What if There was a Depression and the Government was too far to the Right to go for Direct Hiring as Franklin Roosevelt Did?

GUEST COMMENT
mcoyote February 11th, 2010 12:05 pm
The Democrats are the piss that "sets" the cloth

The Romans built dye shops with vats outside that served as free public toilets. Not only did they act as your basic "rest area" for passersby, but the urine was used to "set" cloth that had been recently dyed - the same way that vinegar is sometimes used today with natural dyes.

So too the Democratic Party. Since FDR, the move of the Democratic Party toward Social Democracy was stillborn; a casualty of McCarthyism which was as much a Democratic Party invention as it was anyone else's. The old coalition, such as it was, essentially fell apart under Kennedy and LBJ. Since Nixon, the "modern" form of the two party system has emerged.

Each Republican president dyes the political fabric a deeper shade of reactionary brown, and each succeeding Democratic president pisses on the new shade to set the color. Thus with Carter, Clinton, and now, Obama.

All of it is maintained through the ambiguity of middle-classdom and the rest, but people can be forgiven for thinking that the shirts are increasingly brown, all talk not withstanding, and that the whole scheme reeks of piss.

Of course the Romans used various scents to mask the process. Our assholes call it the smell of success and don't even bother with perfumes.

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There is an economic depression in the United States and there is a shortfall of twenty million jobs. To address that there is a TARP of roughly a trillion bucks, a stimulus of roughly a trillion bucks, a budget deficit of roughly a trillion bucks, and cash outlays from the Fed, FDIC and others that amount to another three trillion bucks... that is all in a year... and at the end of that, there are still gonna be twenty million to twenty five million people without a job.

Yet, any twelve year old can fix the problem. How? Give twenty million people jobs. Do it tomorrow and figure out later what they will do. Pay them $50,000 a year and that is only 1 trillion dollars total. Problem solved.

But wait, those are "fake jobs". What about "real jobs"?

Well, stimulus jobs are "fake jobs" too. But, don't make them fake jobs. Make them real jobs. Let those twenty million make stuff... food and trains and paintings and mocha lattes. So what if they don't make a profit. Subsidize it. The whole thing is subsidized now.

But those twenty million have no capital. Where do we get the means to make stuff?

Confiscate it. Start by taking the idle mills, mines, land that produces nothing today. If ya wanna be "moderate", give the "owners" a few bucks in "rent". It's better than what they get today. And have the banks lend the rest.

But the banks won't lend to such "unprofitable enterprises". How do we get them to finance it?

We take the banks too. The state has already paid for them twice over.

But, but, but... $50,000 a year is too much. That is close to the median income. If you hire twenty million people another 40 million will quit to take the new jobs. What do you do then?

Hire the 40 million. Let them make or do what they were doing before.... or maybe let them do something better. Let people get their own damn whopper if they gotta have it.

But, that will be inefficient, won't it?

In fact it is a matter of degrees. Too inefficient to survive in the private market? Maybe. More inefficient than wiping out all of American economic growth since the mid 1970s in one big depression? Not a chance.

But, that's all pie in the sky. The major political parties will never go for that and the people with money will never allow it.

Well then, we've identified the actual political problem, haven't we?

UNITY PROGRESS RESPONDING
The fact that having the Government directly create even just one job is completely off the table in the second depression (by sharp contrast with the first) is a very clear reminder of how far to the right the US is, very, very far indeed.

Didn't you know, you are supposed to start your own business if you can't get a job. You are supposed to ignore problems such as having no money, can't get a loan, don't have a product or service that will sell, and so forth. Just wake up from that ground under the bridge where you sleep every morning and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get that business up and humming. There is money to be made by people living under bridges, laugh out loud. Yes, even if you are homeless you are supposed to start your own business. Come to think of it, many of the homeless do run their own businesses, most commonly panhandling. (But those, alas, often violate zoning or petty crime regulations. Nutz, I thought I was on a roll there.)

I do believe Jimmy Carter was the last President who signed legislation that directly created jobs without the slavery to tax cuts and the private sector thing going on today. He had for example a summer jobs program for young people. Clinton was, let's face it, even more of a pimp for the private sector than Obama is, or at least he was a more successful pimp than is Obama. And poor Obama suffers from incredible political incompetence, especially in comparison with Slick Willy.

Notice too that in 2010 the poor can not even be mentioned by major US politicians or their sidekicks. As recently as 1975, the poor still existed; they were a constituency. Between then and now, the poor completely disappeared from the lexicon of elites and now the “middle class” (which is more and more the equivalent of the poor in 1975) is that "lagging, unfortunate group of people who through their own fault can't keep up with us rich people".

Meanwhile, as far as elites are concerned, the rightful place of the poor is in prison today. No more summer jobs programs for them, unless they are at the slammer for ten cents per hour.

Oh, and as a sociologist I would like to see the cave that Katie Packer lives in, laugh out loud.

My new jobs, incomes and prices site is here.

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

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Almost Everyone has and is Paying a High Price for one of the Most Unequal Societies in History

The scientific mobility studies that proved that the US is last in mobility finally came out in the first decade of the 21st century.

Thirty to fifty years ago, as the far right moved toward taking complete control of the US, one of their favorite arguments was that "the greater economic freedom in the US as opposed to Europe means that it is easier for a poor person in the US to economically achieve than it is for a poor person in Europe. Like so much more "wisdom" from the right, we can now see what utter trash that argument was. Trouble is, the far right got the prize that motivated that and other false arguments: they received and they maintain today full control over US society.

And what an irony it is that shortly after those studies were produced, the entire US society (except maybe the top half of one percent, and even they were temporarily damaged) experienced downward mobility. Everyone had to pay a price when the orgy of right wing economics produced one of the very most unequal societies in world history. There is some classic poetic justice in that history for you.

That price is not yet fully paid, by the way.

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

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Comments are very appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress.

The email address for Unity-Progress is
unity.progress.mail at gmail.

Use this address for all communications, including requests for link exchange if you have a good economics or political site.