will proposed extending unemployment benefits and an infrastructure "bank." Instead of household debt relief, they will propose yet another scheme to provide mortgage "help" that in too many cases makes things worse rather than better for households.

They will propose yet more free trade agreements which typically don't improve domestic employment.

They will propose direct aid to states to keep teachers and first responders on the job -- what does that mean to other categories of State and Local workers? Sounds like more "net zero."

They will propose patent reform and regulation roll backs.

They will propose continuing the payroll tax holiday, possibly extending it to employers, thus further weakening Social Security into the future.

They will propose unpaid "internships" instead of paid work until the economy turns around.

They will propose retraining programs for unemployed workers until the economy turns around.

On and on, dancing around the problem that workers cannot find work, employers are not hiring, and nothing is being proposed to put people back to work or to seriously address the problem of household debt.

But they'll talk about "jobs." So there is that.

The Attacks on Social Security and Medicare (and Medicaid, which is something else) are Relentless

As I've been pointing out in other fora, Social Security has already been effectively cut for most seniors through the administrative refusal to allow any COLA this year or last year, and by proposing a tiny COLA for next year that would be immediately gobbled up by higher Medicare premiums.

Social Security administrators insist that no COLA is due to recipients because "there has been no inflation," which is absurd. In fact, costs for basics and necessities -- like food, shelter, heat, transportation, non-prescription drugs and other off-Medicare health care, and so forth have been going up exponentially during this period of Endless Recession. The purchasing power of Social Security benefits have declined substantially in the last two years, as they will continue to do so long as COLAs are denied.

A trial balloon was floated by Our Rulers to see how changing the COLA inflation formula would fly. The idea was to reduce COLAs even further by assuming that as costs for one basic or necessary good or service go up, seniors will substitute cheaper goods or services (even though many are already at the rock bottom price point) and therefore they won't "need" such a generous COLA. Fucking genius! Why wasn't this plan instituted long ago?

The idea was to save a few hundred billion dollars in Social Security payouts -- so as to have the wherewithal to conduct more and ever more imperial wars of aggression while continuing to provide handsome emoluments and tax breaks to the High and the Mighty.

Supposedly, this idea has been shot down -- for now -- but we can bet (and win) that it will come back with a vengeance.

Today there comes news that His Serenity is proposing to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Not immediately. He'd wait till after the election next year, but still. And to think, it wasn't that long ago many of us thought, gee, eligibility for Medicare might just be lowered to 55.

I'm so old, I remember when it was taken for granted that "by the year 2000" (what a milestone that was intended to be!) the usual retirement age would be 55, if not actually 50. Now it is 66 for people of my cohort, and it is going up to 67 for those coming after -- this "reform" agreed-to in the 1983 overhaul of Social Security, along with doubling the OASDI tax rate. Obviously, that's not old enough though because people who will never have to worry about their own retirement security are now proposing to raise the retirement age to 70 for those now in the 40's. This is insane.

Meanwhile the assault on public employee pensions continues unabated as well; private sector defined benefit pensions were largely done away with long ago -- except, of course, for the top executives, many of whom leave with super-generous pensions of almost unbelievable amounts. Because ordinary workers in the private sector may not have any pension provisions at all, and they may not have enough income to set aside money for retirement, the thinking among the Ruling Class is that public sector workers -- who have bargained for and have contracts ensuring certain defined benefit pension provisions -- should be forced to sacrifice their pensions "because workers in the private sector don't get pensions..."

Well, some private sector workers do. If they're on the top of the heap, that is.

Meanwhile, savage cuts to Medicaid have been underway since the Endless Recession began, yet even now, this simply fact is widely unrecognized. Of course, most people don't use Medicaid (and most will never be eligible for it) so they don't know -- and for the most part, they don't care -- what's been happening to those on Medicaid. They don't know that eligibility is more and more restricted, that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, have been pushed off the Medicaid rolls, even as poverty has skyrocketed in this country. They don't know that fee reimbursements have been repeatedly cut for providers. They don't know that the people who are still able to access Medicaid services have to pay more and more out of pocket for the services they receive. They don't know that the services provided by Medicaid have been reduced, that mental health and dental services are as rare and unavailable to Medicaid recipients as hidden diamonds. On and on and on.

These are things that most Americans have no conception of.

Meanwhile, unemployment benefits are being time restricted in state after state -- even though there are no jobs -- and unemployment benefit amounts are being reduced (even as costs for basics and necessities continue to climb.) This as more and more people wind up not only out of a job, but ineligible for any unemployment compensation at all.

