Content – Aug 26, 2011

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Admin

Newsletter Header

The Content

August 26, 2011

In This Issue

Quote of the Day

The slow disappearance of the American working man

The wrong budget analogy

Obama's got plenty of options to right the economy

The constitutional populist realignment of 2012

Huntsman says if elected he would call on wealthy to 'sacrifice'

Quick Links

Follow us on Twitter

Quote of the Day

"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."

-Frederic Bastiat

The slow disappearance of the American working man

Goodbye workin' man

As President Barack Obama puts together a new jobs plan to be revealed shortly after Labor Day, he is up against a powerful force, long in the making, that has gone virtually unnoticed in the debate over how to put people back to work: Employers are increasingly giving up on the American man.

If that sounds bleak, it's because it is. The portion of men who work and their median wages have been eroding since the early 1970s. For decades the impact of this fact was softened in many families by the increasing number of women who went to work and took up the slack. More recently, the housing bubble helped to mask it by boosting the male-dominated construction trades, which employed millions. When real estate ultimately crashed, so did the prospects for many men. The portion of men holding a job-any job, full- or part-time-fell to 63.5 percent in July-hovering stubbornly near the low point of 63.3 percent it reached in December 2009. These are the lowest numbers in statistics going back to 1948. Among the critical category of prime working-age men between 25 and 54, only 81.2 percent held jobs, a barely noticeable improvement from its low point last year-and still well below the depths of the 1982-83 recession, when employment among prime-age men never dropped below 85 percent. To put those numbers in perspective, consider that in 1969, 95 percent of men in their prime working years had a job.

Click here to read the full article at Yahoo News

The wrong budget analogy

More twaddle

Washington's renewed obsession with government budget deficits has become a major obstacle to dealing with the U.S. unemployment crisis. At the root of this misplaced focus are widespread misconceptions about the role of deficits in the economy.

The fact that high unemployment and budget deficits are occurring at the same time has generated confusion about the real sources of the slump. The increased deficit is a consequence, not a cause, of the downturn. When economic activity falls, so does tax revenue. Some categories of government spending, such as unemployment benefits, automatically rise during a recession. This contributes to a higher deficit.

Click here to read the full article at the Los Angeles Times

Obama's got plenty of options to right the economy- He's just got to fight for them

Even more twaddle

Here's the policy reality facing the president: The economy is stuck in the mud and the American people are losing faith that policy makers can do anything about it. As long as GDP growth is persistently below trend-trend being around 2.5 percent-the unemployment rate won't be going anywhere good anytime soon. Paychecks, meanwhile, are declining in real terms, so we're stuck in a cycle where the weak job market hurts household budgets, which trims consumption, which discourages investors.

The only games in town are fiscal or monetary stimulus-there, I said the 's' word-but the president is boxed in, it is said, by three forces: First, he's got no job-creation bullets left; second, even if he did, and American people don't believe the government can help on the jobs front (a pathetic 26 percent have confidence in Washington's ability to solve economic problems); and, third, Republicans in Congress will block any idea he proposes anyway. Thankfully, none of these challenges are as insurmountable as they might seem, and pushing relentlessly to overcome them is the president's best, and only, chance to change the fundamental direction of the debate, find his footing, and create some momentum for the economy and for himself.

Click here to read the full article at the New Republic

The constitutional populist realignment of 2012

Progressive elite don't understand currency

How to create tens of millions of jobs, good jobs? Much hinges on the answer to this question.

Long gone are the golden Reagan-Clinton years that saw almost 40 million new positions created. In the decade since Clinton left office America created a paltry 3 million under George W. Bush, and Barack Obama recently was scored as having the worst job creation for a first period in office of any president since 1890, excepting Hoover.

Click here to read the full article at Forbes

Huntsman says if elected he would call on wealthy to 'sacrifice'

Good luck getting the nomination now

In an interview airing Thursday on PBS's "Newshour," Republican presidential contender and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said, if elected, he would consider asking the richest Americans to "sacrifice."

"As president, I wouldn't hesitate to call on a sacrifice from all of our people, even those at the very highest end of the income spectrum," Huntsman said.

Click here to read the full article at The Hill

About The Wilkow Majority

The Wilkow Majority broadcasts live, Monday-Friday from 12-3pm EST on SIRIUS XM Patriot.

The Wilkow Majority
1221 Avenue of the Americas
New York City, New York 10020

The Wilkow Majority | 1221 Avenue of the Americas | New York City | NY | 10020

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.