Hard Times??

We are experiencing something historic today in America and it has nothing to do directly with the economy.  Our Nation has succumbed to a kind of mass brainwashing engineered by those who, among other things, control the Republican Party.  I have no evidence regarding the Republicans other than what I witness every day. I accuse them (with bias) primarily because they are the direct beneficiaries of the brainwashing. 

Regardless, all corners of the general population, including media and pundits, now accept as conclusive that times…these times…are bad – end of story.  The Nation believes this because they are relentlessly told it is a fact.  They believe it even in the face of their own personal experience.  Further, by convincing the population that hard times are what we have and fear is the appropriate reaction, the proponents have wisely calculated that empirical statistics to the contrary won’t get in the way.

Today on ABC’s Sunday news program This Week, senior Obama advisor and one of the architects of Obama’s 2008 campaign, David Plouffe, awkwardly avoided commenting on the hallmark question made famous by Ronald Reagan and used repeatedly at the 2012 RNC: Are you better off now than when Obama took office?  His inability to respond had little to do with a loaded question and everything to do with an inability to expose fantasy.  He is as brainwashed as the rest.

He delivered what is becoming a tired line about how the President knows that times are hard and is committed to improving them. He should of said; “if taken from the time Obama’s policies began to take effect in the late fall of 2009, then hell yes the Nation is better off: out of a recession, large corporation profits at record levels, private sector jobs rising for two years straight, a first step taken toward universal health care, a stock market fully recovered, housing prices stabilized, a financial sector stabilized, an auto industry stabilized, a war ended, and Osama Bin Laden’s fookin’ head blown off”.  It is worthy to note that had McCain been elected President in 2008 none of that would have occurred, including Bin Laden.

Republicans point to unemployment as the key benchmark to prove that we are living in an economic black hole of despair. Some Economists estimate a "range" of possible unemployment rates. For example, in 1999, in the United States, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) gives an estimate of the "full-employment unemployment rate" of 4 to 6.4%. This is the estimated "structural" unemployment rate, (the unemployment when there is full employment). In other words, the number of unemployed at those rates is driven mostly by the choices of the employees and not the lack of available jobs.  It also means that the true unemployment rate in July 2012 was not 8.3%, but rather something more like 3.3% (assuming average full employment at 5% unemployment).

Further, as stated over and over by Romney, Ryan, Fox News, Republicans, Republican pundits and probably brainwashed Democrats, they set the number of unemployed at 25 million.  This number was used more times than I could count at the RNC.  They get this number simply by multiplying the unemployment rate by the total US population.  Why doesn’t anyone (news media or Democrats or…well, just anyone) challenge these claims?  The Bureau of Labor Statistics set the 8.3% unemployment rate in July at 12.8 million unemployed workers, or 8.3% of total workers looking for jobs.  As the true unemployment rate is closer to 3.3%, the actual number of workers forced to be left unemployed by the economy is really 5.1 million, or about 1.5% of all Americans.  This reality however doesn’t fit with the drip…drip…drip of how incredibly bad your life is.

The problem today is not unemployment, it’s under-employment, workers feeling the lack of mobility that is characteristic of a slow growth economy.  Republicans endlessly claim that by injecting a hypodermic needle of cash into the rear ends of the wealthy, successful, “job creators” their entrepreneurial spirit will just have our economy taking off.  This, of course, is beyond ridiculous.  Would someone please ask Mitt Romney this question: If you get an additional $300,000 added to your many millions, just how will that result into more jobs than your other accumulated millions are already producing? The truth is that markets create jobs, and markets are created by people spending money. That includes the markets for public services.  Increasing our insane concentrations of wealth in this country only exacerbates the problem. 

The real question is how things get better from here. If I had a magic wand I would tax the bejesus out of the top 2% of the Nation’s wealthy, pour money into public services (not entitlements or defense) and eliminate the deficit.  The resulting demand would not only spur growth, stabilize the economy, eventually reduce the national debt, and increase revenues, but, ironically, would make the well-off even wealthier.  The top 2% already own more than 50% of the Nations non-residential assets…I don’t think they’d be suffering.  

I don’t have a magic wand, so the best thing that can be done in the short term is not to let Romney and Ryan get their Bush-like hands on the economy, and you start by praising the American people by what they’ve accomplished in just four years after exiting the asylum back in 2008.