"Dear Readers, Several of you have told me that you are tired of reading about the deplorable state of affairs in Ukraine produced the by idiots that comprise 'our' government. In this current posting you can read instead about the deplorable state of jobs in 'your' economy or, rather, the absence of jobs. 'Your' same government that lies to you about foreign affairs also lies to you about the economy." -- Paul Craig Roberts

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OpEdNews Op Eds 3/9/2014 at 22:13:20

No Jobs, No Economy, No Prospects For Peace Or Life

By Paul Craig Roberts (about the author)     Permalink

opednews.com                                                                                                 Headlined to H2 3/9/14

Source: Paul Craig Roberts

No Jobs, No Recovery, No American Dream
(image by YouTube)

Over the decades various administrations, seeking to improve their economic record, monkeyed with economic statistics to the point that the statistics are no longer meaningful.

According to Friday's (March 7) payroll jobs report, the US economy created 175,000 new jobs in February. If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'll let you have at a good price.

Even if 175,000 jobs were created in February -- remember now, February was a cold month whose low temperatures are used to explain poor housing and retail sales performance, yet somehow created 40,000 more jobs than needed to keep up with population growth -- that is an insufficient amount to drop the unemployment rate.

To see how screwed up US economic statistics are, consider the reported unemployment rate (U.3) of 6.7 percent in comparison with the fact that there are about 6 million Americans who have been unable to find a job and are no longer counted as unemployed. These millions of unemployed are not included in the reported rate of unemployment.

John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that the true rate of US unemployment is around 23 percent.

Rather than examine the issue, the presstitute financial media trumpets the government's propaganda. In America there is no more of a financial media, except for Pam Martens and Nomi Prins, than a print and TV media.

The Economic Policy Institute reports that there are 1,360,000 unemployed men and women under the age of 25, 2,8000,000 unemployed men and women aged 25-54, and 1,640,000 unemployed men and women 55 and over who are not counted as unemployed, because they have been unable to find a job after searching a long time and have given up looking.

Just as "your" government and "your" prostitute media lie to you about Ukraine, Putin, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, NSA, spying, torture, 9/11, Obamacare, and literally everything under the sun, "your" government lies to you about the economy and hides from you the perilous state of your economic existence. If you are not among the One Percent, you have no future in America.

Let us have a look at the 175,000 claimed jobs. Are these the promised high-paying jobs of the "New Economy" that Washington and its economist pimps guaranteed us would take the place of the offshored manufacturing and tradable professional service jobs?

Afraid not. In the many years that I have been observing the monthly payroll jobs reports and the BLS's future jobs projections, I have never seen even one of the "New Economy" jobs. They simply do not exist. Yet, the economics profession, an extremely deluded collection of morons, still believes in these jobs.

Again -- how many times have I reported this same result -- here are the jobs of the "New Economy":

Of the 175,000 jobs claimed, 13,000 are taxpayer-supported government jobs.
Of the 162,000 private sector jobs claimed, a mere 22,000 or 13.6% are goods-producing jobs, of which 15,000 or 68% are in construction The other 140,000 are service jobs.

Are these service jobs the promised high-pay "New Economy" jobs? No, but judge for yourself -- 14,800 are jobs in wholesale trade. Food and beverage stores accounted for 12,000 new jobs. The Federal Reserve accounted for 7,800 jobs in order to continue rigging every financial market, thus replacing capitalism with Federal Reserve Central Planning. Accounting and bookkeeping services (it is tax time) gave the economy a short-lived 15,700 jobs. There were 24,400 temporary help jobs. The old standby, education and health services, delivered 33,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality produced 25,000 jobs of which 21,200 are waitresses and bartenders who live on tips.

This has been the jobs profile of the "world's only superpower" for the entirety of the 21st century. Washington, wallowing in its arrogance and hubris, is unconcerned with its economic base. Washington believes its own propaganda about the (non-existent) recovery and America's economic power.

Consequently, the ignorant and stupid American government is now challenging Russia with a strategic intervention in Russia's back yard.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available here:  http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Capitalism-Economic-Dissolution-ebook/dp/B00BLPJNWE/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1362095594&sr=8-17&keywords=paul+craig+roberts

The latest lie from the government that lies about everything

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Another Phony Jobs Report From A Government That Lies About Everything –Paul Craig Roberts

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June 7, 2013 | Original Here                                                        Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

June 7, 2013. The payroll jobs report for May released today continues the fantasy.

