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Remember the goal: 220-60-1 for 2012. Two-hundred and twenty Democratic House Members, Sixty solid Liberal Democratic Senators and a Democratic President. This is the minimum we need to create jobs, restore economic balance, create a secure social safety net, affordable health care and balance our budget. If we do not achieve this, we face…literally face…disaster and a Fascist form of government. All the deaths in all the wars we have fought for freedom and equality will have been wasted.
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Well,of course we do not mean a Republican outside of government. We need to fire every single Fascist, every Neocon Republican, therefore, in Congress–the congress members in the House and Senate and the Republican state governors who have abandoned and now persecute the working man in favor of the rich monopolists.
For all the economic proposals, suggestions and schemes proposed by economists on both sides of the political spectrum, the answer to our current financial problems…and they are primarily financial problems, not economic problems…is job creation.
Forget easing the money supply, and cutting government and bringing the boys home from war. We need to immediately create 5 million jobs—direct government jobs—and use the tax revenue from those jobs to create private industry jobs. Because our economy is 80% service oriented, meaning that less than 10% is manufacturing and about 12% is government, we can create non-derivative jobs.
In other words, we can create direct government jobs that take action–restores a building or a bridge, organizes senior citizen centers, improves conditions in medical clinics, cleans and paints and rebuilds areas of our national and state parks, establishes self-help programs for veterans, maintains forclosed housing stocks and commercial buildings, builds homeless shelters, and helps to build housing for the disabled and elderly poor…all these jobs and others are needed right now.
And there are many more highly technical jobs, like IT for small communities or civic organizations, or helping small businesses through the SBA. We need remedial teachers in math, and basic English and history and social workers to deal with problems at home so that kids can be free to learn.
If we peg these jobs at a median of $40,000, it will cost us $200 billion a year. But if these jobs work out the way this economy normally works, two things will happen. First, the tax revenues from those jobs, rather than paying unemployment, will return about 20% to the Treasury from the workers and the ancillary taxes…sales taxes on purchases, etc.
That means that even the first year we will see the return at about $40 billion. In addition the jobs created in the derivative service sector will amount to about 1.1 economic benefit…at least. This means that another $44 billion will be returned, and at the same time, create a number of private job openings for some of those 5 million.
So the first year, using this little example, we will have ended unemployment for 5 million, created another 5 million jobs in the service sector and spent about half of what we are currently spending on unemployment and welfare, about $350 billion. This program will actually cut the deficit by about $350 billion, but it will also do something else.
The five million people out of work are those who are either currently or will soon be foreclosed upon by the financial industry. A large segment of the $200 billion will go…about 25% of it at minimum, to the housing market. This means an immediate propping up of the housing market, raising the value of homes within 6 months. This removes one of the key factors that potentially might send the economy into a worse tailspin.
This economy, as bad as it is, is not as bad as it can be if we are not careful. We have had no growth, virtually zero. Here is what will happen if we do not create new public jobs. Our society will begin to crumble…the financial health of individual households…will begin to collapse in on one another, with social support fail-safes falling to family fail-safes, like savings and pension funds.
When people eventually run out of savings or or their 401ks or Roth IRAs, we will then see a large structural collapse, larger numbers of chain stores and restaurants, now hanging on, will go broke and shut down. These are meager, minimal jobs, not even enough to live on, but when they collapse, the two and three-income families will go on the dole. That means food bank increases, added housing for the poor, homeless shelters, tent cities on a massive scale.
A 20% unemployment rate would mean a 25% to 30% actual rate of intense below-poverty existence for every third person. This would not only be disastrous for the individual families but it would be catastrophic for the country. We have neglected reinvestment in our government institutions on an increasing basis for the last 30 years.
We did so because of a false philosophy, perhaps even a deliberately false economic philosophy promoted by wealthy Right Wing monopolists, The first tenet of this philosophy was that, if you cut tax rates, particularly on the wealthy, the money saved by individuals would be invested in the economy and tax revenues from the greater number of businesses and employed individuals with higher salaries would actually increase government revenues.
It never did. Tax cuts went into the pockets and into that small area at the top of the economic pyramid and never created the jobs nor the revenues to cover even a fraction of the lost revenues from tax cuts. A study under the Republican CBO chief, Douglass Holtz-Eakin showed that tax cuts never pay for themselves and thus always take us further into debt. But what are a few facts when millionaires need tax breaks?
Clinton has showed where we can get jobs that can legitimately pay for themselves…in actual savings. In one case he points out how buildings have been retrofitted and the changes resulted in energy savings that more than paid for the project in a short term. We have seen how government participation and loans created a huge lithion-ion battery development program in Michigan which has created tens and tens of thousands of jobs.
Just painting flat asphalt roofs white with a certain kind of paint can save substantial amounts of money on cooling costs. These are simple jobs, with minimal training…jobs that cannot be sent overseas. We can also do something with our deteriorating housing stock.
We need a law that says that properties abandoned for a certain period of time become property of the state. At that point they should be assessed in value at their current value and that amount of money credited to the homeowner if the house is left abandoned. We could then restore these homes, increasing their value and sell them to pay off the money owed to the original homeowner plus the restoration costs. Part of the deal is simply that they will be rented once restored until sold. With millions of abandoned homes, this could be a major financial enterprise, paying for millions of jobs.
But none of this will work until we decide that we will no longer furnish jobs for people in India, China, Singapore, Korea and even Mexico and Brazil until we have found jobs for people here in the U.S.A. Trade policies need to be strengthened and any company taking jobs outside the U.S. must pay a tariff on those goods manufactured abroad. They can totally relocate abroad, if that is what they want…headquarters, CEO, executive suite…the total package can change citizenship if they want. Otherwise, to have a company here, you need to pay taxes here.
We should consider nationalizing the utilities and the coal industries, paying off those corporations over time from revenues. Utilities are basic necessities and we need the control in the hands of the government and the coal which powers utilities also in the hands of those who will mine it safely and as cleanly as possible. This will not only reduce rates but create tens of thousands more jobs.
We must tax the top 5% of Americans by an additional ten percent. In other words, if you are making $200,000, and your taxes are $40,000, they would now be $44,000. A slight handicap, but those kinds of numbers, all the way up the ladder, will balance our budget at current spending levels almost immediately. Even in this recession, so long as we enact a program to put 5 million people to work for two years, gradually changing them out into private industry jobs.
That’s it. That’s all we need to do. Let’s get to work. Get your congress person on board. Vote Democratic or if possible, Green or whatever more-leftist Party is available to you. We are so far shifted to the Right that only those left of Democratic are truly Liberal.