Will Work for Jobs

[McCamy Taylor]

A nation is a community of people with a shared language, shared
history and culture. Even a people deprived of its own
land can survive. But a people deprived of history and the
will to resist falls apart and sinks into oblivion.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/2221/1/131/

The above remarks were made by the modern day Communist Party in Russia in response to attempts to remove the Red Square monument to Lenin. In this country, you see the same principle at work. Generations of young people have emerged from the U.S. public school system, which hires specially trained instructors for math and sciences but assigns coaches to teach history and social studies. If President Obama really wants to shake things up, he will start a federal program to promote academic excellence in the social sciences at the high school level . And then we can all sit back and watch the FAT-CATs, the Fascist American Terrorists and Corporate American Traitors have a collective stroke. Because they want us ignorant about our history and about the economy.

Americans who know what happened during the Great Depression saw Friday’s grim unemployment number and they recognized that this was one of the signs . No, not one of the Signs of the Apocalypse. One of the Signs of an eminent economic Depression. Sharp rise in unemployment combined with widespread bank failures, bottomed out interest rates, contracted money supplies, Congressional gridlock. The nation is on the long and winding economic road downward, and the forecast calls for rising unemployment unless the federal government spends money to create jobs now . Anyone who lived through the first Great Depression can tell you that. Anyone who studies history can tell you that. Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize last year, told us all that a decade ago.

In an on-line article about Paul Krugman, John Case makes a good argument for why we should work for jobs.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8037/1/359/

“Depression economics” is a term that Krugman came up with over a decade ago. His main point is that monetary policy, once you get into a depression, becomes ineffective, and the only possible way to manage the economy or influence its direction once interest rates have reached zero – which, coincidentally, they are pretty close to right now – is by means of very aggressive financial intervention by the federal government, not just in terms of liquidity, but by employing people directly or indirectly so they have the power to purchase things. This is the only way, according to depression economics, that you can effect a recovery in the economy.

Snip

There is a strong group of economists, that focuses on employment. They are called the post-Keynesians. Hyman Minsky is one, and he has a strong argument that full employment, using the government as a last-resort employer, is a non-inflationary and stabilizing policy that should be adopted in place of the ones that we currently have, which is basically involves transfer payments, unemployment benefits, etc. Transfer payments are only for folks who are not actually working, but the national service program proposed by Obama, however, of which a huge expansion is being planned, could provide a path to implementing a full-employment program.

Snip

The question is not is it or isn’t it going to happen, but how much of it is going to happen, and how much influence the people can have through their own struggle and their impact on Congress, etc., to insure that the benefits of the stimulus and stabilization start flowing back into areas of the economy where it is putting people back to work and raising incomes again. If we are able to make this turn and accomplish this huge reform without civil war or lawless patches (I consider, for example, the Bush administration a kind of lawless patch), then I think we need to begin to think about the socializing tendencies of society and the ideas of socialism: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their work,” and a wide range of other socialist values that are actually shared by most of the American people.

We will also have the chance to make the achievement of those ideals – the ultimate objectives of the socialization process – more democratic and more working-class in orientation, and to do all this in an incremental and peaceful fashion. That is the way things need to go. We need to understand those points in policy-making where a more socialist perspective contends with a “free market” one. The test must be what is best for society as a whole. We now have the ability to test these concepts concretely, to see how they work, and how to democratize the process.

This is a more realistic way to transform society than to say, “Well, I’m frustrated because of all the difficulties, so there’s no point in even getting into all that, until there is a revolutionary transformation, because until real socialism it’s not going to happen.”

Sounds lovely. There is just one problem. That last "lawless patch" Case mentioned, the Bush administration, handed out billions of dollars which may well have been intended to be used as a special political slush fund for the Republican Party, since the recipient banks have not used it to ease up on their lending to average consumers. If you read this Huffington Post article, it looks like the FAT-CATS at Bank of America and AIG got their billions and immediately turned around and began telling their clients to start funneling money to Republicans---the implication being that good little Republican donors would find their cash flow problems solved.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/bank-of-america-hosted-an_n_161248.html

Armed with this much extra cash, these modern day "Banksters" will be able to buy lots of support from people like Sen. John Cornyn and from the usual corporate media whores.

GIBSON: Which leads some people to say that you tried to do too much with this bill too soon, and not enough of it is really stimulative. And as you know, there's a lot of people in the public, a lot of members of Congress who think this is pork-stuffed and that it really doesn't stimulate. A lot of people have said it's a spending bill and not a stimulus.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200902030016?lid=879777&rid=21272837

I am not exactly sure who “some people” are, but there is a good possibility Gibson is referring to two old guys who spend all day sitting on a porch in Weatherford, Texas. These two coots will say just about anything you pay them to say. We are just going to have to take Gibson’s word when he claims to be a mind reader.