Goods producing jobs declined, with manufacturing losing another 4,000 jobs, but the New Economy produced 179,000 service jobs.

Are these jobs the high-powered, high-wage “innovation jobs” that economists promised would be our reward from Globalism. I’m afraid not.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the jobs created are the usual lowly paid
non-exportable domestic service jobs–the jobs of a third world country.

Retail trade accounts for 27,700 of the jobs.

Wholesale trade accounts for 7,900 jobs.

Ambulatory health care services accounts for 15,300 of the jobs.

Waitresses and bartenders account for 38,100 of the jobs.

Local government accounts for 13,000 of the jobs.

Amusements, gambling, and recreation account for 12,500 of the jobs.

Temporary help services provided 25,600 jobs.

Business support services provided 4,300 jobs.

Services to buildings and dwellings provided 6,400 jobs.

Accounting and bookkeeping services provided 3,100 jobs.

Architectural and engineering services provided 4,900 jobs.

Computer systems design and related provided 6,000 jobs (most likely filled by H-1B work visas).

Management and technical consulting services provided 3,200 jobs.

For a decade this has been the jobs profile of “the world’s most powerful economy.” It is the profile of third world India 40 years ago. The jobs that made the US the dominant economy have been moved off shore by corporations threatened by Wall Street with takeovers if they did not increase their profits.

The easiest way for corporations to increase profits is to take advantage of cheap labor in countries with massive quantities of unemployed labor.

So, if we believe the BLS report, and the reported new jobs are not simply a product of faulty season adjustments and a faulty birth-death model, why is the financial press happy that the US economy can only create third world jobs? Why was the stock market up on the news that the US economy has created 179,000 third world jobs? Would rational markets be up on such discouraging news?

But are the jobs really there?

With retail sales going nowhere, why 35,600 new jobs in wholesale and retail trade?

With real median incomes declining, why 38,100 more waitresses and bartenders? For every month as long as I can remember the BLS reports numerous new jobs in waitresses and bartenders, despite the long-term decline in real median income.

In the May jobs report, where are the jobs for the vast number of new college graduates?

The US now has more hotel maids, bartenders, and waitresses than it has manufacturing workers.

The US has twice as many people employed in government than in manufacturing.

The services of maids, bartenders, waitresses, and government cannot be exported.

Therefore, the US trade deficit remains large and without exports to reduce it, a crisis in itself.

What the BLS jobs reports have been telling us for many years is that the US economy is in crisis, in a death-spiral. Yet, not a handful of economists’ voices have been raised.

Today president obama’s economist said that the notch upward in the unemployment rate was because the economic outlook was so good that more people were encouraged to enter the labor market than there were new jobs available.

The conclusion is inescapable: The same government that lies about weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein’s al-Qaeda connections, Iranian nukes, and so on, also lies about jobs, the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, rigs every financial and commodity market, pretends that terrorism is such a threat that the US Constitution must be set aside and that Americans are safer without the protection of habeas corpus and due process.

It is amazing how rare terrorism is, especially with Washington in the second decade of trying to stir up terrorism by invading countries on totally false pretenses, murdering citizens of countries, such as Pakistan and Yemen with drones, and supporting Israel’s never-ending murder and dispossession of the Palestinians.

After such massive provocations from Washington, one would think that the world would be ablaze with terrorism. But it isn’t.

As there is so little terrorism, Washington and its presstitute media call those who resist
Washington’s invasion of their countries “terrorists.” Everyone who resists Washington’s military aggression is a terrorist. Just ask the New York Times, Fox News, or any neoconservative. Or, for that matter, the Bilderbergs, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and Homeland Security, the Gestapo organization that now defines all American dissenters to be “domestic extremists.”

Washington’s claim that Americans have “freedom and democracy” is the sickest joke in human history.

