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The New Economy?
Robert Reich says that it's consumers, not investors, who will need to lead a recovery out of our current recession:
Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from.
They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings.
....My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years — featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere — simply cannot be sustained.
The X marks a brand new track — a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come.
For many years it's looked as if we were getting closer and closer to an economy in which there flatly wasn't enough unskilled work left to keep employment at normal levels. Stagnant median wages were the canary in the coal mine, with permanently higher unemployment coming in the future. But I dunno: maybe the future is now.
I'll write more about this later so that everyone can tell me where I'm wrong. At least, I hope I'm wrong. We'll see.
stagnant?
It is frequently cited that median wages have been stagnant but when you look at wages plus benefits, I believe they have gone up quite a bit, around what we might expect from productivity growth. The problem is that health care costs have gone up without a commensurate growth in actual improvements in health. So workers haven't been getting very much for their additional benefits.
Now this doesn't apply to all workers. Many do not have benefits. But focusing exclusively on median wage stagnation may obscure the issue ...
Less for workers
micahd above is correct, healthcare costs have eaten a lot into wage growth.
But it's also true that the rewards for productivity gains have gone not to labor, but to capital owners. Nothing else explains the huge growth in wealth inequality over the past 30 years. Not sure why exactly, but I bet a weaker labor movement and weaker worker protections has something to do with it.
I don't agree that there is a shortage of unskilled jobs, it's just that mid-skill manufacturing jobs are disappearing due to technology and international competition. And the loses are spreading to mid-level white collar. It's the disappearance of those middle-tier paying jobs that's the problem.
I don't have a clue how sustainable consumer demand can be jump started. But if we can't, we'll have a sustained global depression.
It is as bad as you think
Reich has been writing a series of articles regarding new technologies that are replacing both manufacturing and white-collar jobs.
"Economists at Alliance Capital Management took a look at employment trends in 20 large economies and found that between 1995 and 2002 -- before the asset bubble and subsequent bust -- 22 million manufacturing jobs disappeared. The United States wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11 percent of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the Japanese lost 16 percent of theirs. Even developing nations lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20 percent decline, and China had a 15 percent drop."
The near collapse of the global economy will only hasten this. Even if some growth returns, firms will find it more profitable in the long run to hire new technology rather than reconstitute their workforce.
Only analytic/symbolic work and jobs that require interpersonal skills will be plentiful.
Here are some Reich links: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/05/29/auto_industry/
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/robert_reich/2009/05/the...
Cut government spending and
Cut government spending and cut taxes on the middle class. You'll be amazed at the economic growth and spending that will take palce.
Increase government spending and raise taxes on the rich and watch government ineptitude tank what's left of the economy and stifle whatever new economy is out there waiting to germinate and grow.
hand to mouth, day to day
Taxes for the middle class were cut during the last eight years, which partly led to the current crisis. Most of the states with budget deficits have deficits because those states cut taxes on middle class incomes, too. Cuts to middle class taxes were made, but there was no amazing concomitant economic growth. Economic growth comes from consumer spending, and the deliberate holding down of wages since Reagan was president has finally worked its magic, preventing a substantial portion of the economy's participants from being consumers. Now they live hand to mouth, day to day, and no economy can grow when so many of its participants no longer have discretionary incomes.
tax cuts
I have a middle class income, and I hadn't noticed any tax cuts in the past 8 years. What's your definition of middle class ? $500,000 and up ? Why don't you list the tax cuts you're talking about, and display which income levels and declaration status these cuts affected ?
W. Bush sent most everyone a
W. Bush sent most everyone a check for $600 in 2008.
Bush refund
That's a joke, right ? So where was my $600 tax cut this year ? And where will it be next year ? I believe it was a one-time. It also capped out at around $85000, or thereabouts as I recall.
hey cannot eat anymore bananas
The joke is you forgot W. Bush's other tax rebate check he sent to most households in his first term. You also forgot W. Bush's huge tax cuts the upper middle class and that most states cut income taxes for higher incomes also. No economic growth will come from tax cuts to the already wealthy because they cannot use the extra discretionary income to consume more goods and services. The upper middle classes and the wealthy can only invest more income, they cannot spur any economic growth through increased consumption because they cannot eat anymore bananas.
Bad old days
"Increase government spending and raise taxes on the rich and watch government ineptitude tank what's left of the economy ..."
Yeah, just like in the mid to late 1990's. Man, those were awful times. Rising productivity, strong real wage growth, plummeting federal debt. Why anyone would want to revisit that scene is beyond me.
zombie banks make zombie nations
All of the public monies spent on ensuring over leveraged and poorly managed banks did not go bankrupt should have been spent on benefits for median and lower wage earners, who financed the economy's growth the past thirty years with stagnant wages.
The economy will not recover for thirty years, while the zombie banks wait for all of their bad mortgage loans to mature so they can finally take them off of their books. Had the banks been allowed to fail and the stimulus monies spent on people earning at or below median wage, the recovery would most likely already be under way. Now the only way for the US economy to overcome W. Bush's and Obama's foolish give away of American workers' future incomes to the rich is to directly seize wealth and redistribute it, which is not going to happen.
Economy
I've had some idea running around vaguely in my head like Reich's for the last year. What if today's employment rate is really all the jobs the economy can sustain after the debt bubble is wiped out? In other words, what if the unemployment rate of today is the permanent unemployment rate? What sort of political and economic future does that hold for the US and the world? Will the politics of resentment (Palin) be the dominant political force of the future? Does Huey Long rise again? Will we see an economy based on the Central America/Russian model of an oligarchy run by Goldman and friends (the fate of the mortgage cramdown)? Or do we just keep muddling along preaching some sort of mild pragmatism on the same path in spite of the unemployed? Got me.
