Looking Beyond Election Day
NYT Robert Reich calls our attention to post election 2012 life and political realities:
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Blog
Most political analysis of America’s awful economy focuses on whether it will doom President Obama’s reelection or cause Congress to turn toward one party or the other. These are important questions, but we should really be looking at the deeper problems with which whoever wins in 2012 will have to deal.
Not to depress you, but our economic troubles are likely to continue for many years – a decade or more. At the current rate of job growth (averaging 90,000 new jobs per month over the last six months), 14 million Americans will remain permanently unemployed. The consensus estimate is that at least 90,000 new jobs are needed just to keep up with the growth of the labor force. Even if we get back to a normal rate of 200,000 new jobs per month, unemployment will stay high for at least ten years. Years of high unemployment will likely result in a vicious cycle, as relatively lower spending by the middle-class further slows job growth.
Most of Mr. Reich’s prdictions are based on extrapolating current economic conditions out into the future for a decade or more. I have more faith that the American system of democracy will overcome the current challenges as it has so often in hte past.
Reich: “Not to depress you, but our economic troubles are likely to continue for many years – a decade or more.”
While I agree — I think that a second Long Depression is not unlikely –, I do not like the acquiescence in such a scenario that seems to pervade the punditry. If we would, we could bring unemployment down in short order, and the newly employed people would spend money and pay taxes. 🙂
Min
I think you are right. But the purpose of the punditry is to get us to accept the “new order” that our rulers have decided for us. At best they give us a chance to blow off steam and nod wisely when a pundit agrees with us; but the underlying message is always, “there is nothing you can do about it so just keep showing up for work, or the unemployent office, because it don’t get any better than this.”
and what the hell does the election matter?
we voted for Obama and got the death of Social Security (oh, you don’t know it’d dead yet. it is. it’s the permanent payroll tax holiday). they killed it by the simple expedient of refusing to take your money. for a while they’ll pay for it with “borrowing” even as they scream about the deficit… and the need to cut SS to save us all from The Deficit, despite the fact that SS had nothing to do with the deficit before the “payroll tax holiday,” called for by liberals and democrats, most of whom are probably too stupid to know what they were calling for, but some of whom surely knew exactly what they were doing.