Tag Archives: jobs

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs – Not Austerity

Posted on December 5, 2016 by | Comments Off on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs – Not Austerity

William K. Black
December 5, 2016     Bloomington, MN

Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan convinced the New Democrats, over a quarter-century ago, that the key to economic growth was to out-Republican the Republican Party in the fervency of their embrace of austerity.  This began the long war of the New Democrats against the working class that culminated in the loss of their candidate, Hillary Clinton, to Donald Trump.  Rubin’s and Greenspan’s support for austerity constitutes economic and political malpractice.  Austerity is the enemy of the general economy and the people of the world, but it targets for its greatest harm the working class.  As I have explained in earlier columns, Hillary was so devoted to austerity that she made it her major new policy theme in the closing weeks of her campaign – even as every poll warned her that she had enraged the white working class, a principal victim of austerity.

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Jobs for Greeks and for Americans, Too

Posted on February 3, 2015 by | 9 comments

By L. Randall Wray

Here’s a nice piece:

The Workers’ Think Tank: With an eye on the United States and Greece, scholars at the Levy Economics Institute are developing plans to ensure full employment, by Sasha Abramsky, February 2, 2015, The Nation.

As Sasha notes, the Levy Institute has a novel approach to fighting unemployment: JOBS! Hardly anyone ever thinks about that–that the cause of unemployment is lack of jobs.

For some reason, virtually all policy-makers and economists (including progressives) think that jobs will magically appear. True, some suggest that US unemployment is created because China (et.al.) “steals” jobs that are rightfully due to America. Hence, the solution is to steal them back.

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How to Eliminate the Scourge of Unemployment: Jobs Now at a Living Wage

Posted on September 2, 2014 by | 5 comments

By L. Randall Wray

It is amazing no one has thought of this before. Seven years after the GFC began, we’ve still got up to 25 million people who want jobs but cannot find them. Of course that’s far more than the official unemployment numbers—which don’t count anyone who worked just an hour or so, or who gave up looking altogether.

Gee, I wonder how on earth we can find a solution to joblessness, or to low pay? It is all so complicated. How can we stroke the business class in just the right way to get them to create a job or two? How can we prevent our corporations from taking jobs abroad?

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The December Jobs Report: Disappointing But Not Surprising

Posted on January 10, 2014 by | 14 comments

By Robert E. Prasch
Middlebury College

We all know that predictions in economics can be fraught. This is for a variety of reasons, with the absence of controlled experiments high on the list. However, over the years we have learned a few things through the observation of regularities and by deducing from the things about which we are reasonably certain to formulate conjectures about things of which we are less certain.

With this in mind, let us consider the December jobs report.  By all accounts, it was a “disappointing” result with only 74,000 jobs created. The “headline” rate of unemployment did fall appreciably, but that was solely and completely due to an increase in the number of people who have entirely given up looking for paid work. While we can all agree that the result is disappointing, I would like to take issue with the almost ubiquitous report that it was “surprising.”

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A Plan for All the Detroits Out There

Posted on July 22, 2013 by | 84 comments

By Marshall Auerback, Stephanie Kelton and L. Randall Wray

Should the federal government bailout Detroit?  That’s the question everyone is debating.  We think the discussion should be expanded well beyond this narrow question.  Detroit is the canary in the coal mine, but it’s symptomatic of a bigger problem, which is the lack of jobs and decent demand in the economy.

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Job Killers

Posted on February 27, 2013 by | 5 comments

By Pat Hayes from KC’s JobsNow!

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The State of the Economic Union

Posted on February 11, 2013 by | 31 comments

By Dan Kervick

On Tuesday night, President Obama will give the first State of the Union message of his second term.  Preliminary indications from Washington are that the President will attempt to shift some attention back to jobs and economic growth.  But similar White House moves to address jobs and the economy over the past four years have been half-hearted and politically feeble.  It is likely that the jobs message delivered by Obama will be overshadowed and weighed down by the endless and destructive partisan battles over our long-term budget position and Washington’s misguided plans for budget austerity and fiscal contraction.  Obama came into office extolling “the fierce urgency of now” – but Washington’s mystifying obsessions with the federal debt and impossible projections of future budget deficits have moved the beltway agenda from the fierce urgencies of 2013 to the unknowable contingencies of 2035.  The unemployed are trapped despairing and jobless here in 2013, choking on the spreadsheets of dueling beltway actuaries.

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Jobs Now: Make Obama’s Priority Reality and Expose the Lie of Lazy Laborers

Posted on November 11, 2012 by | 6 comments

By William K. Black

President Obama gave a major speech today on his legislative agenda.  He said that the overriding national priority had to be jobs.  We agree.

David Brooks’ November 8, 2012 column called on the Republican Party to become “The Party of Work.”  He put his primary message in his final paragraph for emphasis.

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