In 21st century America, defendants have no more rights than the accused in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. The FBI now shoots suspects brought in for questioning in the back of the head even before the suspect is arrested. http://lewrockwell.com/spl5/fbi-executed-my-boy.html

Long before Bradley Manning’s trial the presstitutes have convicted the accused based on lies leaked by the prosecutors. Consider Bradley Manning. After three years of detention, including one year of torture, he is brought to a rigged trial as a national security danger. All that Bradley Manning did was to comply with the Military Code and report war crimes. As his corrupt superiors did not want to know, he complied with his duty, apparently, by going public.

Now he is being made an example. The message is clear: Support Washington’s war crimes or be destroyed.

The Amerika that exists today has more in common with Nazi Germany than with the America in which I grew up. The young don’t know any different. But those my age realize that we have lost our country. America no longer exists.

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Number 8 below: "According to The Economist, the United States was the best place in the world to be born into back in 1988. Today, the United States is only tied for 16th place." Were we a great country ...or what?

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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

40 Statistics About The Fall Of The U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

By Michael Snyder (The Economic Collapse Blog | Original Link) May 28, 2013

If you know someone that actually believes that the U.S. economy is in good shape, just show them the statistics in this article. When you step back and look at the long-term trends, it is undeniable what is happening to us. We are in the midst of a horrifying economic decline that is the result of decades of very bad decisions. 30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was about one trillion dollars. Today, it is almost 17 trillion dollars. 40 years ago, the total amount of debt in the United States was about 2 trillion dollars. Today, it is more than 56 trillion dollars. At the same time that we have been running up all of this debt, our economic infrastructure and our ability to produce wealth has been absolutely gutted. Since 2001, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities and millions of good jobs have been shipped overseas. Our share of global GDP declined from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed is at a record low, and the percentage of Americans that are dependent on the government is at a record high. The U.S. economy is a complete and total mess, and it is time that we faced the truth.
The following are 40 statistics about the fall of the U.S. economy that are almost too crazy to believe…
#1 Back in 1980, the U.S. national debt was less than one trillion dollars. Today, it is rapidly approaching 17 trillion dollars… 

#2 During Obama’s first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.
#3 The U.S. national debt is now more than 23 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
#4 If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.
#5 The federal government is stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.
#6 Back in 1970, the total amount of debt in the United States (government debt + business debt + consumer debt, etc.) was less than 2 trillion dollars. Today it is over 56 trillion dollars…

#7 According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percentof all global economic activity in 2001. That number dropped to 21.6 percent in 2011.
#8 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
#9 According to The Economist, the United States was the best place in the world to be born into back in 1988. Today, the United States is only tied for 16th place.
#10 Incredibly, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been permanently shut down since 2001.
#11 There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there was in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.
#12 According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit.
#13 When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of 1.6 billion dollars. By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of 61.6 billion dollars.
#14 Back in 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately 6 million dollars (million with a little “m”) for the entire year. In 2012, our trade deficit with China was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
#15 Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.
#16 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
#17 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.
#18 At this point, an astounding 53 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
#19 Small business is rapidly dying in America. At this point, only about 7 percent of all non-farm workers in the United States are self-employed. That is an all-time record low.
#20 Back in 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States had 62 cents of debt for every dollar that they earned. By 2007, that figure had soared to $1.48.
#21 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
#22 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.

#23 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.
#24 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income”.
#25 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives direct monetary benefits from the federal government. Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a home that received direct monetary benefits from the federal government.
#26 Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different “means-tested welfare programs”, and at this point more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one of them.
#27 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
#28 As I wrote recently, it is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.
#29 At this point, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years. That comes to approximately$328,404 for every single household in the United States.
#30 Right now, there are approximately 56 million Americans collecting Social Security benefits. By 2035, that number is projected to soar to an astounding 91 million.
#31 Overall, the Social Security system is facing a 134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years.
#32 Today, the number of Americans on Social Security Disability now exceeds the entire population of Greece, and the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.
#33 According to a report recently issued by the Pew Research Center, on average Americans over the age of 65 have 47 times as much wealth as Americans under the age of 35.
#34 U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
#35 As I mentioned recently, the homeownership rate in America is now at its lowest level in nearly 18 years.
#36 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
#37 45 percent of all children are living in poverty in Miami, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty in Cleveland, and about 60 percent of all children are living in poverty in Detroit.
#38 Today, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.
#39 When Barack Obama first entered the White House, about 32 million Americans were on food stamps. Now, more than 47 million Americans are on food stamps.
#40 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

Offshored American manufacturing jobs are NOT being replaced by jobs requiring "imagination and innovation" as rationalized by the giant corporations who are increasing their profits by offshoring. Paul Craig Roberts has been saying this for a decade. Now a team of 20 MIT professors and their grad students concluded that “the loss of companies that can make things will end up in the loss of research that can invent them.” TOO LATE! Now millions more of Americans will be doomed to joblessness ...while our corporate-owned goverment is preparing to cut their safety net.

