This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Obama Thinks that High Unemployment Is Okay: Unwise for Government to Spur Hiring
Obama Does Not Care About Reducing Unemployment
As I’ve repeatedly documented, Obama is not concerned with reducing unemployment. Indeed, despite his faux populism, Obama’s policies increase unemployment. D.C. is like a separate country, and the politicians are increasing jobs … but only for their wealthy buddies, and not the average American.
Indeed, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich says that Obama is simply trying to distract us, so we forget how grim the unemployment situation is. And, no, it is not bad advice from his advisers, but Obama himself which has made the calls on ignoring unemployment.
Americans are getting hammered, and so it is no surprise that unemployment is America’s number one concern.
Obama Considers Unemployment to Be a Good Thing
A new book by Ron Suskind shows that Obama thinks high levels of unemployment show that Obama thinks that everything is fine the way it is:
A few weeks later the economic team was back to the discussion of stimulus versus deficit reduction. The October jobless figures, out in mid-November, were now clear: unemployment had jumped to 10.2 percent.
***
Both [Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers and chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer] were, in fact, were concerned by something the president had said in a morning briefing: that he thought the high unemployment was due to productivity gains in the economy. Summers and Romer were startled.
“What was driving unemployment was clearly deficient aggregate demand,” Romer said, “We wondered where this could have been coming from. We both tried to convince him otherwise. He wouldn’t budge.”
Summers had been focused intently on how to spur demand, and on what might drive a meaningful recovery. Since the summer, in meeting after meeting, he’d ticked off the possible candidates, and then dismissed them – “it won’t be construction, it won’t be exports, it won’t be the consumer.” But without a rise in demand, in Summers’s view, nothing else would work.
***
But productivity? The implications were significant. If Obama felt that 10 percent unemployment was the product of sound, productivity-driven decisions by American business, then short-term government measures to spur hiring were not only futile but unwise.
The two economists strained their shared memory of dozens of meetings: had they said something he’d misconstrued? At one point, Summers had mentioned how Keynes once wrote in a 1938 letter that the labor movement depressed productivity, and maybe Obama saw that the disruptions in the economy from the Great Panic gave employers an opportunity – an excuse, actually – to harvest latent productivity gains.
After a month, frustration turned to resignation. “The president seems to have developed his own view,” Romer said.
Obama is wrong. Economists Lawrence Mishel, John Miller, Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Mike Konzcal, and many others have shown that unemployment is not a good sign, and that this episode of joblessness is not caused by increased productivity.
As the Wall Street Journal reported last year:
[In] a new paper[,] Steven Davis of Chicago Booth School of Business, R. Jason Faberman of the Philadelphia Fed and John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland — take a deep dive into Labor Department data and come up with an estimate of what they call “recruiting intensity,” a measure of employers’ vacancy-filling efforts including advertising, screening and wage offers.
Their finding: Employers haven’t been trying as hard as they usually do.
***
Depressing as it might seem, the finding is in some ways encouraging. It suggests that the trouble with hiring might be more a “cyclical” function of low business confidence than a chronic, “structural” ailment that will last for years to come.
As Business Insider notes, survey after survey shows that lack of demand is the main problem businesses face, and the main reason they aren’t hiring.
The rich may love unemployment, but small businesses don’t. Grim conditions for the average American means that small businesses are slowing down, rather than hiring.
- advertisements -
agreed that ananon's 15 minutes of hate blinds his argument. but perhaps what he's trying to say is that the rest of the world's people already caught on to your above realization many moons ago. and us "americons" have benefited (whether we were conscious of it or not) from when it was happening to them. now that it's happening to us, we want to frame it as solely a con perpetuated on "The American People" when in fact we have only been insulated from it til now due to the lucky fact we were born in the realm of the current enforcer of the Empire and were bred to believe this was due to our superior heritage, philosophical principles & moral standing.
of course, all this blinds us to the real issue, that all of us humans no matter where we were born seemed to have reached peak carrying capacity on this planet and each of us has to figure out a way to deal with it before it deals with us.
i know, zero-sum game's are a bitch, aren't they? (especially when they start shrinking into negative-sum games)
and us "americons" have benefited (whether we were conscious of it or not) from when it was happening to them.
.......................................................................
Oh but US citizens were absolutely conscious of it. They kept fighting anyone who dare point that they benefited from it, because they did not want the trick to be stopped, benefits were too good.
