Economic Recovery? What Recovery?
This article originally appeared on OpEd News.
Reported recovery is an illusion. There is none.
Reporting it doesn’t make it so. In fact, it’s more illusion than fact, but that doesn’t surprise half of US households impoverished or bordering on it, according to recent US Census data.
Nor are independent analysts and economists fooled. Last summer, economist Richard Wolff called “so-called economic ‘recovery’ since mid-2009….chiefly hype, a veneer of good news (benefitting corporations and elitists) to disguise and minimize the awful underlying economic realities.”
Since crisis conditions began in fall 2007, most people experienced pain without gain. For them, current conditions are worse, not better, with no policies proposed to help them. That’s today’s grim reality, especially across America and Europe.
In his most recent co-written February 2 article , titled “Manifesto for Economic Recovery and Ecological Sanity,” Wolff said:
“Capitalism today abuses the people, environment, politics and culture in equal measures. It has fostered new extremes of wealth and poverty inside most countries, and such extremes always undermine or prevent democratic politics.”
It’s also “plunged the world into the second massive global economic crisis in the last 75 years.” Yet in America and Europe, policies adopted assure harder than ever times ahead. Elections don’t matter as no major parties offer better choices. Whatever their name, they’re all involved in benefitting the few at the expense of the many.
Progressive Radio New Hour regular economist Jack Rasmus discussed the latest February 3 jobs report. He said it belies economic reality. Real unemployment’s at 22.5%. Most jobs created since 2009 have been low pay temp or part-time ones with few or no benefits. Higher-paying full-time manufacturing, construction, high-tech, and others keep declining.
For example, since the downturn’s mid-2009 low-point, 79,000 fewer manufacturing jobs exist, 680,000 aren’t replaced in construction, and other data show similar declines.
Unlike all previous post-WW II recessions, “the government sector has not created jobs to offset private sector losses.” In fact, federal, state and local governments destroyed almost 650,000 jobs since mid-2009. Nearly, 250,000 were teachers. Moreover, around 20,000 public workers on average are laid off monthly.
If Obama maintains this trend in 2012, over one million public sector jobs will be lost with hundreds of thousands more coming after November 2012, whoever’s elected.
In addition, long-term unemployed numbers rose from 24% in mid-2009 to over 40% now. Rasmus said “the Employment to Population Ratio that measures how well the economy (creates) jobs” shows the it’s creating increasingly fewer numbers as population totals rise.
In late 2007, 63% of Americans were employed. Today it’s 58.5%. The JOLT ratio (Job Opening to Labor Turnover) shows 4.2 workers for every job opening, over double the pre-recession 1.8 to 1 ratio.
Obama’s so-called job creation program is illusory. In January 2009, he promised six million jobs. Instead, over 40% of his $787 stimulus bill went for tax cuts, largely to America’s rich and corporate favorites. In June 2009, 25 million were unemployed. A year later it was unchanged.
Read the full article on OpEd News.
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Our government is lying to us about the recovery. They have finagled the numbers on unemployment and inflation so they that they are no longer comparable to the numbers that drove Jimmy Carter out of office.
The “misery index,” which become well known under Carter, was obtained by adding the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. When Carter left office, the misery index stood at 19.72, down from a high of 21.98. Reagan brought it down to 9.72.
Today, under Obama, the misery index would be closer to 33 if we still measured umemployment and inflation like we did under Carter.
Needless to say, the mainstream media, which has become the propaganda arm of the Democrat party, is “oblivious” to all of this. They only see “recovery,” everywhere.
First republicans and democrats (along with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, big banks, and Wall Street) almost collapsed our economy putting millions of citizens into financial hardship from job losses,investment and pension losses, home foreclosures, etc. Then both parties forced taxpayers to bail out their mismanagement piling crushing debt onto them in the process. Now that so many are absolutely dependent on government assistance because they have been put under enormous financial pressure, these same citizens will continue to re-elect members of both parties – out of financial desperation. Once people have most of their needs met through government subsidies, it’s impossible to convince them reform is needed despite increasingly massive debt, lack of good jobs, and inflation that will continue to degrade our economy. Government and the media are misinforming us about our economic situation. Unfortunately, most citizens care little about this – at least until we face potential economic collapse at some point courtesy of both republicans and democrats.
Though quotas do exist, in 2010 the U.S. government processed 422,228 employer applications requesting 851,556 foreign workers in 2010 so American corporations can give foreign workers American jobs right here on U.S. soil.
http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/annual_report.cfm
Now look at the U.S. population clock:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html
That’s NET international migrant worker every forty-six seconds entering the country and taking an American’s job.
Much of the “job growth” we see in the news today is going directly to these insourced foreign workers and immigrants both legal and illegal.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) was able to show that in Texas, for example, between 2001 and 2007 81% of all new job growth went to immigrant workers (both legal and illegal) instead of American natural born citizens.
http://cis.org/immigrants-filled-most-new-jobs-in-Texas
Our government also enables a broken U.S. immigration system that fostered the establishment of Spanish-speaking immigrant networks all over the SouthWest that block American citizens from working in the U.S. as those jobs go directly to the friends and family of the immigrants bypassing American workers.
A UCLA study showed that a weak economy in the state of California was the result of more than two million Spanish-speaking immigrant workers who were receiving their pay off the books without paying taxes. These immigrant networks only hire other immigrants.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/28/BUG92EURPQ1.DTL&type=business
U.S. population growth is also being omitted from the elitist and corporated owned media propaganda and it is substantial. Little people quickly grow up into adults that need good paying jobs.
The American people are being indoctrinated to accept the lie that free trade, free market monopoly capitalism, etc… etc…. etc…. are good for them when they are destroying the country right in front of their nose in an observable way… and the media is culpable.
The U.S. government needs to stop lying to the american people. We are not idiots. We can tell how the economy is by whats going on around us. The thousands of people still out of work,the high gas prices,and the high grocery prices. Especially the already poor population we really feel these effects. Just because the rich are getting richer doesnt mean that the economy is getting better. As far as the unemployment rate, the only reason the unemployment rate is going down is because people are exhausting their benefits and the government is putting an end to their claims.
Government ARE ALL ABOUT lying!
Nothing new.