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When Truth Is Suppressed Countries Die — Paul Craig Roberts

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March 14, 2013 | Original Here

Over a decade during which the US economy was decimated by jobs offshoring, economists and other PR shills for offshoring corporations said that the US did not need the millions of lost manufacturing jobs and should be glad that the “dirty fingernail” jobs were gone.

America, we were told, was moving upscale. Our new role in the world economy was to innovate and develop the new products that the dirty fingernail economies would produce. The money was in the innovation, they said, not in the simple task of production.

As I consistently warned, the “high-wage service economy based on imagination and ingenuity” that Harvard professor and offshoring advocate Michael Porter promised us as our reward for giving up dirty fingernail jobs was a figment of Porter’s imagination.

Over the decade I repeated myself many times: “Innovation takes place where things are made. Innovation will move abroad with the manufacturing.”

This is not what corporations or their shills such as Porter wanted to hear. Corporations were boosting their profits by getting rid of their American employees and replacing them with lowly paid foreigners. Porter’s job was to reassure the sheeple so that no outcry would materialize against the greed that was hollowing out the US economy.

Now comes a study conducted by 20 MIT professors and their graduate students that concludes on the basis of the facts that “the loss of companies that can make things will end up in the loss of research that can invent them.” http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/mit0305131.html

I am pleased to be vindicated by MIT. Of course, the professors are too late. The loss has already occurred. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if the MIT professors can be heard through the orchestrated disinformation.

Two years ago in 2011 a Nobel prize-winning economist, Michael Spence, confirmed my decade-old conclusion that the US economy no longer had the capability to create any jobs except low-wage domestic service jobs that do not produce tradable goods and services that can be exported to reduce the massive US trade deficit. Spence validated my argument that the “new economy” was the offshored economy. Spence concluded that the outlook for the US economy and US employment is dire. The US faces “a long-term structural challenge with respect to the quantity and quality of employment opportunities in the United States. A related set of challenges concerns the income distribution; almost all incremental employment has occurred in the non-tradable sector, which has experienced much slower growth in value added per employee. Because that number is highly correlated with income, it goes a long way to explain the stagnation of wages across large segments of the workforce.” http://www.cfr.org/industrial-policy/evolving-structure-american-economy-employment-challenge/p24366

There has been no more public policy response to Spence’s conclusion than to my identical conclusion.

We have heard all our lives that ideas are the most powerful force and prevail over material interests. Perhaps this was once true, but that would have been in previous times when material interests did not control the media, the universities, and the publishing companies along with the government. Voices such as mine, that of a high US Treasury official, and that of Spence, a Nobel prize winner, cannot compete with the voices paid by Big Money. Today the bulk of the population knows nothing except the propaganda fed to them by the oligarchic interests. They sit in front of Fox News or CNN and ingest it all. Those who fancy themselves more sophisticated get the same dose of lies from the New York Times. 

If those who speak truth cannot be bought off or shut up, they are ignored or demonized. Almost everything Americans need to know is off limits in public discussion. Anyone who broaches the truth becomes an “anti-American,” a “terrorist sympathizer,” a “commie-socialist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” an “anti-semite,” a “kook,” or some other name designed to scare Americans away from the message of truth.

The corrupt corporations, the corrupt media, and the corrupt US government have insulated the country from truth. The result will be a massive crash. A country built on lies is like a house built on sand:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock [truth]. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand [lies].The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV)

Economist Paul Krugman debunks the G.O.P. reply by Senator Marco Rubio to Obama's State of the Union Address.

