Obama’s Plan to Address 9.2% Unemployment: Send More Jobs Overseas
At today’s press conference responding to the lousy jobs report, Obama offered a few suggestions for how to create jobs: patent reform, infrastructure investment, confidence fairies and … “free trade.”
But as the Economic Policy Institute has shown, these trade deals would actually cost jobs, particularly in the manufacturing sector, which has finally begun to turn around. Colombia wouldn’t even be required to end its tolerance for the murder of labor organizers, as was originally going to be required. Not only that, but Republicans (the ones who actually want these trade deals) are now balking on funding Trade Adjustment Assistance as part of the deal, so workers whose jobs get sent to Korea can get training that will help them find a new one.
In short, Obama’s “solution” to the jobs crisis is–at least as Republicans envision it–a way to send jobs to a country where workers get killed for standing up to their employers without, at the same time, trying to help Americans adjust to losing their jobs.
Somehow, suggesting we address the jobs crisis by sending them overseas doesn’t make me believe in the confidence fairy.
And the Repug solution:
Lower fatcat taxes to make fatcats fatter! Cut spending and give it to the fatcats to make them even fatter. And throw more Americans overboard out of the lifeboat so the ever-fattening fatcats have more room!
Time to trim some fat(cats).
I told you, Obama is a Republican!
Right you are, but it’s even becoming more surreal than that. By the way love the ‘confidence fairy’. Obama is now actually to the right of most Republicans, he’s becoming a full blown fascist and spouting nonsense that makes me wonder if he’s lost his mind. Of course I wonder that about Washington in general, so isolated from reality they could be from another planet. Maybe that’s the answer..we’ve been invaded by aliens who want to destroy us so they can take our jobs, property, medical care, retirement funds, savings…think about it. Who are these assholes determining our lives? We truly need an Egyptian moment in D.C. and apparently some people are organizing this very thing, on Bastille Day. We need to take a leap of faith that they are not hostile aliens hell bent on our destruction and try to show them how much ‘confidence’ we have in their fascist leadership. We need to show them how little we have confidence in their negotiations to screw us. How many bankers are in jail today? Zero.
This really does illustrate that these folks have no understanding of how ‘regular’ families deal with crises and what they do to make ends meet.
‘Regular’ families when facing income problems try to increase revenue, not cut it… in other words the head(s) of the families try to get pay raises at work, take on overtime hours, get extra part time jobs, have both heads (where applicable) get jobs, etc. etc. Sure they do cut expenses, but they try to bring in more money, by whatever means they have available.
When they can find the work… they do not quit those extra jobs and use the claim ‘things will be okay’ if the kids do not go to college or the grandparents staying in the back shed put off eating.
Too bad this team of economic advisors and their congressional palliative pushers didn’t take a few courses in Mathematics or any of the Sciences while they went to those elite prep schools.
Now think about this: What’s going to happen if our wars end and those soldiers come home looking for jobs?
My bet: We’ll redefine “unemployed” to exclude recently discharged soldiers and continue as though nothing had happened.
Boxturtle (See? Obama DOES have a jobs program, you DFHs!)
We can’t end the wars! They’re self perpetuating jobs programs.
You might be right about that, President Reagan did something very similar when his administration ran into problems with the unemployed numbers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/opinion/the-index-of-missing-economic-indicators-the-unemployment-myth.html
p.s. For bonus amusement points look closely at the by-line.
patent reform
No!!
I have too much to do this afternoon for the glassful that makes me want to have.
O/T. Apparently, BP = Beyond Parody: BP wants to end future loss claims
What I would like to understand is why we have so many nationals from other countries (such as India) who come over here to work and take jobs away from Americans…
Last year, I worked for an Indian firm that was bringing workers into this country to perform jobs that could be easily performed by Americans. The Indian firm had been hired by a large utility to manage its IT infrastructure and perform project work. They say that it is because the utility company could save money, but the rates at which the Indian firm billed for its services were equal to if not higher than similar services performed by Americans.
There is really some screwed up logic at work here…
Globalization is going to keep jobs pressure on firstworld economies, to upgrade onshore education as well as pathways for advancement in work which has a future.
I agree with the post*s allusion to the dereg ambience Republicans (and Democratic party members) prefer foremost in trade treaties.
The Republican, and conservative Democrat, statehouses vitiating education and local government budgets, only add barriers to career enhancement.
Rust belt economics were a harbinger of the waves of tech that acelerate obsolescences of many sorts.
Bureaucracies and cronies of all stripe are going to resist obligate-modernizations.
The economic crunch Bushco-2 initialized was only one element of these trends.
I am sure some wag could begin to advocate for training low wage unemployed to find new fields of work in the climate warming induction cycles: helping folks deal with increased acts of doG, plant community conversions to adapt to new heat extremes. Check out this new study [prepublication precis] with Duke Univ cybergraphics showing ten more days every summer exceeding average temperature maxima in the US by 2029; your region is on the maps at that link.
The regulators who are in bureaucratic posts with job security, until government budgets trim, can avoid direct consequences in the near term, but ancillary impacts are going to affect their personal budgets outside of work. The kids are going to pay more for college; extended family is going to have less social safety net, and rely more on cousins.
The democrats need to address more than economics, and be firm on more than environment. It*s a party that needs genius, and of the kind that is unlikely to develop at the cinema and observing the chit chat of mass television or listening to the skim of pretty radio coverage while monopoly interests smile at media uniformity.
The “free trade” deal received precious little media coverage. Instead, the media covered a murder trial night and day and obsessed over the credibility of a maid in a rape investigation. As if those had anywhere near the same impact. So, today I pulled the plug on cable TV.
Believe it or not, June’s 9.2% unemployment rate is nearly a point BETTER the same time during Reagan’s first term:
http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp?fromYear=1981&toYear=1990
Of course, we were down to 7.2% by Election Day 1984 and 5.4% when Reagan left office in January 1989.
If we can match those two numbers, I’ll vote for Obama again in 2012 and lobby to repeal the 22nd Amendment by 2016.