"It’s terrifying," said middle-aged Stephanie Wheeler, of New Jersey, who lost her job a year ago and has consumed nearly all her savings and now knows not how she'll manage to continue paying the rent -- thus, "I’m petrified of being set out on the street."
Multiply Stephanie's terror more than 15 million times -- twice that factor, if you choose to acknowledge the chronically underemployed as well as the hopelessly withdrawn -- and you get at least an arithmetical sense of, quite literally, a pandemic panic in the streets, in anonymous homes, and in tens of thousands of uncertain workplaces.
Now, it's true that Ms. Wheeler and her fellow idlers have merely failed to appreciate the (re)coming glory of supply-sided free enterprise and the transcendent magic of self-correcting markets. But what else should one expect of the little people, unschooled as they are in theoretical transcendence? The good lady from New Jersey could find solace in the principled knowledge that her unemployment and pending homelessness are but the nobly untaken Roads to Serfdom, but does she choose to embrace this, the finer things in life? Of course not.
Instead, she dwells on the desolate downsides of her freedom to be destitute -- indeed, her God-given right to be destitute, sayeth those libertarian apostles of freedom.
These sustained job losses may be, as the Washington Post reports, "the longest such stretch in 70 years of records," but the unappreciated upside is that exciting new job opportunities are already beginning to open around the country: such as in Macomb County, Mich., whose "five employment offices [have] recently hired security officers to stand in the lobby," since, as the "head of the workforce investment board" there notes, "People are ... on edge when they come into our offices."
But tensions will abate soon, right? -- that is, there's a little something around the corner to take that edge off? Not according to the Business Roundtable, a chief-executive assemblage which surveyed its membership and found that "only 13 percent of its members intended to increase hiring in the next six months." What's more, "Forty percent said they expected their U.S. payrolls to decline during that period."
Said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the dastardly Keynesian Economic Policy Institute, "This recession is just astounding for the duration of the unemployment"; hence writes one her think tank's dastardly Keynesian founders, Robert Reich, "Let me say this as clearly and forcefully as I can: The federal government should be spending even more than it already is on roads and bridges and schools and parks and everything else we need.... This is the only way to put Americans back to work.... When one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, this is no time to worry about the debt."
For those who choose to worry anyway -- and these choosers seems to receive far more media face time than do those dastardly Keynesians, hunkered down as they are in their characteristically freedom-hating bunkers -- Reich adds, "if government doesn’t spend more right now and get Americans back to work, we could be out of work for years. And the debt will be with us even longer."
So, as compounded paradoxes go, this one's a doozy: The fiscally responsible oppressors want to spend money we don't have, while nevertheless compensating on the other end and employing Ms. Wheeler in the meantime; while the freedom fighters want to spare that money we don't have, so that we'll owe even more of it later on, thus increasing our indebted enslavement and freeing absolutely no one to pay the rent in the meantime.
But at least we have the people's elected representatives to hack through these paradoxes and just do the right thing, through an instant, 21st-century Works Progress Administration (repairing dilapidated schools, cleaning up city parks, whatever) -- especially since, otherwise, they "face month after month of bad news on the jobs front in a midterm election year," as the NY Times puts it this morning in a short-term, sure-thing political forecast.
So it's a bit of a no-brainer, right? Wrong. "Despite the bad jobs figures," the Times continues, "Democrats in Congress generally agree with the White House that a second full-blown stimulus package is not needed."
Although I doubt the aforementioned Democrats checked with Ms. Wheeler on that, I can guarantee you that the White House -- which knows better -- did check with the hyperneurotic, overly sensitive-to-right-wing-criticism Congress first, which instantaneously led to their mutual, public "agreement."
Let's face it: This Democratic Congress is an inexcusable drag on no-brainers, from health-care reform to energy policy to jobs programs to necessary fiscal measures, and the even greater no-brainer is that the Obama administration is going to have to figure a way to break free of it. Otherwise it's looking at four to eight years of mind-numbing, progress-inhibiting mediocrity.