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OP-ED COLUMNIST
Rubio and the Zombies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 14, 2013 611 Comments


The State of the Union address was not, I’m sorry to say, very interesting. True, the president offered many good ideas. But we already know that almost none of those ideas will make it past a hostile House of Representatives.

On the other hand, the G.O.P. reply, delivered by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, was both interesting and revelatory. And I mean that in the worst way. For Mr. Rubio is a rising star, to such an extent that Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him “The Republican Savior.” What we learned Tuesday, however, was that zombie economic ideas have eaten his brain.

In case you’re wondering, a zombie idea is a proposition that has been thoroughly refuted by analysis and evidence, and should be dead — but won’t stay dead because it serves a political purpose, appeals to prejudices, or both. The classic zombie idea in U.S. political discourse is the notion that tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves, but there are many more. And, as I said, when it comes to economics it appears that Mr. Rubio’s mind is zombie-infested.

Start with the big question: How did we get into the mess we’re in?

The financial crisis of 2008 and its painful aftermath, which we’re still dealing with, were a huge slap in the face for free-market fundamentalists. Circa 2005, the usual suspects — conservative publications, analysts at right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, and so on — insisted that deregulated financial markets were doing just fine, and dismissed warnings about a housing bubble as liberal whining. Then the nonexistent bubble burst, and the financial system proved dangerously fragile; only huge government bailouts prevented a total collapse.

Instead of learning from this experience, however, many on the right have chosen to rewrite history. Back then, they thought things were great, and their only complaint was that the government was getting in the way of even more mortgage lending; now they claim that government policies, somehow dictated by liberals even though the G.O.P. controlled both Congress and the White House, were promoting excessive borrowing and causing all the problems.

Every piece of this revisionist history has been refuted in detail. No, the government didn’t force banks to lend to Those People; no, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn’t cause the housing bubble (they were doing relatively little lending during the peak bubble years); no, government-sponsored lenders weren’t responsible for the surge in risky mortgages (private mortgage issuers accounted for the vast majority of the riskiest loans).

But the zombie keeps shambling on — and here’s Mr. Rubio Tuesday night: “This idea — that our problems were caused by a government that was too small — it’s just not true. In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies.” Yep, it’s the full zombie.

What about responding to the crisis? Four years ago, right-wing economic analysts insisted that deficit spending would destroy jobs, because government borrowing would divert funds that would otherwise have gone into business investment, and also insisted that this borrowing would send interest rates soaring. The right thing, they claimed, was to balance the budget, even in a depressed economy.

Now, this argument was obviously fallacious from the beginning. As people like me tried to point out, the whole reason our economy was depressed was that businesses weren’t willing to invest as much as consumers were trying to save. So government borrowing would not, in fact, drive up interest rates — and trying to balance the budget would simply deepen the depression.

Sure enough, interest rates, far from soaring, are at historic lows — and countries that slashed spending have also seen sharp job losses. You rarely get this clear a test of competing economic ideas, and the right’s ideas failed.

But the zombie still shambles on. And here’s Mr. Rubio: “Every dollar our government borrows is money that isn’t being invested to create jobs. And the uncertainty created by the debt is one reason why many businesses aren’t hiring.” Zombies 2, Reality 0.

In fairness to Mr. Rubio, what he’s saying isn’t any different from what everyone else in his party is saying. But that, of course, is what’s so scary.

For here we are, more than five years into the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, and one of our two great political parties has seen its economic doctrine crash and burn twice: first in the run-up to crisis, then again in the aftermath. Yet that party has learned nothing; it apparently believes that all will be well if it just keeps repeating the old slogans, but louder.

It’s a disturbing picture, and one that bodes ill for our nation’s future. 

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 15, 2013, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Rubio And The Zombies.

FROM ROBERT REICH'S BLOG

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http://youtu.be/cO1F7EcGFAc                                                                                    Original here


Monday, August 20, 2012

The Five Reasons Why the Ryan-Romney Economic Plan Would Be A Disaster for America

Mitt Romney hasn’t provided details so  we should be grateful he’s selected as vice president a man with a detailed plan Romney says is “marvelous,” “bold and exciting,” “excellent,” “much needed,” and “consistent with” what he’s put out.

So let’s look at the five basic features of this “marvelous” Ryan plan.