This is what is going on, what has been going on for years, and this is part of what is ensuring that more and more millions of Americans are forced into poverty every year.

It's almost as if it is planned to be that way. Gee. Ya think?

Whatever Shall We Do About The Unemployment Problem?

Oh. Have you noticed? The issue du jour is the persistent unemployment abroad in the land, indeed, abroad abroad as well (it is one of the chronic issues driving protests in Europe and North Africa). The Rs have a Solution: cut taxes on business and corporations and the rich and remove regulations that protect air, water, and lives of workers as well as requiring employers to pay a bare minimum wage to their workers. Oh, and require them to actually pay it, too.

Both Robert Reich and Paul Krugman have come out full-bore on the topic and the blogosphere is all atwitter over it, so it must be important somehow.

Now they notice.

You know, I've been banging the drum on this topic for years, since the Endless Recession got underway in earnest with massive job losses. Forcing unemployment and keeping unemployment rates high is what it's all about for the Ruling Class. The current situation for the struggling masses -- now entering its fourth year -- is not accidental. The lovely thing for the High and the Mighty is that high unemployment rates force down wages and benefits for those who can manage to get a job or stay employed. It's a wonderful profit center for those on top of the heap, and they know it.

Commentators, though, either have ignored the problem (because they have other interests) or have been sorely confused about why the Government (let alone Industry) does nothing about the persistently high unemployment rate and squabbles over the high cost of unemployment benefits instead. This is frankly insane, but it is so confusing to the nation's commentariat.

Shouldn't the Government be doing something? Shouldn't they have been doing something all along? Why haven't they?

I attribute it to a deep-seated Hooverite belief system and ideology implanted in the White House and especially in the beliefs of the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama.



You might want to take a look at this commentary by Jared Bernstein regarding the White House's continuing lack of interest in doing something about unemployment:

There will be no WPA-type programs in our near future. There was no appetite for them in the Obama admin in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression and there’s a lot less now. The reasons for that are interesting and I’ll speak to them another day. But it ain’t happening.

And please don’t accuse me of “negotiating with myself” here. I stressed above the importance of making those arguments, and I frequently made them myself as a member of the President’s economics team.

It’s also congenitally hard for politicians to get behind “a serious program of mortgage modification.” Those who advocate for this (the NYT editorial page, e.g.) are right, but they’re also downplaying a very binding constraint. The politics of this idea are deeply wound up in moral hazard. People forget, but it was precisely this action—giving mortgage relief to someone at risk of default and not to someone who was struggling to keep up their payments—that birthed the Tea Party.

This is a straight out statement by Joe Biden's former chief economic advisor about what was going on in the White House and -- apparently -- in the President's mind about these matters.

He simply does not believe that the Government's role should be to interfere in the labor market by directly employing the vast armies of the unemployed. Instead, like Hoover, he believes (I think sincerely) that the issue of lack of employment must be dealt with in the private sector -- with the encouragement and "help" of Government where necessary -- but without direct Government intervention on behalf of labor.

At the same time, I've been hammering the issue of the crushing burden of debt the masses are under for years, debt which is crippling the economic recovery for ordinary people, and I proposed long ago that the answer to it was a debt relief program that was driven from the bottom up -- instead of paying off bankers' and financiers' gambling debts straightaway (which is what the Government has been doing) pay households an amount to lower their debt, and watch the economy recover immediately. The banksters will get their cut anon, for the money would "trickle up" (and BTW multiply on the way up), but no. Couldn't even consider it. "Moral hazard" and all that, you know.

Whereas paying off the banksters' gambling debts straight out of the Treasury has no "moral hazard?" I see. Then there was the Rick Santelli rant on the teevee, and that just made everything hard.

Yes. Well.

It's all such a load of utter horseshit, isn't it?

It's probably not too late to correct this situation, but it will require concerted and persistent action on the part of the People to get it done.

The Krugman and Reich considerations (and in the case of Krugman, the mea culpa) are coming out at a time when Democrats are recognizing that they "should be talking more about" unemployment more than they have been. So they're "talking about it more."

They are not doing anything about it, any more than the Rs are, and any more than they have been since the beginning of the Endless Recession.

"Doing something about unemployment" is contrary to Ruling Class Doctrine as is relieving the debts of the Lesser People. Doctrine requires those Lesser People to endure untold hardship so as to ensure the comfort and convenience of Their Betters.

