What the Net Increase in Jobs per Month and per Year Needs to be

Yes, there is most definitely some propaganda between the lines here.

A main message is: "Oh, the first decade of the 21st century was a strange accident that we will be researching for years and years". No, it was not an accident, but instead it was a deliberate series of errors and actions of extreme greed that was sooner or later going to crash the system. Even Alan Greenspan admitted he made errors. And the Goldman Sachs people etc. knew full well that what they were doing would eventually lead to a system crash, although it is true that they didn't know when it would happen and they were hoping that it would not happen until they were dead.

Also notable is this Herbert Hoover like announcement:

"The financial crisis is, for all practical purposes, over, and forecasters are now generally expecting the job market to turn around early in 2010 and begin creating jobs."

The financial crisis is never going to be really over for everyone except that top 1%. For 99%, the "financial crisis" goes on. For the bottom third or so, crisis is too light a word to describe their economic predicament.

Credit is still not reliably available even to established businesses with good credit histories, so how are a large number of jobs going to be created?

More than 7 million jobs are lost and more than 3 million have not been created but should have been over about the last 27 months. So the total job deficit is close to 11 million. It takes at least a 175,000 net increase in jobs for jobs to be available to those who desperately need a job. The US is not Europe where anyone who can't get a job can get basic subsistence grants. In the US, the unemployed often end up living in tents or cars.

But that 175,000 number is still pretty lame. It will take 220,000 jobs per month during the new decade to achieve a 20% growth in jobs for the decade, the minimum percentage growth in jobs standard that was achieved in all recent decades except for the one just ended.

Finally, in order to make up by 2020 for the 11 million lost jobs, it would take slightly more than 300,000 jobs per month during the entire decade, or 3.7 million jobs per year, or 37 million jobs for the decade: 26 million constituting a 20% increase plus the 11 million.

The bottom line is that if and when you see jobs going up by anything less than 175,000 per month, the job market is still depressed. Anything from 175,000 to 220,000 per month is slightly depressed. Anything from 220,000 to 300,000 per month means that the job market is no longer in recession currently, but is not restoring all of the 11 million lost. You would have to see numbers greater than 300,000 per month if most of the people who have lost their jobs are going to get them back in their lifetimes.

So if (and it is definitely if) some jobs are created in 2010, there has to be at least 2.1 million jobs created (175,000 per month) during the year or the job depression technically continues on. Moreover, there would have to be at least 4 million jobs created in 2010 or 2011 at the latest (via a "rebound") which is 333,000 per month, for there to be any chance to recover the 11 million lost jobs within the new decade.

Does anyone seriously think that 4 million jobs are going to be created in 2010 or any other year in the 2nd decade of the 21st century?

About the only way the US could possibly have created the potential for 4 million jobs a year would be large scale government investing in green technology. Obama created a fantasy in people's minds with his airy rhetoric that this would happen, but obviously it was just another falsehood from him.

The above was in response to this article.

Since it is Perceived by Ignorant Voters as One Issue, the Green Party is a Political Rat Hole

Cenk Uygur fails to mention that the Progressives have lost everything for 30 years and there literally is nothing left to lose. The economy already collapsed, just as you would expect after no non-right wing management of it at all for 30 years, so it is too late to get much benefit from "financial reform" at least in our lifetimes. Maybe it would benefit the next generation.

As for trying to get this or that right wing operator including Obama to change his or her ways, that is not reasonable as most here realize.

Rather, if they want to move toward finally winning a game after losing about the last 50 political games in a row, progressives have to unify their thousands of Internet sites, hundreds of organizations and "movements," and dozens of unelectable parties into an overall umbrella organization. Progressives love little niches and don't fully appreciate the value of unity. This would have to change were they to really want to actually win a game in the future.

On a related note, I finally got around to checking out the Cohn article that was referenced in yesterday's Peter Dreier article: "Pass the Health Bill, Then Improve It". Dreier and Cohn claim that the health insurance deform will improve the financial lives of lower income families. It made my day to shoot huge holes in that one, which I did in brief comments at the Dreier article.

