09.06.11
My Congressman is an idiot - regulations have nothing to do with it
The reason job creation is not where it needs to be is because we’ve started moving to austerity, in our nation and state, which is filtering down to the local levels as well. Austerity is defined as: In economics, austerity is a policy of deficit-cutting, lower spending, and a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided. As history shows austerity will only make our economy worse, but we can also look at history for a way out of this mess. The best way to show this is from a post from 2010 by Robert Reich, My Father and Alan Greenspan.
When I was a small boy at the start of the 1950s, my father gave me my first economics lesson. “Bobby,” he said with obvious concern, “you and your children and your children’s children will be repaying the national debt created by Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
I didn’t know what a national debt was, but I remember being scared out of my wits.
Dad was wrong, of course. Even though the national debt then was a much higher percentage of the national economy than it is today, it shrank as the economy boomed. My children have never mentioned FDR’s debt. My granddaughter (almost 2) will never pay a penny of it.
Dad, now 96 and still in good health, recognizes how wrong he was then. He admits FDR’s deficit spending not only won World War II but it also got America out of the Great Depression.
For whatever reason it is very hard for too many politicians and the traditional media to understand, and they’re unable help the rest of the nation and world understand. That’s why Rep. John Carter’s (R- Round Rock) sorry Op-Ed about too much regulation should be laughed at and used for toilet paper. Carter wants us to believe that government regulation is the reason business and corporations aren’t hiring. But he’s wrong.
The reason businesses and corporations aren’t hiring is because of austerity, job and benefit cuts, and increasing income inequality. As a result we have a demand problem. Americans don’t have money to buy things, which means businesses and corporations won’t hire more people to make more stuff. That’s why as federal, state and local government employees get laid off, as well as teachers, firefighters, etc.., the economy will only get worse. A good job taken away, and replaced (maybe) by a job that pays less and has no benefits, leaves that worker and their family with less money to buy stuff. And the downward spiral continues. Instead of what happened to get us out of the Great Depression.
The best way out of our economic mess is with a new WPA. Promise a job for every American that wants to work.
Further Reading:
The Republicans’ Big Lies About Jobs (And Why Obama Must Repudiate Them).
Regulations, taxes aren’t killing small business, owners say.