So. What can We the People do about it, since our rulers refuse to do anything of substance for the masses, but instead insist on chipping away at whatever slim benefits remain to the unwashed?

How do we who have nothing put people back to work and keep them working? And if we can figure out how to do it, how do we prevent the benefits from increased economic activity from being Hoovered up by the Overclass?

The key, certainly, is to start small, start locally, combine skills and resources to accomplish what needs to be done. Basically what you do is form a cooperative alternative to government and its sponsors to provide for the needs of the People. Ultimately, it becomes a kind of parallel government and economy, and if it is successful, it will in time replace them.

Every Utopian project in the nation's history has started this way and some have flourished at least for a while, and the Mormons have become an extremely powerful political and economic player in local, state and national affairs.

There is a reason why. And it is not necessarily because of Divine Favor.

It wouldn't hurt to study how they did it... And Demand Better!

How Hoover Did It

[Click to enlarge]

There was no state/national Unemployment Insurance in 1932 when this ad ran in Good Housekeeping Magazine. And of course, Hoover, et al, were not about to originate any kind of program to assist the masses of unemployed -- without the permission of the corporatists and plutocrats of the time. What they would allow then is pretty much what the Republicans and many Libertarians seek to institute now: a more or less leaky and rickety system of private charity provided through churches, community fund drives, and large charitable institutions, to the "deserving unemployed/poor" only.

Everyone else to fend for themselves.

That's the way it was back in the Hoover era; that's the way it had always been in this country, and that's the way the Hooverites and their corporatist/plutocratic sponsors believed it should always be. After all, only a few had ever starved or died of exposure or untreated disease during previous economic "readjustments." So it would be this time.

But by 1932, the nation was in the grip of a worsening Depression that had begun 3 years before. The situation for the masses was untenable, and there was a real whiff of Revolution in the air. The Hooverite approach to the economic catastrophe was to shower benefits and government pump-priming efforts at the top (hardly Keynesian, but it is not at all true that the Hoover government did nothing) and wait for things to get better "down below."

Hoover was a Progressive Republican, after all. Little understood is Hoover's massive efforts to feed Belgium after its conquest by Germany in World War I, subsequently to run an American food program once the United States entered the War, and then, after the defeat of the Central Powers, to feed all of Europe, including in time the new-born Soviet Union. This was a monumental task under extremely difficult -- and politically fraught -- circumstances which in previous eras simply wouldn't have been done at all. Famines were strategic weapons of the powerful, and millions of starving and dead were a good thing in the eyes of the Powers That Be more often than not.

When Hoover said, "These people will be fed," and fought those Powers he became a hero, not just in Europe but in the United States as well.

That's part of why his reaction to the Great Depression in the United States seemed out of character for him given what he had already shown he could do. In fact, what he had demonstrated already was that he could be far more of a radical on behalf of the People than Roosevelt would turn out to be. Hoover would not let anything stand in the way of his mission.

But in reacting to the Depression, he was slow, he was focused entirely on the plight of the upper-upper crust, and he was almost shockingly indifferent to the increasingly horrifying situation of the poor and the working classes.

It was as if he forgot everything he learned about doing what was necessary to ensure some sense of well-being at the bottom of the pyramid rather than devoting all interest at the top.

The continuing indifference of our rulers today to the expanding tragedies at the bottom of the American Pyramid is only going to get worse as the government transitions from "Democratic" to partial Republican rule. What had been a breathtaking level of indifference to the plight of the masses is about to become a deliberate campaign of demonization, vilification and scapegoating by Republicans, which will undoubtedly be picked up and sallied forth by many Dems as well. It won't stop with the unemployed. The sick and the elderly, the poor, the halt and the lame are all about to get thoroughly bludgeoned by the 2 X 4s wielded by the Marshalls of Austerity, on behalf of the Rich and the Super-Rich world wide.

I can't see at this point any sign that the White House will stand in the way.

We are going back to a much rougher time.

The question remains: how will Americans respond. So far, they have shown no sign at all that they can even conceive of the kinds of actions necessary to reverse the trend.

W....T....F...!!!!?

So I open today's paper, and what do I see but the latest "We're working on it, really!" trial balloon from our rulers with regard to the, erm, unemployment problem we've been having now for years.

