Skip to main content

The Way out of a Recession is to Fix Things, not Hide

I.  Our economic problems are due primarily to the (semi)criminal activity of the investment community:  banks, the stock market, housing fraud, etc.  


II.  Joblessness is high:  9% at lowest; probably much higher.  People need jobs.  People really need jobs!


III.  Our government poured billions of dollars into avoiding a complete financial collapse;  into banks, automotive firms, State budgets, etc.  On top of spending trillions for two wars we never accounted for in our budgets, we have a massive budget deficit.


IV.  Every expert says there is a lot of money waiting to be invested in the U.S. economy, but it is waiting for stronger signs of recovery.  That is to say, "private" cash is not working for us.  


V.  Conservatives say that we have to balance our national budget, or Adam Smith will come and get us.  As John Boehner says, "if that results in massive layoffs, so be it!".  Kill the labor unions, too, while you are at it!  Genius solution!  Even more people out of work!  


VI.  Part of the problem is that we are shifting from an old industrial economy to a highly competitive world economy.  Many of the people out of work do not have the skills we really need.  


VII.  What should we do?  Government should do two things:  1) invest in the educational system.  That is what we really need:  better trained workers, and 2) invest in infrastructure.  Renewable energy sources, roads, railroads, bridges, lightning fast communications capabilities, etc.  That will make competitiveness and genuine innovation possible, and create millions of jobs.  


VIII.  That government investment will also create the opportunity for luring private investment (better trained workers, available infrastructure, and competitive tools).   That will get the economy rolling, increasing government income, and making genuine budget reductions possible.  Laying off people, scaring off investment, and scaring the public about ever recovering is not the way out of a recession.  


Who is going to tell John Boehner?


Who is going to tell people generally that we need government investment, not government frugality?  They elect people like the Boehner.  


Almost every economist says this is the time to invest.  Almost every politician listens to the Tea Party, instead. 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...