Now, why would anyone want to spread misinformation like this? Because there is a lot of money to be made in a recession/depression if you are already very rich. You can snatch up the foreclosed homes for pennies on the dollar. You can acquire all the farms. You can promote fascism and elect yourself dictator for life. The possibilities are endless. All you have to do is fool enough of the people for a long enough time.

If you went to public school in the United States and the basketball coach taught you that the U.S. never invaded another country that did not attack us first, and if you have been unable to join a union, because your state has all but outlawed them so you only have your boss to give you political/economic advice (“Tax cuts help me hire more workers here at home, son, so I don’t have to move all these here jobs overseas to China.”), and if you rely on corporate propagandists like Gibson to tell you what to think, you are one of the (sizable) minority in this Gallup poll who thinks that tax cuts create jobs. Congratulations! You have been deprived of your history and you are sinking into oblivion within your own lifetime.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/114256/Gov-Projects-Seen-Better-Job-Creation-Tax-Cuts.aspx

If you are lucky enough to be a member of a union or if you read a lot or if you have relatives who told you all about FDR’s New Deal, you know what turned the country around the last time the exact same thing happened to the economy. Jobs. Fortunately for this country, America has a strong oral history to supplement the formal history we are not taught in schools, and few things shaped the last century like the Great Depression. So the majority of people polled believe that jobs are the answer. However, jobs lead tax cuts by only 8% in the Gallup poll.

To me, this suggests that the number one thing that everyone who cares about the economy must do is what President Obama did tonight---convince the 42% that jobs matter. Policies that create jobs are sound. Companies that send jobs overseas are traitorous. If we set our sights on full employment, our other economic problems will improve.

Everyone knew this in the early 1930s, when an entire nation of young men (and some women) rode from town to town by rail looking for work. If we had not been deprived of our history, everyone would know it now.

Many people forced off the farm heard about work hundreds of miles away ... or even half a continent away. Often the only way they could get there was by hopping on freight trains, illegally. More than two million men and perhaps 8,000 women became hoboes.

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_07.html



For those who do not want to work for jobs, be sure to read Studs Terkel's Hard Times so you know what we have to look forward to.

[D-Lee]

1. Agreed, the "dumbing down of America" has negative consequences

You have identified an important theme of our times ... and that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

I suspect we are making our own "depression generation" again. What that will do to our culture as a whole is a thought which interests me.

[valerief]

2. KICK!

:kick:

[planetc]

3. I have a very simple mind for economics

Perhaps my mind for language is a little subtler, but my economic understanding is limited. Or so I used to think until quite recently. I can clearly remember just a few years ago when pundits were telling the American people we weren't saving enough. This resulted in insufficient funds for people to invest in new businesses. Something like that. This was at the exact same time that Americans were being persuaded, ever more loudly and incessantly, to buy, buy, BUY! Well, small wonder that Americans, working ever harder, and too distracted to resist the incessant orders to buy, went out and bought. Banks lent them money, and if banks wouldn't, there were private usurers who would be happy to fill the gap and lend to people with rocky credit. So everyone who wasn't paying attention to the fundamental contradiction here went out and bought. And everybody bought food, clothes, housing, and the occasional DVD. (If all there were to buy was food, clothes and housing, we'd have an economy.)

But recently it turns out that the Wall Street high-flyers put the populace to shame when it comes to self-defeating practices. The Wall Streeters thought (this is rich), that they could destroy the financial soundness of the people and still have a capitalist economy, which depends entirely on consumption. They thought they could deprive the people of jobs, and more recently, of their very houses, and *still have a capitalist economy*. How long have these people been raving?

Luckily enough, the people are smarter than the Wall Street crowd, although it takes the people awhile to catch on to what the game is because of the authoritative nonsense provided by their leaders in the media. But we are catching up. We are realizing that with jobs, and houses to live in, we can sustain the economy. All by ourselves. Perhaps we will soon realize that the Wall Streeters wouldn't have a job without some real value in the economy--well-run factories, schools, hospitals, and garages to repair our cars. And the people with jobs (what a concept!), taking their money out and spending it on stuff they need. Taking anything left over and spending it on stuff they want. Without buyers for its products, the factory will close. Without jobs, there will be no buyers.

Somethings I think there's hope for me as an economist.

Thanks for a really lively essay, McCamy. On a serious subject it manages to be serious and light hearted at the same time. No mean trick.