Having apparently discovered that telling the masses over and over again that "it could be worse" doesn't cut it, they've figured out they have to do something. And being the clever dicks they are they've apparently seized upon Robert Reich's "payroll tax holiday" idea and are floating it around before Labor Day to see who looks up.

Except... what the fuck do they think they are doing by suggesting that such a payroll tax holiday -- if there were to be one -- would only apply to employers, not employees?

They are seriously deranged if they think that either this will win them any votes or that it will do fuck-all for employment or the economy.

It is inconceivable.

Worse than Hoover. Truly.

At this point, all the Rs have to do is throw any kind of bone to the ravening masses -- the masses that Congress and the White House has been ignoring for years as they continue to suck up to the MOTU -- and the Rs win.

Which many people have speculated is the outcome desired by the Administration, but I don't know.

This latest proposal is just crazy.

Of course they will deny there was any such proposal, claim that "everything is on the table," and that "no decisions have been made yet," yadda, yadda, the way they always do, and then do what they intended all along, which is essentially somewhat less than Hoover would.

One assumes they know how this will play among the People.

Not well.

So. We'll watch them circle the drain.

I for one don't like what I see.

The Plan

Hm. Seems to me that a handful of folks are catching on that the way things are, especially the grotesquely high unemployment rates and the ripple effect throughout society of so much unemployment, is just the way Our Rulers have planned it.

Years ago -- remember? -- the now Endless Recession got under way, and remarkably, as unemployment figures rose higher and higher, "month over month," there was no effort, whatsoever to put people back to work. The "stimulus" was hailed as this Big Jobs Program when it obviously was not; none of the shovel ready programs the stimulus would eventually fund (maybe in Year Two?) provided more than very, very modest employment anywhere in the country. A project might be hailed as providing 300 jobs in an area where 30,000 had been lost.

Here we are, years into this Endless Recession, and there are still no Jobs Programs, no serious effort to put people back to work whatsoever. This Hooverite disinterest in the plight of the unemployed should have been alarming years ago.

It is only now being noticed to a very limited extent because of a study done by Rutgers entitled "No End In Sight: The Agony of Prolonged Unemployment." (pdf link)

Yes. Well. Glad they noticed. Finally.

But will Our Rulers? Why should they? As far as they are concerned, the astronomical levels of unemployment in this country can essentially be permanent. The American Plutocracy simply doesn't need all those workers, and there is no way in hell they will re-employ them. Furthermore, there is no way in hell the Plutocracy will allow the Government to become the Employer of Last Resort.

But worst of all, there is no way in hell that Americans will rise up in protest against this appalling situation.

None.

The White House economic team has been rigorous in maintaining its utter indifference to the fact that millions upon millions of Americans are annually being shoved into poverty. That millions upon millions have lost their jobs and will never be employed again. That millions upon millions of Americans continue to lose their homes to foreclosure, their savings to bankruptcy, their future to the Masters of the Universe.

Not even Hoover and his team were this indifferent. They couldn't afford to be because the People would and to some extent did rise up in protest.

Now? (Almost) Nothing.

As I said over at Digby's Place, Reagan must be chortling in his grave, Baroness Thatcher tickling his corpse. The idea of an uprising on behalf of one's own interests and those of his and her compatriots is almost alien to modern Americans. Instead, such uprising as there is is almost entirely confined to the right wing stooges of capitalists and their running dogs.

The Important Thing

The Done Deal Health Care is pretty much Old News, no matter the fulminations of our Republican Friends. After all, they got what they wanted, though someone else had to do it for them. That's kind of the way it goes, isn't it? They sure love to rule, but they can't govern worth shit -- except as Banana Republic dictators.

Barack Obama is now the best Republican President since Clinton, so what the TeaBaggers and their ilk are crabbing about is anybody's guess. Crabbing to be crabby, I think. But what do I know?

There was no way either a Medicare for All or a Public Option (whatever that might have been) could be passed in this environment. And there is a reason why: Medicare's costs are going through the roof, and there still aren't any controls on Medicare or overall healthcare costs. Until the cost curve is "bent" -- runs my theory -- our rulers can't do the right thing and institute universal single payer health care. But my suspicion is that once costs are tackled and some containment is instituted, wah-lah, we'll see something like Medicare for All. At least from the rhetoric coming out of Big Insurance, it appears that going after those costs is the major project still to be done. And Big Insurance is not just a Stakeholder but the major player in cost containment.

We'll see. We'll see.