Now and in spite of their past success in terms of pushing others out of their resources, well, US citizens hit a limit they can not bypass: all the resources of the world are no longer enough to maintain their life style.
of course, all this blinds us to the real issue, that all of us humans no matter where we were born seemed to have reached peak carrying capacity on this planet and each of us has to figure out a way to deal with it before it deals with us.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
No. The only population that has reached peak carrying capacity on this Earth are US citizens.
When one has pushed others out of their own resources so that one can monopolize them, when one has no longer enough resources to support oneself despite the previous achievement, the situation is simple:
-killing the others will not free resources for one
-others killing one will free resources for them
The world has reached its carrying capacity in terms of US citizens. They are the overpopulating population. Not the others.
Feel free to point at the propaganda.
I do it every day, with ease as US propaganda is cheap.
So dont restrain yourself... Oh, but wait, US citizens can not self control. If they do not something, that is because they cant do it.
Some of those mongrels should try running a business some time - large or small. It's clear they are completely out of touch with the decision processes of any sort of business. They'd get a more applicable understanding of economics in the local bar than they learn from their years of academic view-from-the-moon theories.
Here's an idea - if they wonder why business owners aren't hiring, why don't they could go out and ask a few. It would clear up the confusion pretty quick.
Funny how unemployed people don't buy much stuff. Lack of demand and high unemployment who would ever thought that these two elements were conjoined?
They think the business owners are idiots who don't know anything about running a business.
Does this surprise anyone? Obama has a vision for America. Unfortunately for most of us his vision is for an America with higher unemployment to increase the role and power of the state and thereby increase the power of the ruling elite. His vision is for a militarily weak America to make it easier for other countries to bully the US into alignment with their views.
The Democrat party are willing accomplices in pursuinf his vision as are some of the Republicans. For the ruling class, party affiliations are not so much about true beliefs but ae only 'teams' to make the game more fun.
Obama loves America, but the America he loves is nothing like the America the rest of us love or want to live in.
I don't think Obama has a vision for America, Obama has a vision for Obama, if it involves America that is merely a side point.
His vision is for a militarily weak America to make it easier for other countries to bully the US into alignment with their views.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Made me laugh. Sure, that is really what Obama is displaying.
US cheap propaganda.
THat's true for a lot of Democrats. Why don't they just say America should be like Venezuela or Cuba and get it over with.
Neither party has any answers just hunger for power.
Cloward Pivens living large at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy
Got it?
Obama cares about wealth transfer and government supremacy over all areas of life. Period.
He's been pushing that his entire political life, that's what he outlines explicitly in his two, best selling books of all time! (that apparently no one read but me) and that's what he promised during the 2008 campaign.
In Obama's mind I'm sure that when he gets the country close to where he wants it to be he'll just redefine unemployment (lot's of rich people don't work now and we don't call them "unemployed" - so what's the big deal?).
So, while it's nice to see that more people are waking up (you mean, he really meant that shit?)...it's too late. We were already on the brink at the end of Bush II but we're way over the cliff now. Collapse is the only possible way out and the sooner it happens the better.
Obama in 2012!
If collapse is somehow held off for several more years or even a decade+ the best case scenario is that more and more native-born American workers get squeezed into a tighter space in the middle of the jobs market (and more of that will be public sector) while the rest sit around and collect government transfer payments. The bottom has already been mostly written off as "jobs Americans won't do" and the top is increasingly beyond Americans' education, work ethic and incentive structure. Guess how many doctors in Iowa today were born in the United States?
Agreeing with Bob Reich on something is generally not in my best interest, though his take on the Obama distraction, I concur. Obama is nothing but one freaking huge distraction. Never could I ever believed that this guy could distract the sheeple so well that they would not pay attention to double digit unemployment and underemployment, sky high fuel and food, costs, and the overall sh--ty state of the union. The elite globalist's never could have imagined that he would perform so very well for them and their plan to consolidate the NWO.
The problems today are multi-faceted... on the one hand, there is an intentional conspiracy to debilitate the working class, on the other, eficiencies (automation) / cost reductions (out-sourcing) / reduced demand (less wealth). We have a systemic problem, and trying to correct any one thing will not resolve anything, but the players at the table really have no interest in fixing anything, so it really doesn't matter. We are observing the absurd conclusion of the capitalist system... the descent to the lowest common denominator... increased demand for profit results in lower wages results in lower demand for products, results in lower profit, results in lower wages, etc etc etc. Welcome to the abyss.
Bingo! Ranger. TPTB don't care about the "90 percenters"... it is their "New Normal" if we let them have their way. Stop supporting TBTF, multinational corporations and politicians that accept lobbying money. Walmart kiss my ass! Support neighbors and local businesses even if it costs more. Those folks are us!