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The Left needs a political party ...

Register Green Party ... without a political arm alll those liberal and progressive blogs and websites are just noise. Then there are all the Environmental, Human Rights,
Anti War, Civil Rights, Labor and Clean Government groups that need to coalesce around a political party.

UNITY PROGRESS COMMENT
Change the name of the Green party because the name right now shouts one issue and there is no way a party perceived by the ignorant voters as a one issue party can ever succeed in the US.

GUEST COMMENT
Do you have any idea what's involved in changing the name of a political party? We did it here in Oregon about 10 years ago, from Pacific to Pacific Green, and lost a dangerous number of registrations when we did it. EVERY member had to change their registration, and new members had to look for the new name. I think there are still people registered "Pacific Party."

Anyway, the name might be our biggest advantage. Saving the environment - "Going Green" - is the best supported single progressive issue. People seem to grasp that it's a question of survival. Only health-care, also a survival issue, draws such universal support and passion - and we're on the popular side on that one, too.

UNITY PROGRESS COMMENT
The best supported progressive issue is economic survival, especially now but always. (It would be nice to not have to live under the bridge and/or file bankruptcy every few years, wouldn't it?)

You should have left your party named the way it was if you really want to win elections and not just a few movement votes.

Again, there is no way any party which has a name which shouts one issue will ever win much of anything in the US. There are like two or three countries where the Green party has ever actually won anything important, with Germany being by far the most important one. Germans very often don't judge political books by their covers, but Americans and people in most other countries mostly do. It's just a quirk of Germans that allows the Green party to win some things in Germany.

The above exchange was in response to this article.

Rulers, Serfs, and the Stock Market Experiment

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teddy December 29th, 2009 12:19 pm
America will have another "great depression" if it's not here already. that's just a matter of naming.

this time around, the bankers with their allies in government have found a solution for themselves:

KEEP the Depression at bay from THEIR doors. and LET the rest of America SINK.

and so - the INTENT which is at the heart of "americanism" is achieved:

effectively, by means of law, Fascistic law, create a permanent two-tier society without any further apologies:

RULERS and SERFS.

I have always said : america is really just the modern day version of the continuation , under different disguise of SLAVERY.

it is like the modern day version of having Pharaohs and servants...the servants build the Pyramids to the glory of pharaohs.

or as the great canadian thinker, John Kenneth Galbraith said:

"CAPITALISM is really the modern way of playing a very, very old game: finding moral justification for Greed."

and in america and FROM america this is expressed most solidly in its Corporatist culture...of

RULERS (management, administration, shareholders, board)

and SERFS (workers and consumers)

America merely subsituted CORPORATISM for PLANTATION SLAVERY.

that's all.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
All exactly true and well stated.

There is an experiment being conducted right now to see if the stock market, at least, can grow even if the underlying economy is treading water or is still shrinking (the so-called "jobless recovery"). The common people are the guinea pigs.

The above was in response to this article about the 40% excise tax on the "Cadillac health plans".

Norway and Switzerland: Two Examples of a far Better Health System

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The European countries that use private insurers (among them Norway and Switzerland) have systems that in some ways are similar to the Senate plan (mandatory insurance, government help in paying for premiums if one is poor). HOWEVER, they spend a minimum of 40 percent less per capita than we do because they treat health insurance as a public utility instead of a for-profit industry.

All insurers must be non-profits. The government reviews health care costs annually to be sure providers are decently recompensed and sets premiums to match. Businesses and individuals pay the set premiums and every resident receives the same set of benefits. There are no co-pays, no denials (except for obvious fraud), no excuses like imaginary pre-existing conditions to refuse to insure.

Competition is based only on each company's level of customer service.

Is it too late for some good Dem on the conference committee to suggest burying both the House and Senate versions of the bill and substituting the Norway plan for REAL reform?? (Second only to single-payer.)