Yes, in the short term, it will be very costly for very many. But kind of like the Enron/California Energy Crisis Thing, people get used to the higher costs. After a while they don't notice. We're going on ten years since the "crisis" that led to raising utility rates in California by as much as 50% to pay off the bonds that were sold to buy electricity at outrageous prices from the market manipulators. We've been paying higher utility rates in California and most of the West because of it all this time, and those higher rates look to be permanent now, because no one -- no one at all -- is talking about lowering them as the bonds are paid off. No, instead, they'll just move the rates around some. So that residents of the Central Valley aren't stuck with $400-500 a month electricity bills every summer to cool their haciendas. Instead, they'll pay $350, and residents of the naturally cooler Bay Area will pay slightly more...

Meanwhile, there is a very important aspect of the overall picture we need to pay a lot more attention to. I've brought up the policies that foster this Endless Recession, the deliberateness of the languid indifference to continuing high unemployment, the forcing of ever more millions into poverty and the underclass "year over year." There are no accidents here, no oopsies. The People In Charge know what they are doing, and what they are doing is carrying out the Neo-liberal phase of our ongoing nightmare.

Jerome a Paris posted something over at dKos the other day that made clear just what has been going on, and how it has affected people in the United States and Britain.

To wit, from the Economist:

IF YOU need an explanation as to why political discontent is so widespread on both sides of the Atlantic, take a look at figures compiled by Dhaval Joshi of the hedge fund RAB Capital. This recovery has benefited companies a lot and workers not at all.

In the US, Joshi calculates that, in cash terms, national income has risen $200 billion since the depths of the recession in March 2009. But corporate profits have risen by $280 billion over that period, while wages are down by $90 billion. One would have to go back to the 1950s to find profits outperforming wages in absolute (cash) terms, and even then it was on a much smaller scale. In Britain, national income rose $27 billion in the last two quarters of last year. Profits were up £24 billion and wages just £2 billion.

Yes. Well, well, well, isn't that interesting? Profits rise as income for the masses falls. And it is policy that it be so. This is no accident.

US productivity has outpaced European largely because the US has been quicker to sack workers. This is a decidedly mixed blessing. In theory, it is good for resources (inclduing labour) to be relloacted to more productive use. Thus it would be OK if the workers were quickly rehired by new, growing industries or if they were at least retrained, but there is little sign of such a positive development.

Of course. People have been forced out of work by the millions upon millions, and they are not being rehired. Well, how about that? Huh. And profits rise. Even paying them a pittance of unemployment benefits is loudly protested by the TeaBaggers, for reasons that -- as usual -- don't make any sense, and radio hate mongers go on and on about the lazy and shiftless unemployed, (used to be Lazy N-Word, but can't say that, unless you're a TeaBagger protesting a member of Congress)...but there are no jobs. Everybody knows that. They aren't being shed quite as quickly as last year, but there is no net gain in employment, either. The United States is down tens of millions of jobs since the Endless Recession began, and our rulers do nothing but get their nails done and tut-tut the sadness of it all. "There's nothing to be done." To paraphrase Larry Summers.

But why should they do anything when profits are UP? Clearly the Recovery is Underway. Rejoice!

Profits are UP because employment is down and because the last few pennies are being extracted from the vanishing middle class through all the bailouts and handouts Washington has been so eager to "help" our struggling industrial and financial sectors with.

Who'd a thunk?

And except for the unformed rage of the TeaBaggers, the People are passive.

Note, from the statistics, things are not as bad, overall, in other countries as they are here. And why might that be? Could it be because their people are NOT passive? Hm? Yathink?

And in Iceland, the People went so far as to say, "Thank you and fuck you, we ain't gonna pay your extortion" Twice. Notice, they've been having some nasty volcanics lately. Maybe they better revisit their intrasigence?

Could be we're dealing with forces of Nature here....

On Direct Jobs Creation

This is a follow up to my previous post/rant on the continuing high unemployment rate and what to do about it based on L. Randall Wray's suggestions at Economic Perspectives from Kansas City that was mentioned by Meteor Blades over at dKos.

MB has been one of the very few Lefty Bloggers to consistently focus on the unemployment situation during this Recession, and one of even fewer to recognize the policy implications of maintaining such a high unemployment and underemployment rate for so long. I suspect the general lack of focus on unemployment/underemployment and the widespread obliviousness to the policy implications (ie: high unemployment/underemployment is being deliberately maintained in order to drive down worker pay and benefits substantially, and to keep it down "when employment returns") has something to do with age. MB is relatively old for the blogosphere, in his 60's, old enough to remember federal jobs programs and the rationale for them back in the day, and old enough to wonder at their absence during this, the most far-reaching and devastating Recession in several generations.

