https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
TheRealNews
February 23, 2010
Robert Pollin: Reaching 4% unemployment by 2012 is possible
***
Robert Pollin: Based on a “normal” pace of recovery, it could be 2018 before unemployment hits 4%
***
Kucinich on Jobs Bill
FoxBusinessNetwork
February 23, 2010
unavailable
***
Dennis Kucinich New Idea For Jobs Creation
MoxNewsDotCom
February 23, 2010
unavailable
see
Real, Uglier American Unemployment by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Dennis Kucinich Challenges Sec. Gates on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan
Kucinich Plan to Create One Million Permanent Job Opportunities
Dandelion Salad 
Pingback: Kevin Hall: High unemployment likely for years to come « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Robert McChesney and John Nichols: The Death and Life of American Journalism « Dandelion Salad
Kucinich’s idea to help early retirement through Social Security at 60? What a joke. Let’s be real and abolish the self-voted retirement plan for political gangsters and put them back on the rest of America’s retirement plan – Social Security. You would never see it used again as a political tool to frighten the aged. It would overnight become solvent and probably over-funded. Mandatory retirement at 60 would be a godsend if it were applied to politicians.
If you want to create jobs – repeal NAFTA and GATT.
Dennis!!
I posted my answer to Pollin 5 days ago on The Nation and today I posted these on Alternet …
It begins with the paltry $15 bilion for job creation and explains why there will be no net job creation for years and years …
~~~
The Senate Jobs Bill is an insult to suffering Americans, as is Obama’s new health care push, as is Obama’s mortgage relief program … All are nothing but spin that will, in the end, help no one, save some politicians’ jobs, institutionalize corporate control of health care and grease banksters palms, once again.
There are not going to be net jobs created. More jobs are going to be lost as a second huge wave of foreclosures hits, states and local governments lay off hundreds of thousands, commercial real estate melts down, hundreds of ”too small” banks fail, bankruptcies skyrocket and social programs are slashed.
The bubble is burst and throwing trillions at banksters is throwing money down the drain. The banks need to be nationalized, rationalizing losses, imposing tighter regulations, the Federal Reserve System needs to be nationalized, that we can create credit with no debt and the work week needs to be cut from 40 to 32 over two years …
There will be no new job creation for years and years and millions of job are yet to disappear … This crisis is just the beginning of the downward deflationary spiral that trying to save banks past hope of solvency will begin.
~~~~
From Calculated Risk today:
~ ”States are looking at a total budget gap of $180 billion for fiscal 2011, which for most of them begins July 1. These cuts could lead to a loss of 900,000 jobs, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com.
This suggests that more state and local government job cuts are coming.”
~ From the Rockefeller Institute: States Reported Fifth Consecutive Drop in Tax Collections in the Fourth Quarter of 2009 (ht Ann)
State tax revenues declined by 4.1 percent nationwide during the final quarter of calendar 2009, the fifth consecutive quarter of reduced collections, according to a report issued today by the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
~ First American CoreLogic released the Q4 negative equity report today.
First American CoreLogic reported today that more than 11.3 million, or 24 percent, of all residential properties with mortgages, were in negative equity at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009, up from 10.7 million and 23 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2009. An additional 2.3 million mortgages were approaching negative equity at the end of last year, meaning they had less than five percent equity. Together, negative equity and near‐negative equity mortgages accounted for nearly 29 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide.
~~~~
People, we are headed for deep trouble.
Thanks for all your commentaries, mm.
Kucinich, as always, has some great ideas. His most important was the idea that the Federal Reserve System be nationalized, put under the Treasury, where it can create currency and credit without debt.
My piece above touts this idea …
I advanced the idea that the workweek be shortened from 40 to 36 to 32 hours over 2 years using single payer to compensate employers for the added cost and the plan to pay for single payer without raising taxes …
Kucinich’s idea to help early retirement through Social Security at 60 doesn’t mention health care costs. At any rate he is not talking about new jobs. He is talking about making space by retiring older workers and how many older workers would retire without health care guarantees?
Pollin has several good ideas, but overall his plan ignores the elephant in the living room, massive debt. The US aggregate (public, private, business) debt is now 3.5 times GDP.
Banks, despite the hoopla, are largely insolvent by credible accounting standards. William Black, a former regulator, in an interview with the PBS’s Paul Solman, dropped the bomb. Banks have never really been cleaned up. The banking system is still insolvent, with a new wave of foreclosures (already known), commercial real estate tanking and bankruptcies soaring.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) was forced, by threat of annihilation, to loosen standards so that banks could hold their losses without accounting for them. Enron all over again. This time it is the banks. Thanks only to trillions in gifts, loans and gurantees do the banks even function today. What we see happening is that the taxpayer is absorbing bank losses onto the nation’s balance sheet.
At this moment the federal debt is manageable, but not for long. There are the current budget deficits that won’t go away anytime soon and the looming bills for Social Security (which we paid for and loaned to give tax breaks to corporations and the already wealthy) and Medicare (healthcare that every industrialized country has for all their citizens).
Pollin is trying to re-inflate a bubble, as is the Obama administration, rather than cut the rot from the system. A rot that is already turning into a gangrene for state and local governments and blood-poisoning for our financial system. The losses must be taken to reduce the overhang of debt. New powerful financial regulation must be enacted to purge the system of waste, fraud and abuse and gain trust.
As for jobs, the methods are simple. Reduce the workweek to thirty-six then thirty-two hours over two years. Employers will pay the same but be relieved of having to cover healthcare benefits through a single-payer health system. Tariffs to protect domestic industry and promote re-industrialization. A graduated carbon tax over time whereby the proceeds are retruned to the people per capita and allotted for export reimbursement.
How do we pay for single-payer?
We nationalize the privately owned and operated Federal Reserve System and print our money without debt, auctioning credit to the private sector with interest rate differentiation between consumptive and sustainable use. Back-of-the-envelope savings for America: $1 trillion–half a trillion in money creation and half a trillion saved from interest payments.
The nationalized Federal Reserve and the Treasury generate and save $1 trillion for the country, while we cut the military budget by 50 percent or another half a trillion. Single-payer health care is paid for with no new taxes with $1.5 trillion.
Taxes on the wealthy must go up to stop all the sloshing of excess capital through the system and help pay for the coming of Social Security (a paid-for promise) and trade schools, junior colleges and universities, so that students and families can afford education. We should go back to pre-Reagan tax rates, while purging loopholes for both corporations and individuals.
Pollin is well-intentioned but does not recognize how truly and deeply this country is in trouble.
Krugman says it’s OK, that they shoulda spent far , debt is the way it’s done in the Keynes method.
Let’s hear more about the war-industrial complex, HALF the IRS haul goes to gratuitous war, war-wounded, war-waste. Conservatives are FINALLY talking about this, make it viral. Pull the cult-killer-Gamers back home and there’s revenue for everything in this luxe land.
But if you want a job that you can’t be downsized from, work for yourself! ‘Jobs’ are a myth, they’ll can you overnight.
Good points, Natureboy.