UNITY PROGRESS COMMENTS
Norway has a straight up public system paid for by progressive taxation. The system is administered by the Norway Government. All citizens and I think all residents who are not citizens are automatically enrolled. Those who have no taxable income (such as housewives) get health care at no charge.

Norway heavily subsidizes the supply side: doctors get educated at extremely low cost to them, and hospitals are mostly or entirely funded by Norway Government.

This is the best possible system yet thought of and proved to be successful. Health care systems have to be run by the government or they simply do not work out right: people end up not getting care they need for any of numerous reasons when the private sector is involved. Moreover, when the private sector is involved with health care, other parts of the private economy are damaged when the health sector overuses scarce financial resources.

Private health insurance has virtually no presence in Norway except at the margins, for example, for dental care.

It's not simply that countries like Norway do not have large amounts of money going to insurance companies. It's that countries like Norway do not agree in the first place that the insurance concept is appropriate or useful for health care, which it is not when you truly understand what insurance is and when you spend some time thinking about whether it works for health care.

Switzerland has private insurance companies but they are very strictly non-profit, not to mention that all high income individuals in Switzerland (including executives of the private insurance companies) make a lot less than half what their US counterparts fleece from their "customers". When a private company is strictly non-profit (not the pretend, sort of non-profit which is so common in the States) it economically acts not all that differently than a government agency.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

The Racket, Summarized in one Paragraph or Less

Laugh out loud. So money from China and US taxpayers is being used to cover the spread between reasonable health costs and the exhorbitant health costs in the US. The spread goes to the executives and other very highly paid but unneeded employees. But the executives don't have to pay back their loot to either China or the US taxpayers.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Under new Laws, Health Care Will Still not be Affordable for Ordinary Families, so Many Will go Without Care

Anyone who claims this law will be affordable for ordinary families is, whether they know it or not, being a moron, because no one and nothing is talking about the following items which determine whether a very large expense is affordable or not.

In other words, the following are the reasons why there is no way that a scheme like this will ever be affordable for a good percentage of the peasants, public option or not.

1. The federal subsidies are determined only by adjusted gross income (AGI)and without regard to expenses that can not be deducted when AGI is calculated. Some families simply can not afford 20% or more(10% for premiums and 10% or more for deductibles, co-pays, medications, and uncovered items) of income for health care; there are too many other important items on the expense list. Families living in high cost of living areas are especially hurt by the false assumption that 20%-25% of income on health care is reasonable.

2. The subsidies are determined without regard to net worth, liabilities (debts) and debt repayment. A family paying $1,000 or $1,500 a month on student loan and/or credit card debts gets no more subsidy than one paying nothing on student loan and credit card debt. Since the majority of but not all families have debts, and since debt servicing varies radically from one family to another, this issue alone makes the scheme unworkable.

3. In the real world, incomes can fall from whatever they were in year x to next to nothing in year y. Since the subsidies are based on last year's income, some families will face an impossible cash flow problem and will not be able to actually pay the premiums in year y when unemployment or other fiascos strike. So they end up uninsured even though they paid handsomely for some years prior and even though the federal government paid the subsidy to the insurance company.

In the real world, families have sometimes been paying premiums (full or employee share) and sometimes not, depending on whether they are employed or not and what their pay rate is in different years. When you deny that reality and declare that families should every year pay for grossly overpriced health insurance policies, you have completely moved to la la land where money grows on trees, and you have totally messed up the household finances of tens of millions of people.

Yes, it's true, this cumbersome system will result in the US government, using your income tax receipts and money borrowed from China, paying subsidies to insurance companies, but then the people for whom the companies were paid are uninsured because they can't pay their share when they get invoiced. Will the federal government get a refund? I highly, highly doubt it. That money will be down the rat hole.

Not to mention that even if and when the policy is fully paid for, if the family can not afford the deductibles, co-pays, medications, and uncovered items, they are not going to get the actual health care or else they are going to get it and file for bankruptcy! And that means more of your tax money and more of China's money down the rat hole, too.