Policy.

And it is Policy that I'd like to get into first in connection with the Wray suggestion to establish a Federal Jobs Program that would employ everyone who wanted to work and was ready to work but who could not find employment in the private sector.

While the country has had temporary programs something like this since the Great Depression, there has not even been a hint of such a thing during this Recession. The idea is so "radical" that the Wray suggestion is the first of its kind to appear in the open as it were. Not even Paul Krugman has gone this far.

There are several Policy issues to keep in mind, however:

1) Not everyone can or should work. There is a tendency when "full employment" is considered and discussed to presume "everyone" (except perhaps children under 10, the very old, and the permanently incapacitated) should be working. The fact that they don't raises the un-and-underemployment rate to rather spectacular levels (approaching 30-40% depending on economic conditions) and getting the unemployable working becomes a mission for labor reformers (especially on the right but not exclusively so)... I would suggest it is a distraction, and there should be a recognition up front that a significant part of the population cannot and should not be considered part of the labor force, should not be forced, permitted or encouraged to work, and that this is a good thing. Further, provision for people who are unemployable should be a basic right. It is not at this time (the stories of struggles that some people go through to get disability payments are legion, child care provisions are a disgrace, and elder care is lacking in many respects), and making it so should be one of the focuses of Labor Reform.

2) Federal jobs programs should supplement the private sector, not substitute for it. From appearances, the ongoing shedding of jobs in both the public and private sector is a deliberate policy choice that goes well beyond the immediate economic situation. Reduction in the absolute number of those employed appears to be intended as a permanent feature of the Labor Market, with a two-fold purpose: a) to prop up productivity; 2) to force and maintain lower wages and benefits for those who can get or keep a job. The upshot being the continued high profits to the Owners. Any jobs program would of course threaten those objectives and so would be opposed fiercely by Ownership, but a Federal jobs program that simply replaces absent private sector employment with public sector jobs at a low wage and benefit level would actually serve to reinforce the private sector's determination to reduce wages and benefits, on the one hand, and increase productivity and profits on the other. Consequently, the Labor Reform Policy must be to push the other way: to force the private sector to compete for workers -- by paying them more and better among other things. The Wray proposal basically provides low-wage drone-work for the unemployed, some of which has a beneficial public interest purpose to be sure, but it would have the effect of driving down wages for everyone, and it would give the private sector further excuses to shed more jobs, keeping the current downward cycle going.

3) Any Federal jobs program should be intended to improve the overall economic condition of the nation -- by providing work which rewards the worker and improves living conditions for all, and by providing decent wages which become part of a resurgent consumer economy.

4) Wray's notion to regionalize and localize an employment program is essential but there are risks. As corrupt as the Federal government has become, local and state governments are in many cases more corrupt. A forthright jobs program would have to run counter the widespread corruption at all levels of government. Have it help model a less corrupt future. That's a public interest most of us could agree with.

5) Finally, a Federal Jobs Program should be designed primarily as a "bottom up" economic recovery program, something that has been missing from all the efforts made so far. It should be "for" but also "by" the People. It should be empowering. Yes, Socialism. Ha ha!

Well... yes.

Thanks to Meteor Blades over at dKos, I glommed on to this this little posting from the "Economic Perspectives from Kansas City" blog:

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.

Still drives me nuts

More administration analysts claim that the unemployment rate will remain high through next year, maybe longer, even though the so-called recovery is under way.

And no further stimulus is needed.

The take away from this repeated administration claim is that the high unemployment rate (the actual rate is much closer to 20% than 10%) is intentional.

Why would it be intentional? Well, of course: to drive down wages and reduce benefits. The reason? To keep profits high -- at the expense of workers, the working poor, and the massive numbers of unemployed.

It's intentional.

The only people who can possibly benefit are the already over-upholstered rich and their lackeys in Government.

So? (Re: The Unemployment Thing)

Huh. After years of neglect and months of indifference, there seems to be something of a dawning among the High and the Mighty that perhaps the high and still growing unemployment rate is actually retarding "recovery" not enhancing it. Huh. Well, how about that.

Who'd a thunk?

Of course, there's still no inkling of a plan to do anything about it. Heaven forfend.

