Obama's Rose-Colored Glasses: Growth Has Little to Do with Jobs or Reducing Poverty

[dajoki]

Obama's Rose-Colored Glasses: Growth Has Little to Do with Jobs or Reducing Poverty
by Dave Lindorff | September 12, 2010 - 5:30pm
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/31264

Faced with the bad, but hardly surprising news, that poverty has increased in the US on his watch, to a record level not seen since before President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1965, President Obama is declaring that the answer to poverty and joblessness is economic growth.

He's wrong, but, as they say on NPR's "Marketplace" program, "But first, the numbers."

According to new figures from the Census Bureau, the poverty rate in America in 2009 jumped to 15%, up from 13.2% of the population in 2008. That would be one in seven of us, or about 45 million people living below the poverty line of $22,000 for a family of four. Now, obviously, things are pretty tough for people who are earning a lot more than that. It's not easy getting by with a family of four on $35,000, especially in some parts of the country, so the real poverty rate is probably a whole lot higher than 15%, but let's not quibble. The point is that we now have the highest rate of poverty that the country has seen since the mid-'60s.

Obama is claiming that growing the economy is the answer for these people. As he put it at a White House news conference, "The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there...If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle."

The problem with this answer is that economic growth doesn't guarantee jobs, and it also doesn't guarantee that any jobs created, or already there, will pay better wages.

MORE...www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/201

[Hannah Bell]

1. kr.

[another saigon]

2. he is being much too kind

'Either the president is fooling himself, or he is trying to fool the public'

One thing obama is not, is a fool. He is behaving as if we are all fooled by his complicity to his corporate backers.


-snip-

To help the poor you need programs of income support, and you need jobs, but the way you get the poor employed is to hire them--now!--with government money.

Urban schools need painting and cleaning and lots of teachers' aides--all things that unskilled workers could do. Roads need trash pickups. State and national parks need trail maintenance and other things. Neighborhood watch programs to improve safety could be paid positions. School crossing guards are in short supply. Fire departments need more people who could work in support roles. There is an endless supply of jobs that the government could be funding to put the jobless to work immediately. That's how you end poverty.

Not by extending tax breaks to the wealthy, who just hoard it anyhow, or invest it in speculative ventures.

President Obama and the Democratic Congress may not have caused this terrible economic calamity (well, I'd actually say that the Democratic Congress, including former Sen. Obama, did their bit in producing it by suppporting deregulation of the financial industry), but they have done precious little to end it. And at this point, all his election eve proposals are a dollar short and a day late, as far as dealing with the desperate situation that the one in five who are jobless or underemployed are facing.

Either the president is fooling himself, or he is trying to fool the public (and given his years spent at the University of Chicago, where Milton Friedman and and his Chicago Gang of "free market" economists held sway, it's probably a little of both). Growth is not going to solve the poverty crisis or the jobs crisis.

[BeFree]

6. Jobs

We could give the money to local governments who would hire the workers.

Establish some parameters for the jobs and make sure the people who get the jobs are the ones that need them the most.

[atreides1]

3. The Unrecs just keep on coming

I guess any criticism of this President is off limits?

Put a finger in each ear and sing LA,LA,LA,LA,LA,LA!

[dajoki]

19. You are absolutely correct n/t

[blindpig]

4. Trickle down, plain & simple

Could our current situation show the fallacy any more plainly? The banks and companies are sitting on billions and not hiring. This is Raygun all over again, with the predictable results.

[Hawkowl]

8. Obamonics = Reaganomics

Or at least very close. It is still the same supply side bullshit that has been wrecking the economy for 30 years. I am in stunned disbelief at the absolute STUPIDITY of Obama's economic policy. His economic advisors would be right at home in Reagan's administration.

[inna]

15. the same supply side bullshit, exactly.

it's not the "stupidity" though, these are deliberate policies that work very well for the rich.

[Edweird]

16. Haven't you heard? Everything 'Reagan' is new again and now it's 'progressive' and 'liberal'.

[suston96]

5. Growing the economy = jobs...jobs...jobs....

...that is exactly correct. As a side note - that will also fix whatever is broken with Social Security and Medicare, real or imagined.

[Hawkowl]

9. Wrong, wrong, WRONG!!

Growth = jobs is idiotic simplicity at best and outright supply side/Reaganomics/Bankster fraud at worst.

If the economy grows at 5% and 99% of the growth is simply extra profit given to the top tenth of 1% who succeed in "growing" their businesses by replacing hundreds of thousands of workers with nifty high productivity machinery from China, then you could get "growth" with an INCREASE in unemployment.

A rising tide may lift all the damn boats. However, if you don't have a boat you are going to fucking drown!

[sandnsea]

7. Painting, cleaning and teachers aids are not unskilled jobs

Unions fight relentlessly to get them the credit and pay they deserve.

Endless government jobs is not a long term answer to anything. Even FDR knew that.

Programs of income support exist thanks to LBJ's war on poverty. And FDR. That was the point, to make sure people who are in poverty - aren't homeless, freezing and starving. And for the most part, they aren't.

Obama addresses the lost decade of income growth all the time. But before he can push business to pay fair wages, he's got to get the economy producing jobs.

[Buns_of_Fire]

11. "He's got to get the economy producing jobs..."

Preferably, jobs in THIS country (like painting, cleaning, and teacher's aides, of course).

But even before that, it seems to me that the hemorrhage of jobs OUT of this country needs to be stopped (or at least made unprofitable).

[bvar22]

13. Campaign Obama 2008 agreed with you, and agreed to "renegotiate NAFTA".

However, President Obama 2.0 disagrees.

[Starry Messenger]

10. k & r

[Rex]

12. Criminal negligence...fix it or we all go down the tubes.

Is it really that hard to understand? No money to huge corporations that are involved with criminal activity or have cases pending. Spend ALL THOSE BILLIONS on revitalizing the national infrastructure and create millions of new jobs. Then let the next generation worry about how to pay for all those future retires...I kid, raise the working age til retirement to 90! :sarcasm:

[inna]

14. kr

[Starry Messenger]

17. k & r

[mzmolly]

18. The author must have forgotten about Obama's job packages?

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-labor-day-agenda-job-growth-ideas/story?id=11554930

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/01/nation/la-na-obama-budget1-2010feb01