Ron Paul may have not have a chance but he scares the shit out of TPTB. Go Ron Go!
“What was driving unemployment was clearly deficient aggregate demand,”
......just ask Greenspan how to fix that. He's a pro.
deez nutz
“What was driving unemployment was clearly deficient aggregate demand,”
What we need is to legalize gambling, drugs and hookers. Put a vice den in every neighborhood. Some place for dad to hang out and mom to get a second job. So dads blackjack fetish and crack addiction would take his unemployment check and put it directly in moms pocket for groceries. Hell throw in a day care for the kids and you can run whole generations through the facility. Fuck toss in some education and you now have a community center.
Pay mom in food stamps and incorporate a store. Better yet just set up a credit system like the old company stores.
Cloward Pivens living large at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy
I love all the folks who call for eliminating the debt without acknowledging at the same time the elimination of the wealth.
Debt and wealth are the same thing, identical, a unitary being. Getting rid of 'x-amount' of debt gets rid of 'x-amount' of wealth.
When employees are fired, their wealth is eliminated ... right?
The loss of jobs is also loss of demand for employers. Get rid of all the debt and the result is ... Latvia. When US companies outsourced the jobs to China, they exported their customers at the same time. People don't like the 'finite planet' idea but the debt-wealth equation is a function of a closed system where every credit issued has a liability taken on at the same time.
Latvia is okay in Latvia but not okay when the 'New Latvia' is the US.
Hard to have an economy when the cost of workers is greater than what the workers can earn for their employers. This imbalance is a function of input costs, not debt. The debt-wealth model is in perfect balance, it takes little in the way of outside cost to throw this model out of balance.
This additional cost is added to the output side (for each employer) or subtracted from the demand side (workers cannot afford the goods they produce).
Maybe a lightbulb can go on and people will see the real problem: we've been too successful for too long and must now pay for our success.
"debt is wealth" Are you running for congress? Debt is a cost transfer either spatial or temporal with the hope (often false) that it will be paid later with additional cost financed by the hope (often false) that growth with continue.
if debt is wealth, why is it so often written off?
if debt is wealth, why is it so often written off?
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Huh? Because it is a convenient way to appropriate wealth? Or is it too blatant for US cheap propaganda standards?
steve,
The loss of jobs is also loss of demand for employers
No it is not neccessarily all the time.
Where Oblameuh is, and most employers of the large corporations are is IT's a Buyers market, so the Sellers, get rid of 2 out of 3 employees.
Because they are making DO, with that one thats left, as that one, is doing NOW the work of all three.
It's killing the one left,but he/she cannot afford to quit,gotta eat, and pay those bills.(and theres a 100 waiting for a chnace to work that 120hr/40hr work week.)
Lived it, seen it,and have been on the end of that chain.
It's always been cyclical,and this is how it is.
Typically this works well for the employers,until demand comes back, and the ONE that was the slave, no longer has to do that job, work those hours, and can go anywhere else for less work, and more pay.
This is the artificial Expansion in productivity,(per man hr worked) that lower costs,and gives the APPEARANCE of a productivity gain.( Which is BS in reality),unless your that ONE.
I don't know if you were trying to be sarcastic, but I don't think so, and that's what is so alarming. Your statement is completely false. Debt != Wealth. Never will be. Debt is future wealth, in that you hope one day to be able to make enough to pay off that debt. But regardless, this point is so self evident, I won't continue to explain further.
Debt is future wealth, in that you hope one day to be able to make enough to pay off that debt. But regardless, this point is so self evident, I won't continue to explain further.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
No, debt is present wealth one wishes to bring a substitute for in the future.
It is kind of baffling but unsurprising since US citizens are addicted to attrition games that US citizens keep denying simple, basic obvious facts.
Example (not including money, only barter):
A guy owns a tree farm but has not enough timber to build his house. He borrows what he needs from his neighbour, telling that in two years, the tree farm will have produced enough to pay back the debt.
Debt is present wealth as the house is built now (and not in two years)
If the farm tree produces enough in two years, the debt is paid (as a substitute was brought in)
if not, it is either repo or showing the middle finger to the neighbour (the US typical solution)
In all cases, debt is wealth and present wealth.
I think this is why accounting was invented. So people could atleast agree on definitions.
Debt is a liability. Can we agree on that? Alright. For the person who lent the money it is a receivable, an asset.
It is possible to increase your asset position by borrowing money. Borrowing $1m increases your liabilities by $1m and your assets by $1m.
Is that wealth? Personally I consider something that is income-producing (land, operating business) an asset. If you borrowed money to buy it, it is still just an asset, with a liability against it. Wealth would be the difference (equity/retained earnings) between your profits and your financing costs.