FIRST: It  would boost unemployment because it slashes public spending next year and the year after, when the economy is still likely to need a boost, not a fiscal drag. It would be the same austerity trap now throwing Europe into recession. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Ryan’s plan would mean 1.3 million fewer jobs next year than otherwise, and 2.8 million fewer the year after.

SECOND: Ryan would take from lower-income Americans and give to the rich – who already have the biggest share of America’s total income and wealth in almost a century. His plan would raise taxes on families earning between 30 and 40 thousand dollars by almost $500 a year, and slash programs like Medicare, food stamps, and children’s health What would Ryan do with these savings? Reduce taxes on millionaires by an average of almost $500,000 a year.

THIRD: Ryan wants to turn Medicare into vouchers that won’t keep up with the rising costs of health care – thereby shifting the burden onto seniors. By contrast, Obama’s Affordable Care Act saves money on Medicare by reducing payments to medical providers like hospitals and drug companies.

FOURTH: He wants to add money to defense while cutting spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research and development. America already spends more on defense than the next five biggest military spenders put together. Our future productivity depends on the public investments Ryan wants to cut.

FIFTH AND Finally, Ryan’s budget doesn’t even reduce the federal budget deficit – not for decades. Remember: He’s adding to military spending, giving huge additional tax cuts to the very rich, and stifling economic growth by cutting spending too early.  The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates Ryan’s Roadmap would push public debt to over 175 percent of GDP by 2050.

So there you have it. The Ryan – Ryan-ROMNEY – economic plan.

And the five reasons why it would be a disaster for America.

(Please watch the video — and share.)

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ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock" and “The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS' LATEST JOBS AND UNEMPLOYMENT REPORT WAS "WORTHLESS AND MISLEADING." "OTHER THAN SOME MINOR INSIGNIFICANT DETAIL, 'YOUR' GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN CONSISTENTLY LYING TO YOU ABOUT EVERYTHING OF IMPORTANCE" -- PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

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Friday’s Jobs Report: More Lies From “our” Big Brother

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August 4, 2012 | Original here

In his report on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs and unemployment report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) writes: “The July employment and unemployment numbers published today, August 3rd, were worthless and likely misleading. . . . Suspecting at one time that the jobs numbers were being rigged against him by his own Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), President Richard M. Nixon proposed a new approach to reporting the numbers. Although the proposed changes never were implemented, several decades later the BLS adopted reporting methods that were somewhat parallel to the late president’s thinking.”

I will spare the readers an explanation of Williams’ account of the manipulation that is occurring as it is too arcane for the general reader.

Instead, Let’s just apply common sense. According to the BLS, there were 163,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs created in July. This figure is about 13,000 more jobs than is needed to keep pace with population growth. Therefore, the unemployment rate should have declined fractionally. Instead, the unemployment rate (U3) rose from 8.2% to 8.3%.

In case you missed the point, new jobs, a net figure, rose and so did the unemployment rate!

Moreover, the alternative, but much less reported, jobs report from the Household Survey found that the economy lost 195,000 jobs in July.

The government that lies to you about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about Iraq’s al Qaeda connections, about the Taliban in Afghanistan, about Osama bin Laden, about Libya and Gadhafi, about Iranian nukes, about Syria, about Pakistan, about Yemen and Somalia, about Bradley Manning, about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, indeed about everything under the sun, also lies to you about jobs, unemployment, economic recovery, GDP growth, 9/11, the “terrorist threat,” everything. Try to find anything that the government has said over the past 6 presidential terms that is not a lie.

Other than some minor insignificant detail, “your” government has been consistently lying to you about everything of importance.

“Your” government lies to you, because “your” government has an agenda that it most certainly will not tell you about, because if you knew what it is, you would revolt. Putting down the revolt would divert the government from its agenda. It would also alert the rest of the world to the fact that the US government has an undeclared agenda of world domination, despite the costs to the American people and every other people. World War III looms.

Nuclear annihilation is the necessary outcome of the neoconservatives’ drive for US world hegemony. Syria can fall, and Iran can fall, but Russia and China are unlikely to accept their reduction to puppet state status. As both are nuclear armed and as the crazed criminals in charge of the US government are wallowing in hubris, nuclear war seems inevitable.