4. The subsidies are also without regard to number of children, and without regard to whether those children are in college or not. Families with the same adjusted gross income obviously have radically different expenses depending on those and related factors. Some of those expenses incurred for children of all ages are deductible when AGI is calculated but many of them are not.

5. The rest of the world has decided that middle income families should pay no more than about 10% of their income for health care and low income people should pay nothing, while the right wing Americans are saying 20-25% of income for middle and 10% of income for low income families is good.

No, that is not at all good. Sorry, but the days when the rest of the world is wrong and only the Americans are right are over.

The above was in response to this news article at Common Dreams.

No Unity Equals no Chance to Stop the Right Wing Juggernaut

Would somebody take the thousands of internet sites, the hundreds of organizations and "movements," and the dozens of tiny political parties that make up the non-right and organize them all into one unified entity? Please complete that by the end of 2010 if you would. Thanks in advance.

Remuneration? I'm sure you will make some tip jar and Google Adsense money besides saving the planet. Seriously, if someone could do that I'm sure they would become fairly rich.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Lies, More Lies, and Lies That Even Chronic Liars Won't Tell

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bardamu December 26th, 2009 1:12 pm
To pass this bill in hopes it should become some thing it is not, even in many ways the opposite of that it is, is irresponsible.

To pretend that doing so takes the food from babies or leaves poor uncared for that the bill would protect is bad rhetoric at best, and lying if Dreier does not actually believe it.

Either way, Dreier proceeds by false figures and false analogy.

The figures Dreier cites ignore the portion of the population who eat, pay our rent, and educate our children because we do not pay that premium of $12,042 but go without.

There are a lot of us in that category, and someone is disingenuous in neglecting this, if not Dreir himself.

Compromises are fine. This bill is not a compromise.

The difference lies at the heart of Dreir's false analogies:

The Social Security Act did not collect money from the poor and middle class to distribute to a set of private thugs, but provided some funding for the poor from general taxes.

That was progressive legislation, though imperfect, and therefore the opposite of this bill, not analogous.

The National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act and the Fair Labor Standards (minimum wage/40 hour week) Act were not acts to restrict labor--to force all labor to accept full time work or a government equivalent, while providing little or nothing in the nature of limitations to management.

That was progressive legislation, though certainly it did not go far enough. That was a compromise. That was worth supporting.

The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts did not force African Americans or other minorities to pay into the coffers of the racists who oppressed them. It did provide some legislative basis, however inadequate, to prosecute those who denied them their rights.

These were therefore progressive pieces of legislation that deserved support.

The Clean Air Act did not force those in East Los Angeles or Pasadena, where smog abounds, to underwrite General Motors -- one particular company among those responsible for the smog.

If a decent bill or even an embarrassing but authentic compromise cannot be passed in relatively public debate before a population that is something like 70% in favor of Single Payer health care for another ten years, how much less likely is it that such a bill will be changed for the better by backroom lobbyists and the same lying, money-pandering legislators who are right now selling their sick constituents for campaign moneys and whatever other sweetheart deals they have negotiated in private?

How can people like Dreier and Krugman ignore something so obvious? Congress is not trustworthy. Those who would have us trust Congress are not trustworthy, at least to that extent.

I agree with his last three "lessons," but find that accepting their premises causes me to reject his first.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENTS
That this is a compromise or that this can be improved in the future are lies that even a chronic liar like Obama won't tell. It has been left to Obama cronies such as Peter Dreier, the author of this article here, to tell these new, after the fact lies.

It's simple: this is totally anti-progressive and can not possibly be improved at the margins in the future. It will either be largely scrapped or it will be regarded as an abject failure by almost everyone (but not the insurance company executives) roughly a decade from now or sooner. Wheras real progressives, to my relief, realize it is an abject failure already.

The above was in response to this article.