Buzz this on Buzzflash.net
obama absolutely shares in the blame
when obama swept into office, he might have told the blue dogs, the corporate toadies and the other dempublican road blocks that they either got on the change/straighten out the problem bandwagon NOW and stay on for the ride, or stand in line with the rethuglicrats to ride their wagon to hell. Instead, he dithered around doing consensus, and unless BIG changes come very soon, the entire mess is headed to hell. yes, he should have hired krugman, and he should have taken care of main street, not wall street. now unthinkable things are happening, people like stephanie are in trouble. my family is in trouble too.... my husband is getting out of the army, with not a single job offier despite months of searching, and we are headed back home, in debt, without a job for him to keep us afloat. lucky thing i have job skills that never wane, because i take care of the people few others want to work with, developmentally disabled, mentally ill, and old folk. but despite how valuable that job is to society, i won't make a living wage, and we will be camping out in a motor home parked on a friends property, living from hand to mouth trying to keep the wolves from the door. good thing we are both good shots. and don't eat much. i am sorry so many are disappointed in obama. i think we got exactly what we paid for...... a smooth talking, urbane, citified, icon that hasn't got the in the gut sort of courage needed for the job at hand. the only thing that could have been worse in the whole deal would have been mckook and the empty headed alaska bitch, or billary clinton. we were always going to lose.... all that was up for grabs was the style in which we would be delivered into the cesspit....
gypsy
You don't think these articles are transparent, PM?
All the blame falls on the the "inexcusable drag" of Congress (and, of course, Pelosi and Reid), while Obama, the putative leader of the Democratic party, is just trying to "figure a way to break free of it"?
Do you ever tire of making excuses for him?
Wall Street Made Out Like Bandits - Main Street Not So Much
The Taxpayers have spent billions to bail out Wall Street. Obama, who promised recovery to Main Street ...... well..... that will have to wait.
We have been in Afghanistan for nine (9) years. There is no end to that idiotic quagmire, in sight. again, at the cost of billions of dollars. We put billions into the pockets of KBR, Halliburton, and Blackwater (aka as Xe), in Iraq.
Now, when domestic programs are finally even being considered by the Congress, everybody starts counting pennies. Penny-wise and dollar foolish.
The Health Care Debate, is but one example.
We can't afford to take care of our own people. Seniors, for the first tiime in years, it appears, won't get a COLA increase in Social Security for 2010.
It's more important that we save Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Obama talked a good game when he was running for office. He talked the talk. He obviously had no intention at all -- of walking the walk.
And..... the rich get richer, and the poor continue to get poorer.
The power and appetite of banking is rather astounding
I wouldn't have expected WPA programs to be a problem. Obviously, it's all about sucking money up to the rich, but if these projects were contracted to Halliburten budgeted for $10/hour per worker while Halliburten is given the OK to pay $6/hour at their discretion, that would seem to be an acceptable profit. But, no. It's all about "Gimmie another trillion!" from the international banking community.
Oh, and I've been predicting the security industry would explode for years. I'm surprised I haven't heard of rich people in America installing high concrete walls with broken glass embedded at the top like the rest of the second and third world. Can't be long.
Dilemma
It's difficult to think of any way more Americans can once again be employed and compete with the world any more without 'productive' workers' wages going down.
Our future doesn't look good.
Obama's economic advisers need to go
First of all, all of the president's leading economic advisers are worshipers of "free market" Jesus, the late Milton J. Friedman, so their first remedy to financial crisis and unemployment is to cut taxes to "expand" economic activity.
Look, the Friedmanian theory of economics is the dominate theory taught in the United States' leading universities' business schools, so the poison of "free market" economic theory has infected even so-called "liberal" Democratic economists.
The only course for the president is to clean the Augean stables that is his economic advisory team and replace all the Summers and Geithners with economists who know that Friedmanian economics does not work in the real world.
ET Spoon
I do have one question
P.M., I completely agree with your assessment, but why do you rightfully excoriate the democratic congress while absolving Obama for the job problem? Had he hired Joseph Stigletz and Paul Krugman instead of corporate toadies Summers and Geitner, he might have fought for a bigger stimulus package upfront, as the outsiders both advised. Instead, while certainly a commendable package in many ways, the stimulus has failed to acheive one of its prime directives--creating jobs.
We don't need another stimulus but we damn sure need a new WPA-type "jobs bill."
Unfortunately, thanks to Obama's poor choices to staff his economic team, the momentum for this is lost. Sure, he saved capitalism for the moment, but the people have no prospects. And we have a dithering, over-cautious president "leading" a dithering, over-cautious, corrupt congress.
It's no wonder the unemployed are near panic.
actually, you don't "completely agree"
You believe Obama shares in the responsibility while PM doesn't. And I agree with you - he does.