The world’s most mortal enemy is Washington. If Washington prevails, the world will be dead or in slavery to Washington, including all american subjects, whether Democrats or Republicans.

Don’t let it ever be said that your enemy, whatever your country, has not been identified.

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GLOBALISM IS RAPIDLY SHIFTING MIDDLE CLASS JOBS TO THE LOWEST PAYING COUNTRIES WITH THE RESULT THAT WORKERS IN FIRST-WORLD COUNTRIES CAN FIND ONLY MENIAL JOBS AND SO CAN NO LONGER AFFORD THOSE GOODS AND SERVICES.

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August 18, 2011 at 11:59:59

Promoted to Headline (H3) on 8/18/11:

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Is Globalism Reversing?

By paul craig roberts (about the author)

Globalism is a conspiracy against First World jobs. It is the process by which capital extracts surplus and appropriates the earnings of labor. By moving offshore the production of goods and services for the home market, corporations benefit from labor arbitrage. Because of large excess supplies of labor, corporations can hire employees in China, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere at wages below the value of the marginal product of labor, thus raising the returns to capital.

If globalism reverses, it will have little to do with capital adequacy, deregulation, and sovereign debt. It will have to do with the fact that corporations, by offshoring jobs in pursuit of short-run profits, have undermined domestic First World economies by moving countries' GDP, tax base, consumer incomes, and career opportunities to developing countries.

The extraordinary debt leverage and fraud made possible by financial deregulation produced the financial crisis. The crisis of globalism is the inability of First World economies to produce new jobs other than in domestic non-tradable services.

As Michael Hudson has shown, the response to the debt crisis is to shift the costs of the mistakes made by banks and governments onto the backs of ordinary people. Thus, the large and persistent protests in the streets of Greece and Spain against allegedly "representative" governments for implementing the bankers' policies that reduce the living standards of people in order to protect bankers and their shareholders from losses.

It was ever thus. In his classic history, The Rise And Fall Of The British Empire, Lawrence James writes that the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882 was perceived "as having been foisted on the government by a clique of investors. Sir William Gregory, a former Tory MP and governor of Ceylon, argued that, "We are the only nation which had an honest sympathy with the unfortunate peasants of the Nile Valley, and yet we are forced to be the n-word-drivers, the administrators of the lash to exact the last piastre from these poor wretches for the benefit of bondholders.'"

Today economists are allied with globalists to drive wages to subsistence levels and to privatize for the benefit of the banks and their customers the remaining areas of public domain. To quote Hudson, globalism and financialization (the drive by the financial sector to absorb the entire economic surplus in the form of profit, interest, penalties, and fees) are "economic warfare by non-military means."

This article originally appeared in the summer 2011 edition of The International Economy.

Questions for The Money Party: Why Negative Job Growth Since 2000?

Submitted by Michael Collins on Tue, 06/21/2011 - 12:31

The Money Party is a very small group of enterprises and individuals who control almost all of the money and power in the United States. They use their money and power to make more money and gain more power. It's not about Republicans versus Democrats. The Money Party is an equal opportunity employer. It has no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests. Democrats are as welcome as Republicans to this party. It’s all good when you’re on the take and the take is legal. Economic Populist

Negative job growth for eleven years is the best evidence concerning our economic troubles. There were 135 million jobs in 2000 for a workforce of 144 million. Today, there are 139 million jobs for a workforce of 154 million. That represents negative job growth when you factor in population growth.

Job growth in this economy hit a dead calm in 2000 and is now moving backwards. If the issue isn't raised, how can we address the phenomena?

What is the Money Party doing about Negative Job Growth?

The solutions offered by congressional Republicans are packed with their favorite programs (House and Senate versions). Unfortunately, their proposals don't have much to do with increasing jobs.

The first recommendation calls for the federal government to "start living within [its] means." How does that happen? Pass a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget and  put the budget process in a "straight jacket" through fixed spending limits. We are told that this will "cut spending to immediately and substantially reduce deficits." The Republicans fail to mention how many jobs will be created.

Their program makes rules on spending but, with one exception, it neglects to mention any specific programs that should be cut. Guess which program they mentioned? Their manifesto suggests that we must "control entitlement spending", Social Security for example. How convenient. They cite the one program running a substantial surplus, the lifeline for seniors.

