| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Greg Butterfield" |
| Date: |
21 Jan 2004 08:44:12 AM |
| Object: |
What good is a recovery without jobs? |
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 22, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
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WHAT GOOD IS A "RECOVERY" WITHOUT JOBS?
By Milt Neidenberg
Cheerful thoughts about a boom economy in the foreseeable future have
been seriously dampened by the December job-growth figures reported by
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Far from the 150,000 new jobs predicted
by just about every high-priced Wall Street analyst and bourgeois
economist, they turned out to be a miniscule 1,000. When the figures
were released, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 133.55 points
and the NASDAQ 13.33.
How could they have gone so far off target? Do they lack the data to
predict so significant an economic statistic as job growth?
They went astray because the economy is unpredictable and expanding out
of control, even while there are signs of stagnation and crisis.
The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 9 rounded up a group of Wall Street
economists for a consensus. There was none. "The payroll gain of only
1,000 is ... quite shocking. ... I would certainly not have expected
anything resembling that," said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Han
***** Financial Services. And there was James Glassman, a J.P. Morgan
economist: "We're at least three to four million jobs below what we
should be."
Then there were the optimists. "Over the next few months, all the signs
are that payroll employment will rise dramatically," stated Ian
Richardson, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. But the chief
economic officer at Wells Fargo, Sung Won Sohn, thought otherwise:
"Neither business nor potential employees have confidence in the
economy."
The current fear is that the economic expansion, which began around
Novem ber 2001, is running out of steam. It has been a jobless recovery.
Overall the economy dropped by 74,000 jobs in 2003. Since President Bush
took office in January 2001, over 2.3 million jobs have disappeared.
More than 300,000 workers were permanently dropped from the job market,
and the index of hours worked fell below the 1998 level.
The traditional unemployment rate does not count various segments of the
working- age population--people not looking or working part-time. More
"discouraged workers" explains why the unemployment rate dropped from
5.9 to 5.7 in December, but the Bush administration put a positive spin
on it.
Consumer confidence is on the decline. Consumer spending represents two-
thirds of the Gross Domestic Product. People can't continue to spend
when there is no income. Consequently, under the most relentless,
unprecedented rise in productivity, the markets have become glutted with
goods and services.
Intense exploitation of the workers and the oppressed sections of the
population also has drawbacks for the capitalists. As Karl Marx
explained, if the capitalists are exploiting fewer workers, there's less
unpaid labor, less extraction of surplus value, and consequently less
profit for the boss class.
ECHOES OF 1930S
This is no normal recovery. A Jan. 10 New York Times article, headlined
"As Far as Jobs Go, Bush Can Only Wait," said: "Both the White House and
the Fed [Federal Reserve Board] are confronted by a recovery unlike any
other in history. Economic growth has been soaring for months, corporate
profits have shot up, and the stock market has regained much of its
ebullience. Yet job creation has been slower than in almost any previous
recovery and wage growth has slowed to a crawl."
Today more than one out of every 10 workers is unemployed. This rises to
three out of 10 among Black and Latino teen agers and over two out of 10
in the Black adult population. The unofficial rate is even higher. These
brutal facts expose the so-called trickle-down theory: that good times
bring good jobs.
Is this a recovery unlike any other in history? No. It is like the
1930s. Edmund S. Phelps, professor of political economy and director of
the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University, commented
in the Jan. 5 Wall Street Journal that "The technological developments
and overseas tensions that slowed and limited the 1930s recovery have
clear parallels in the economy's present situation." The unemployment
rate then was one out of every four.
Prices briefly dropped during the most acute stage of the economic
crisis of the 1930s, but the upward spiral of prices soon resumed.
Today, prices of commodities are on the rise due to runaway deficits and
rising interest rates, but even more because of the monumental war
expenditures that are causing the devaluation of the dollar.
According to Robert Pollack, professor of economics at the University of
Mas sachusetts at Amherst, "Five percent more money is being pumped into
the economy than taken out in tax revenues ... and 60 percent of the 3.3
percent growth in the GDP is attributed to the military."
MILITARY SPENDING A DEPRESSANT
Military spending of the astronomical dimensions required to pay for the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars has diverted hundreds of billions of dollars
from much-needed social programs. Sam Marcy, chairperson of Workers
World Party, said in a 1975 discussion bulletin, "Instead of acting as a
stimulant to capitalist expansion and accumulation [military spending]
turns into its dialectical opposite and becomes a depressant. Like any
drug, it may operate to accelerate recovery from illness, but if
administered on an ever-continuing and ever-increasing basis with out
letup, it becomes toxic and poisons the organism." This is even more
true today.
Dark clouds loom for the capitalist system. If there is no job growth in
the coming months, the Bush reelection will be in trouble. A number of
Democratic presi den tial candidates, as the 2004 election grows nearer,
will present proposals that they promise will bring back jobs, peace and
prosperity. Promising won't make it so. These candidates support the
system of monopoly capitalism and the exploitation of labor for profit.
The occupations of Iraq and Afghan istan have not brought Wall Street
and Washington spoils from their wars of aggres sion. At home, the
capitalists believe the cure lies in layoffs, cutbacks in social
programs, and intolerable productivity and poverty.
To the multinational workers and oppressed nationalities, recovery means
jobs for all and insuring work opportunities for the oncoming
generation. It means a rise in the standard of living for them and their
loved ones. There is a conjuncture of class-wide interests with other
movements--the anti-war activists, the civil rights/civil liberties and
anti-globalization resisters. And most important, the struggle must be
elevated within the labor movement, especially building solidarity with
immigrant workers. The crisis requires joining forces and taking the
independent road to fight back.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY,
NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. Subscribe wwnews-
on@wwpublish.com. Unsubscribe wwnews-off@wwpublish.com. Support the
voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
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| User: "InsuranceBroker" |
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| Title: Re: What good is a recovery without jobs? |
21 Jan 2004 09:29:26 AM |
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Subject: What good is a recovery without jobs?
From: (Greg Butterfield)
Date: 1/21/2004 9:44 AM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: <871c377.0401210644.1be1a074@posting.google.com>
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 22, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
WHAT GOOD IS A "RECOVERY" WITHOUT JOBS?
It clearly is good for the Banks. Morgan just purchased Bank One. Morgan is
now the combination of Chase and Morgan two years ago. Banks make a lot of
money when you have a nation that keeps its interest rates in negative real
returns.
The US public debt is now pass the 7 trillion dollar level. It was less than a
trillion when Ron Reagan took the oath of office. The nation would disappear
without a federal reserve system designed to steal the public money to fund the
banks.
Doing Insurance business in the Garden State
.
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