What has been so striking about the response to the collapse of employment in this country has been the consistency of the "nothing to be done about it" attitude coming from nearly everywhere, from official Washington, to the offerings of many economists, to the general lefty blogosphere. It's all been very Hooverite. And shocking. "Nothing to be done?" We just have to wait until things turn around, maybe years? Are you kidding me? Can you possibly be more Hooverite?

The pervasiveness of this attitude, especially among so-called lefties, is what really shocks and appalls me. Obviously, Reaganism (not to mention Hooverism) has penetrated so deeply into American political and economic thinking that it doesn't even occur to Lefties that chronic high unemployment is not good for the economy, and that something needs to be done about it, NOW.

So. At least there is a dawning of recognition that the current and projected levels of unemployment are a severe drag on economic "recovery." Nothing is yet being proposed as a remedy, but it was interesting the other day that Rush or one of his clones on the radio was saying that next year, you can bet the Obama administration is going to do something about it -- that's what they're supposedly saving all the Stimulus Money for -- to buy votes and stay in office.

Interesting theory.

Pushing Them Into Poverty

The World Bank declares that 50 million people world wide are being forced by the global depression into extreme poverty, and they call on rich countries to stop dallying and get with the program of assisting the worst off in the world.

There is no doubt that globally the depression has hit poorest the hardest and the consequences are barely recognized in this country.

The poorest Americans are hit hardest at home as well, and one thing that keeps getting ignored (among so many ignored items!) in the United States is that millions and millions of people are being pushed into -- or are being pushed back into -- poverty.

Current statistics show that around 6.5 million Americans are collecting unemployment insurance payments. A recipient is lucky to receive 1/2 their former pay while on unemployment, and in many cases they receive much less.

About half of those who are out of work don't receive any unemployment insurance payments at all, so the real number of unemployed is closer to 13 million. There are also an untold number of Americans who aren't employed but who do not show up in the statistics because they've given up looking for work and are now considered "out of the workforce." They may want to work, if there were jobs available, but there aren't any, at least not for them.

Added to those who are completely out of work are many millions -- at any given time between 10 and 15 million -- who can only find part time work and who are considered "underemployed."

Bob Herbert, in today's New York Times, picks up on a theme I've been hammering for quite a while: with these massive levels of unemployment and underemployment, really not seen in this country since the Great Depression, there are surprisingly no significant jobs programs to put people back to work quickly, and there are many in the field who are saying that the contraction in employment is essentially permanent, that many of the jobs people no longer have are not coming back, and further, many of those who are now unemployed cannot expect to return to the workforce. Ever.

Yet the highrollers continue raking in the Big Money, now out of the treasury coffers.

Herbert:

The folks who led the nation to this financial abyss are the ones being made whole on the taxpayers’ dime. We can look after them, all right. But we can’t seem to get credit flowing in any normal way again; we can’t stanch the terrible flow of home foreclosures; and we’re not doing nearly enough to address the most critical need of all: putting people back to work.

While Wall Street is breaking out the Champagne yet again, the rest of the economy is beyond terrible, and will be for the foreseeable future.

True. Everybody knows it. Nobody wants to talk about it. And more to the point, nobody who can do anything about it wants to do anything about it.

Many of these people who are being "shed" from the workforce (still around 600,000 a month) will never have a job again. Some of them became gainfully employed as part of the vaunted Clinton Welfare Reform -- when President Clinton demanded of employers that they find work for the many millions who would no longer be eligible for welfare. Employers stepped up to the plate, and jobs were found. But many of those jobs are disappearing and many of those who were employed as part of the Welfare To Work Program are now unemployed, and there are no other jobs for them, nor is there any welfare to take up the slack.

Homelessness is skyrocketing, and charitable giving is declining. The squeeze on the lower and middle classes is getting tighter and tighter, while the upper 1% continues to swim in champagne.

At some point, this situation will not be sustainable. Those on the lower end who have been "shed" by the depression will have little choice but to fight back if they intend to survive. And we can be certain that our Government, which has decided its survival is in serving the rich and the powerful almost exclusively, will find a means and a method to suppress any rising of the modern day sans coulottes crying out for a scrap of bread.

The surprising thing is that with so many currently unemployed, and with more and more added to the unemployment statistics every month, many of whom will never work again, there has been so little grumbling and so muted a rage among the masses up to this point.

The problem hasn't reached critical mass.