So yes, the total asset position of society would be decreased in event of a Jubilee (Mass Debt Restructuring). But who would actually lose their assets? The very richest. Sure, the people who gain most are those who borrowed the most, but a Jubilee is atleast fair in that everyone can start over from the same point (after a property distribution, whereby you own the house you occupy, details of which are yet to be resolved)
Agreeing on what?
I sent an example that debt can exist outside a money system. Bartering can support debt. Yet it is once again reduced to the money case.
Money is another case as money is debt. Anytime one accept a bit of a currency (hard or fiat), one accepts a bit of debt.
Jubilee would certainly not hurt the richest in the world. It would hurt the poorest in the world, those who have been forced to trade their wealth against USD, euros and yens.
And Jubilee certainly not let people start at the same level.
Before Jubilee, the level of consumption is different one from another. After Jubilee, the goods are kept.
If one has bought 95 per cent of all possible goods, wealth etc... possible through debt, flooding the rest with money paper, who is hurt after the Jubilee? The guy who bought 95 per cent of anything valuable? Or the guys who hold promises they will be able to buy the same in the future?
Debt is a tax on present and future wealth and earnings until it is repaid or forgiven.
If debt is wealth we can just charge our way to being a millionaire by borrowing 2 million dollars and paying one million back... oops still on the hook for a cool mil at 27% interest - at least you can go bankrupt - unless it was a student loan.
steve from virginia
"Debt and wealth are the same thing, identical, a unitary being."
Hey now little fella who bamboozled you? The Semanticist Korzybski pointed out that wealth is actually rescources, land,minerals, water, timber. That the rich have gained control of those things long ago.
What we see today is false wealth, paper wealth. That's what allows people to become billionaires overnight.
Then they take that faux wealth and purchase REAL wealth, as mentioned above.
But debt does not involve forcefully a money system.
Wooooo, feeling the bad sides of the US world order really leads US citizens to deny everything and anything.
Fantaisists.
Perhaps I haven't fully awakened, but the statement that "debt and wealth are the same thing" makes no sense whatsoever. And the statement that "when employees are fired, their wealth is eliminated" is senseless also. My job disappeared at the end of July. I still have my wealth, since I didn't spend everything I earned and converted some of it into precious metals. The sort of thinking illustrated by these statements only makes sense if "from virginia" really means "from the DC area". Wealth can be produced by human labor without any debt being involved.
One man's debt is another man's wealth. If I owe a mortgage to another person, my monthly mortgage payment becomes that person's monthly income.
My debt is his asset.
Destroy the debt, and you destroy the asset.
Wealth can be produced by human labor without any debt being involved.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
And?
How does it go against that debt is wealth?
It is going to be hard on locals when US citizens are going to start to expatriate en masse. Really hard.
WTF? Why would Obamb consider unemployment to be a "good" thing? Short term it gives cover to implement his social re-engineering agenda, but long term it just invites problems like we witnessed this year in Tunesia, Egypt, Lybia, etc...
I've posted in depth before on ZH that one way of fixing employment is to change the working week.
Cut hours. 8 hour movement 2.0.
Drop hours 10% and suddenly there's 100% employment. Wage negotiations start to swing in the favour of the labourer and the structural shift has been compensated for.
It's far more efficient than blowing a billionsquillion on ditch digging and filling.
It's worked in Germany.
The entire reason we built all the machines we have was so that one day we could work less than we did in the past. We seem to have forgotten that. Well, the future is here, and we can take this opportunity or we can waste it.
Obibble thinks it is a good thing because he will be laid off in 13 months and can't wait to go into the UE line with his bros.
wombats
High unemployment now means less culture shock later.
I used to read futurists predict that automation/robotics would cause high unemployment and all those disenfranchised workers would require retraining.
Now the automation is human residing in offshored manufacturing facilities.
It takes about a generation, 10 years, for practices to be accepted by the genpop. We now see young workers accepting the idea that even if they can find a job it will be low pay with no bennies. That it is common to hold down two or three jobs to compensate for the previous high paying single job.
It's all factored into the game plan. The greater the acceptance of a changed reality the less the chance of rioting and revolution.
It may also be possible that high unemployment is a means to increasing repression of the general population by the NWO/TPTB/elitists. A recent statement by a congresscritter indicated that blacks would riot if Obama were not the president. Another statement, from some Black Panther leader, echoed the same sentiments. Add in the Hoffa statement, referring to the Tea Party: "President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong". It sounds like the fascists are eager to foment violent racial and class strife. I hope that I am misreading the possibilities.