On Compromising, and Progressives are Better Even When They Can't do Anything

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www.NotOneMore.US December 23rd, 2009 5:53 pm
matti writes: "Politics works by compromise, and if you come to the table with something already compromised to your limits, you will leave it with something beyond those limits."

Actually, the truth is the exact opposite. Politics doesn't work because of compromise.

And when politicians or people agree to compromise core issues because 'that is how the system works' they are doing themselves, and justice, a severe disservice. Our current situation is a prime example of how politics and compromise doesn't work.

The unfair situation is that 'they' have framed how things work. 'They' say that you need to compromise. You actually don't need to compromise if your position is thought out, rational, just and fair, and important to you. It doesn't have to make everyone happy.

You don't compromise on your principle values.

Unfortunately, when you allow others to frame the scenario, to define the playing field, you have already lost.

You can compromise on what color to paint the kitchen. You shouldn't compromise on the war, health care, corporate bailouts.

This is what compromise is. You say you need your nose 2 inches above water. The other side says that you need it 12 inches under the water. You compromise, because they tell you that that is the way the game is played, so you agree to having your nose be only 4 inches under the water. After all, they compromised, and you compromised. Unfortunately having your nose 4 inches underwater is no different than having it 12 inches underwater.

You don't compromise core values. Others may call you selfish, unbending, egotistic, but in fact you are just standing up for your principles. Principles are only principles if you stand up for them.

Ethics and leadership require you to stand up against compromise against core values.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENTS
I gather you've noticed that in America some get everything they want without any compromise, some are supposed to compromise from time to time and get some but not all of what they want, and others are supposed to compromise every last thing away every time. You have to ignore the "supposed to's.

The only reasonable position was and will always be single payer or nothing. If there was a non right-wing president (yeah right, that will happen sometime before there is no US anymore) that's what he or she would say. So absolutely nothing would get done until single payer could and did pass. And nothing would be (a little or substantially) better than what actually passed, which only goes to prove that even when progressives are unable to do anything you are still better off having them.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Obama is so bad that it's Hard to Ignore Him Anymore

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Stone December 23rd, 2009 11:06 pm
Will Progressives finally get the idea that Obama is their man out of their minds. Obama has done NOTHING to earn your hope or respect. He has done EVERYTHING to harm and derail your aspirations. There is no hope or expectation in Obama. He is an extreme corporatist who lacks compassion. Obama is about Obama. Forget him and move on.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
I totally ignored Obama until he turned out to be much worse than even I thought, and until I started to read this site much more often than I used to. Nowadays, watching Obama dissemble about just about everything is like looking at a car wreck: it's human nature to keep looking even though it's basically a waste of time at this point because Obama is going to continue to just mock progressives going forward.

I just wish the Greens would change the name of their party to escape the one issue branding and the severe limitations on winning potential that entails. Yes, I know that branding is unfair, but except for maybe Germany and parts of Scandinavia, the Greens are branded this way everywhere.

The above was in response to this articleat Common Dreams.

The new Insurance law is so bad that you can Forget About Complying with Word Limits

Laugh out loud that yesterday I posted the 2,500 words in one article at Common Dreams and they were deleted due to the 1,000 word comment limit. Now this law will be remembered as so bad that I couldn't possibly limit the summary of reasons to 1,000 words. Actually, each of the twenty reasons could justify a 2,000 or more word article in itself, for a total of 40,000 or more words. There is plenty of content for a book, and I am sure there will be many books coming out after it becomes obvious that this law is a failure.

There was a Vancouver, Washington local progressive site that, before all 20 were deleted at Common Dreams, cut and paste the whole thing onto their nice little site. So if I had been dumb enough not to have it on Word on a drive, I could have retrieved it there. Oh well, such is the wild, unpredictable, but never enough traffic life on the Internet.

But a note to inexperienced internet writers: assume everything on the Internet is going to be deleted because sooner or later it is. You need to save your writing to your disc and then back that up.

Very happy holidays y'all.

The above was in response to this important article.