The global economy faces a deep crisis ”” deeper, in some ways, than the panic that struck financial markets in August 2008. At least then there was the prospect of short-term government action: tax cuts and spending increases, quantitative easing, and the like. Those measures averted total meltdown, yet the United States, Europe and Japan failed to restore strong, self-sustaining growth, leaving governments so deeply indebted that aggressive new policy interventions are probably not feasible for now. Indeed, what seems to have sent markets panicking last week is a dawning sense that capitalist democracies may have made more promises than their economies are capable of fulfilling ”” without significant growth-generating structural reforms. Or so it would appear from the recent dramas over bailing out Greece and raising the U.S. debt ceiling.
For Americans, a dead-in-the-water economy would be not only a colossal waste of productive potential but also a human tragedy, as Friday’s announcement of another U.S. unemployment rate above 9 percent cruelly demonstrated. “We need to create a self-sustaining cycle where people are spending, companies are hiring and our economy is growing,” President Obama said.
Well said. But how?….
Obama speaks of stimulating growth, but we here in Merced County, California…..and several others in the San Joaquin Valley…..will believe that when we see it. Merced County……the center of the agricultural industry……is one of the poorest in the country. We have been ignored and forgotten to the point where we don’t believe our politicans when they speak of job growth. [b]There have been, and there are, no plans for high-tech companies to locate any of their business operations here. NONE![/b] Instead, the only new jobs we’ve seen pay minimum wage at big-box stores and fast-food joints. Period!
We have the people with the necessary education and qualifications here in Los Banos, for instance, who must commute 160+ miles every day to and from Silicon Valley over a winding and often dangerous mountain highway to their employers in San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View; spending, in some cases, $100+ per week for gas……and yes, we do have carpooling, which isn’t always feasible for everyone.
We have been lied to to with news of new jobs being created,[b] but we haven’t seen a single one of those new jobs in this county[/b]……where those jobs are so desperately needed. And it isn’t just this county which is affected; the same applies to Stanislaus County. And with the present political climate in Washington, we are not likely to see any improvement anytime soon. So is it any wonder why we think we’re being fed nothing but empty promises from this administration?
It is a welcome relief to hear the voice of reason emerge from the Washington Post after listening to the dramatic cacophony that overwhelmed the recent coverage of the debt ceiling debate.
I am afraid the when the media refers to U.S. Growth, they mean growth in the size of government. At least they may be starting to realize that the government [b]will not[/b] continue to grow if the people cannot create wealth and expect to hang on to it., even though the case is that he government [b]cannot[/b] continue to grow while the people are stifled. Now if they can figure out that that can only be accomplished by shrinking the bite that government takes from the people…..
I don’t see reason so much here as a befuddled recognition that we have somehow run into a hard limit.