New York Times: Put Jobs First
The New York Times editorial board argues the House jobs bill is a start, but does not go far enough (my own view, come to think of it :-P):
Right now, finding people work is a more urgent task than reducing the deficit. Indeed, deficits cannot be tamed without more jobs to generate more tax revenue. A government boost to job growth is also necessary to help replace the millions of jobs that have been lost in the recession.
Perhaps most important, without a revival in hiring, the economy itself — which appears to be recovering — could regress. A second contraction could be worse than the first, bringing a downward spiral of falling wages, falling prices and even higher unemployment. With interest rates at rock bottom and other market interventions already deployed, policy makers would have few weapons left.
The House bill has strong features. It would extend unemployment benefits, now set to expire in February, through June. It would also increase aid to states and local governments. These are the bedrocks of any jobs program because, by increasing demand, they help preserve and create jobs.
But with joblessness at record levels, unemployment benefits should be extended even further — to the end of the year. Similarly, the stimulus plan for the states should be extended well into 2011; otherwise, federal aid will dry up midway through most states’ fiscal years, leaving them vulnerable to a relapse.
Tags: jobs
Why can’t we just borrow more of the US dollars that US citizens paid foreigners to make our imported consumer goods (and energy) back from China and the other industrial nations, and then give these dollars to unemployed US citizens not to work?
Why cannot the US government can just “borrow” additional trillions more of US dollars back from industrial companies and individual people in China, India, Brazil, Pakistan, and other industrial foreign nations in order to hire people to rake leaves, dig a hole today and then refil the same hole tomorrow, or play music in the park, or write poems, or perform in a play, or take a picture of a Crucifix in his urine, or pave roads, or teach school, or plant trees, or clean up the environment, or paint pictures, or make sculptured statues. Our children and grandchildren can work harder and re-pay these loans later.
These jobs will not be useful and will not contribute anything to correcting the basic USA economic foundation problem which is the foreign trade deficit and the federal government spending deficit. We most stop borrowing US dollars (back from foreign industrialized nations) to pay for government expenses and imported products.
It is not the foreign manufacturer’s fault that this economic condition exists that causes our jobs to be outsourced to foreign countries. US citizens created this condition. US citizens elected legislators that purposefully destroyed most of our industries that then fired all of their employees that were employed in the US located factories for various economic and environmental reasons.
Our recent elected leaders decided that we could get people in other countries to work and make these things for our consumption if we paid them with US dollars that were redeemable to purchase freshly printed-paper T-bills, US Bonds, and other types of freshly printed-paper securities that they could use to purchase title to any of the privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, breweries, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, refineries, and other privately owned assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations.
Our legislators of both political parties, importing companies, consumers that purchase imported products (including myself) because these products are cheaper than US made products, Ignorant Government Employees, Self Serving Corporate Managers, Wall Street Financial Genius Master Criminal type management, NAFTA, EPA, WTO, OSHA, and the buying public just to name a few, have created this situation. The Government needs to reverse the existing negative trade balance by any means possible.
The US citizens want to pay as little as possible for the things that they consume. The US Businesses must relocate and/or outsource labor expenditures as much as possible to escape paying living wages to their employees if they want to satisfy the US consumer’s demand for the lowest price possible for the US consumer’s purchases.
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