On a different tack, I've often wondered if any serious thinkers (Thomas Sowell or someone like him) have ever considered the effects of what I've come to call the "Star Trek" economy. While we never really got to see the general society supporting Captain Kirk's adventures, I always inferred that productivity was so high that most could live lives of leisure. What would people do if all the food, clothing, shelter, computers, cars, etc. required minimal human effort to produce? What if nanobots could assemble everything one could possible want? Would most people veg out? Dedicate their lives to learning or philosophy? This is now personal, as I am between the end of my last job and looming retirement. I do have sufficient resoures to get by. But what do I do after I've written all those computer programs (my profession since 1973) I never had time to do while employed? Or after I've read all those wonderful books I never had time to finish? And what would the less intellectually curious do in a similar situation?
Go look at Detroit or any other rust belt city, or the north of England. The socialists have won, the working class is free.
No more fat bellied capitalists in top hats, no more dark satanic mills, no more trudging to work in the dark of 6 am. The working class is free to develop their full potential, to open like a flower. To remake society as they wish. Go have a look and see what the future holds.
There was no need for money because energy = mass had been solved. You need a hammer? The Heizenburg Compensator would turn any object into energy and then reconstitute it as the new item (hammer). Need more engergy? just convert some "worthless" mass into energy. Nothing to trade for because anything you need is provided for the asking.
Of course...the HC does not exist and here in NON-TV land we have to make energy by converting carbon or dangerous isotopes, and have to make stuff out of what we find in the ground or grows (iron and wood for the hammer).
Of course, the bankers have created the Fiat perpetual debt machine that does an amazing trick...it turns a whole planet of work (our energy) into money for the few at the top of the banking heap. They might touch the moon standing on their pile of paper while the rest of us starve.
Alas for US citizens, bankers have no power against an expansion scheme reaching the point when expanding is no longer an option.
Earth is finite. And it is like US citizens have no experience in this, they forced a world depression when their ponzi scheme based on always more indian lands to rob came to an end.
either that or we aloow ths syetm to work properly and banks and people go bankrupt
ie the debts ahve to be clkeared by mass ban kruptcy and ther system can then grown froma much lower but more sustain able level
Is your keyboard missing keys or did you swallow a lot of paint as a child? Your posts are unintelligible at best.
aggrgate demand my arse
ist all due to excessive debt and speculation at every level causzed by a system that is based on debt thaqt must grow at any cost
we have reached the system mathemitical limit
we have toi have a new system to have any hope of a so calle3d recovery
"Lack of aggregate demand" is the opening sentence of any Keynesian bloviating that inevitably concludes with "we need government stimulus."
Now, I may be confused, but is GW advocating stimulus? To reduce unemployment?
It really doesn't help that the people cited disagreeing with the Obama are Larry Summers and Christina Romer, for chrissakes. I would have thought that they've been discredited so much by now that when you look up "alchemy" in the encyclopedia, you find their official government portraits.
Yeah but where are those 2 clowns Romer and Summers today? Teaching at elite schools. That is freaking scary the product those schools turn out.
Lack of demand results in business slowdown. What a quaint idea.
Lack of demand is the plan. Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc are all bought and paid for. Blame Gobalization. If you want the US economy to do better then we have to bring back US sovereignty. You can't have a high standard of living for the "90 percenters" if you have globalization.
Globalization is deeply controversial, however. Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people. Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.
Pick your poison.... I for one, care about my grandkids. Fuck the bankers, multinational corporations and the politicians who work for them instead of the people who elected them!
Globalization is deeply controversial, however. Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people. Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Many things are controversial in the US world order because US citizens are used to monetizing conflicts.
A typically manufactured US like controversy type.
Funny.
On this site, it is all about money paper this or that. And basic observations show that as typical US citizens, what is true for them is false for non US citizens.
A buck in US citizens'pocket is worth nothing. A buck in a non US citizen's pocket is worth everything.
What globalization has done is move wealth from exterior countries to the US and stuff their coffers with USD.
The first line of the controversy shows the manufacturing
No, proponents of globalization state that globalization has made rich countries much richer by applying Smithian economics and beating the limits of wealth inherent to a nation.
That is all. Once again, as victimology is high among US citizens, they love to depict themselves as victims.
They would want to be the sacrificed of the world while, by all accounts, non US citizens are the sacrificed in order to prop up the US lavish life style.
Once this re established, it makes globalization much less controversial to US citizens as well, it is the fate of non US citizens to sacrifice themselves so that the US unique experiment, the beacon of the western world, can enjoy all its priviledges.