"Sure, people want healthcare reform right now (especially if it were to miraculously also have the virtue of being authentic healthcare reform), but what they really want, overwhelmingly, is jobs"
The US now has massive problems even in areas that it was supposed to have a guarantee against. For several decades, US politicians in both parties claimed that although workers at the low end received lower pay, far fewer benefits, and had much less job security than in Europe, at least they would almost always have a job available to get, whereas in Europe, due to "excessive government interference", you would often have a situation where you could not get a job even if you desperately wanted or needed one.
Well now the US has that same problem that was supposed to be limited to certain European countries: sheer unavailability of jobs. So the US workers now have pretty much every possible problem going against them.
Face it, US workers have no real representation from either of the right wing parties. The information I have provided below is the kind of information that would be common knowledge were it not for the fact that most US politicians have number of jobs and workers in general as very low priorities. Workers need to wake up and demand a new party, and help to create it.
Number of jobs is an extremely important real world economic indicator, as important as GDP in my view. But as an example of how this matters very little to the ones in charge, number of jobs is not even a major factor with respect to whether the economy is considered to be in recession or not in the US, thus the bizarre, bogus, and ultra right concept of "jobless recovery".
The following dates are, as of October 2009, the last month in which each state had the same number of jobs as that state had in September 2009. In other words, this tells you how long it has been since one or more jobs have been created, net of job losses, in each state. States where the month shown is September 1999 or earlier have failed to create a net job for more than 10 years. There are several states showing October 1999; as of September 2009, there have been zero new net jobs in those states for one month shy of ten years.
And if I counted correctly, there are 32 states which have not created a single net job since the 21st century began (which is January 1, 2001 technically).
The greater the amount of time since jobs increased, the worse the depression or recession is in that state. Data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Alabama: September 1998
Alaska: June 2006
Arizona: October 2004
Arkansas: September 2005
California: November 1999
Colorado: November 2000
Connecticut: October 1997
Delaware: May 1999
District of Columbia: June 2008
Florida: November 2003
Georgia: May 1999
Hawaii: October 2004
Idaho: September 2005
Illinois: December 1995
Indiana: September 1995
Iowa: May 1999
Kansas: November 1998
Kentucky: September 1998
Louisiana: October 1999
Maine: October 1999
Maryland: June 2004
Massachusetts: June 1998
Michigan: September 1988
Minnesota: October 1999
Mississippi: May 1997
Missouri: December 1998
Montana: June 2006
Nebraska: May 2006
Nevada: October 2004
New Hampshire: December 2000
New Jersey: June 1999
New Mexico: December 2005
New York: October 1999
North Carolina: June 2000
North Dakota: October 2008
Ohio: September 1994
Oklahoma: November 2006
Oregon: June 2000
Pennsylvania: October 1999
Puerto Rico: December 1995
Rhode Island: June 1998
South Carolina: November 1999
South Dakota: June 2006
Tennessee: September 1998
Texas: April 2007
Utah: June 2006
Vermont: October 1999
Virginia: December 2004
Washington: May 2006
West Virginia: May 2000
Wisconsin: June 1998
Wyoming: June 2007
=====================================
The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.
No comments:
Post a Comment