In a speech to a joint session of Congress tonight President Obama is expected to unveil a new White House economic strategy to bolster employment. With unemployment at 9.1 percent, and figures for jobless claims rising according to today’s report from the Department of Labor, the President is switching emphasis from large public stimulus packages to job creation.
Republican lawmakers are not interested in job creation but in profit maximization. Predictably, some are already calling Obama’s announced “American Jobs Act” an example of the same tired Democratic ideas that have failed to stimulate the economy in the past. No word yet on whether Republican ideas about profit maximization and deregulation lead to anything but risky and unstable economic climates like the one that brought about the more recent financial collapse. When it comes to economics, Republicans really have no good ideas.
Democratic lawmakers are also not much interested in job creation. If they were, Americans would have labor laws that promoted job security and stability, fair wages, and standard benefits such as health care insurance. Of course, Democrats say they are for job creation, but when they say this while passing legislation at the same time that allows corporations to transfer profits and jobs out of the country, it’s hard to believe their commitment to American workers is anything but political pandering to people who don’t know any better.
The fact is a small but powerful minority of Americans has become more wealthy in the last two decades since the global internet economy emerged, largely because the corporations they own and run have paired wages, trimmed benefits, hemmed unions, outsourced jobs, and generally practiced an economics of greed. In order to turn this situation around the President cannot be expected to provide job security for every American without help from Congress. The problem is, again, that Congress is effectively bought and sold by the wealthy political elite that governs economic policy in this country. Without a massive congressional turnover, which is unlikely to happened given the influence and power of money in electoral politics, legislation for protecting and promoting the interests of American workers (that is, every American who has, wants, or needs a job) will be anemic and unsuitable for returning Americans to work at jobs that pay well with good benefits
Everyone keeps saying those days are over. If they are over, then so is the growth and sustainability of the American economy. Without workers who get paid well to buy things we produce and other countries import, we will be a nation of debtors with permanent status anxiety. ::KPS::