The Republican jobs program eliminates all those regulations they love to hate.  Generating more jobs by eliminating regulations is laughable. Since 2001, rules and regulations for business (e.g., Wall Street) have been tossed overboard at a record pace.  No new jobs were created during this period.  The collapse of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed are the main effect of eliminating regulations.

It is no surprise that Republicans want big tax breaks corporations.  Their corporate welfare proposals are the new "trickle down" economics.  Just give the giant corporations one more round of tax breaks and, as if by magic, they will start creating jobs.  

They propose a 10 point reduction in the current corporate tax rate (from the current 35% to 25%.  They claim that it would produce 5.3 million jobs.  That's 053 million jobs for each point taxes are cut.  If the Republican's plan to collect the proposed 25% rate, that's actually an eight point increase over the 17% rate those corporations actually pay right now.  By their own logic, their proposal will cause 4.24 million jobs to disappear (8 point increase times.53 million jobs per point). Mission accomplished!

The Democrats job plan continues their sleepwalking through history. Keep in mind that the Democrats controlled Congress from 2008 to 2010. They did a lot for jobs on Wall Street but not much for the rest of us. 

The Democratic stimulus plan of 2009 produced some jobs. Nearly a third of the $800 billion proposal went to tax cuts. The remaining $500 million offered a modest program at a time of great crisis. 

Current proposals by the party offer programs that are a fraction of their 2009 stimulus package. They are hardly adequate. They say closing corporate tax loopholes, moving toward a green economy, and fixing infrastructure (on the cheap) will do the trick. Democrats are also fixated on balancing the budget. They had legislative control for four years, with concurrent presidential control for the last two of those years. They could not or would not create the conditions necessary for job growth.

Both parties go on ad nauseum about job training and make the compulsory references to community colleges as the key element. Community colleges are outstanding resources. They need more funding. But the notion that there is a skills gap between the employees and available jobs was totally debunked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A recent BLS revision of its new jobs data showed that all those new jobs simply don't exist.

Neither party addresses the ravages of free trade. They talk about export growth but forget the reciprocal, friendly free trade deals plus the import of skilled professionals that end jobs here while creating them over there.

The Money Party has done nothing about negative job growth. The party's Republican and Democratic factions won't even mention that this has gone on for eleven years.

How About a Job Growth Program for People

What work will they do?

Fixing the nation's infrastructure is an excellent place to start. The American Society of Civil Engineers did a report care on the nation's infrastructure. They found bridges ready to collapse, buildings unfit for use, and public transportation in a sorry state to name a few of the $2 trillion worth of repairs the nation needs. That project would create jobs and have a multiplier effect on the economy through greater efficiencies and opportunities as a result of the repair work.

Stop shipping jobs overseas and people will keep the jobs they have.  Give up on free trade for them and a royal screwing for us. Think of people first and corporate convenience, control, and CEO bonuses last.

Brad DeLong at UC Berkeley developed a model that estimates a 1.67% increase in gross domestic product (GDP) for each point reduction in unemployment. There are other models but let's use this one.

Take the official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) unemployment rate of 9.1% and the 2010 GDP of $14.66 trillion. Reduce unemployment by 6 points and GDP increases 10% to $16.1 trillion.

Better yet, let's use a more accurate representation of the job situation.   BLS publishes an alternative unemployment statistic, U-6 (p. 26), showing 16.1% unemployment. U-6 includes: "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

If we reduce U-6 from 16% to 6%, that would increase GDP to $17.1 trillion.

Why is sustained negative job growth the problem that can't be mentioned?

Why won't they address it specifically?

A Crisis of Imagination or Venality?

The Money Party is short on imagination. It won't allow its minions, the servants of power, to think outside the box of the status quo. The party is a one trick pony.

The party is also short on compassion or even the most elementary forms of common decency. It's OK to see millions of people evicted, jobless, without health care, etc., as long as short term profits are maintained for those CEO bonuses and other enrichment for a tiny minority. It's perfectly acceptable for this to go on despite available solutions. If you don't look, it's not there should be their motto.

It's time for The Money Party to go, all of them. Living under their tired, inhumane rule has become intolerable.

END

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