EL: "What if today's
EL: "What if today's employment rate is really all the jobs the economy can sustain after the debt bubble is wiped out?"
That's the lump of labor fallacy. Folks have been worrying about it for a century or two, and it's never come to pass. In the 19th century spinning and weaving machines made cloth with a fraction of the labor needed by hand in the 18th century, yet there were still jobs. In the 20th century neither factory automation nor computers interfered with full employment. There's no reason to think the path will be any different in the 21st century.
EL: "Will we see an economy based on the Central America/Russian model of an oligarchy run by Goldman and friends?"
We already have that.
labor markets
I'm not as sanguine as you seem to be about the future for labor, although I acknowledge your observation about the past 200 years. One problem, as I see it, is the increasing sophistication (read educational levels) required for a lot of the new work. For me there are two possibilities: either we figure out how to raise the absolute IQ levels of the world's population, or Heinlein and others inherit the earth via a dramatic increase in intelligence and autonomy of artificial life forms, thereby assigning to the work force of the future the less arduous task of supervising robots at work.
Limits to Growth.
And what if it is Limits To Growth (finite resources) coming into force? We have probably passed peak per capita consumption of most limited physical resources, such as oil, and minerals. In fact this probably happened two or three decades back. Now now we are trying to figure out how to have a "growing" economy, which produces less stuff than it used to. Only if we can start measuring GDP in units that aren't directly linked to stuff can we do that.
So if this is correct, all those bubbles we were blowing, were just a desperate attempt to disguise the fact that we were still growing. That game could only go on so long. In the meanwhile, we haven't been paying attention to the real issue, meeting human needs with fewer inputs of primary resources.
When I was a young man I
When I was a young man I read a lot of science fiction. My favorite author was Asimov. I used to think that when robots took over all of the manufacturing and many of the administrative jobs that there would be a lot more socialists.
Wrong so far, but the labor glut will continue to increase with advances in automation, so the choices for many will be work for pennies or spread the wealth. Those are the essential two answers I my limited imagination comes up with.
Why have we been importing more unskilled labor?
Kevin says:
For many years it's looked as if we were getting closer and closer to an economy in which there flatly wasn't enough unskilled work left to keep employment at normal levels. Stagnant median wages were the canary in the coal mine, with permanently higher unemployment coming in the future. But I dunno: maybe the future is now.
So, why did we need to import all those millions of unskilled illegal immigrants?
Labor can neither be
Labor can neither be imported nor exported in a market economy. Human beings flow to opportunities based on individuals' initiative and the equilibrium between supply and demand. Slave labor, on the other hand, can be imported, exported and traded like any other commodity.
unskilled labor
Perhaps because there weren't enough natural citizens who were willing to do 8 hours of hard work for low wages ?
A commenter over at
A commenter over at economist's view pointed out (and I concur) that every recession since '91 has required greater and greater levels of stimulus to recover, and that the employment gains have been weaker and weaker. As of right now, there has been *no* increase in employment in this century. We have finally reached the point where there are no other bubbles left to distract the masses as the rich/MNCs screw them over.
What we need is an entirely new social contract that reduces finance and management to its proper position as fostering the creation of new productive industries, instead of being the leaches sucking the life out of anything productive.
Does Obama understand this? TurboTax Timmy and Summers say "NO". Even Reich himself is still blathering around about free trade and retraining. Hey, we saw that movie in the 90's. It only looked like it worked because of the internet bubble. Good jobs still disappeared in droves.
"Most of the states with
"Most of the states with budget deficits have deficits because those states cut taxes on middle class incomes, too. Cuts to middle class taxes were made, but there was no amazing concomitant economic growth"
Actually, the facts prove you wrong. The economy was growing under Bush before the mortgage meltdown and tax receipts went up between the mini-recession after 9/11 and the mortgage meltdown. Think I'm wrong. The federal reserve has the data.
States, liberal ones mind you, are in fiscal trouble because they spend too much. Just like Obama's federal government today. Name the states in the most dire financial trouble and I'll show you states with the most liberal spending programs in the nation.
Cut back spending and cut taxes. That's real growth.
California is in the most
California is in the most fiscal trouble because it combines liberal spending policies with conservative revenue policies: It can't cut spending and can't raise taxes.
Other than that, it's pretty mixed across the country, but generally bad whether it's Illinois or South Carolina.
I know you want simple answers to these problems, but they don't exist. The whole liberal v. conservative paradigm is dead. We need fresh thinking. You aren't providing it.
taxes
There's an interesting Gedanken experiment I heard of once: take ten thousand true believers in capitalism and free enterprise, put them on a desert island rich in existing infrastructure and resources, wait 20-30 years and revisit the island. By then, around half of them should be living in poverty.
equality
tagged as:- solution
Capitalism is about equal opportunity and access. Capitalism is NOT about equal outcome. Why should those who can produce more wealth be penalized by those that can't or those who choose not to?
Natural selection drives individuals to differently ends. Liberalism wants to equalize end state outcomes thus going against the very natural selection that allowed us to survive as a species.
In a general rant, stop trying to create a society run completely by government! Stop trying to have government wipe my ass for me. I can do it myself! And to those that can't, they'll either adapt, obtain help from those who willingly provide it, or have a develop a serious rash.
And before you go slamming me for being insensitive, my father-in-law is completely disabled (immobile, feeding tube, diapers, etc.). Ever change an adult's diaper? No, I didn't think so. Now shut the fuck up about my insensitivity.
Get your damn hands off my pocket book and reduce government spending in line with the tax base. If the tax base is to small, then cut government spending, preferably down to those "services" originally sanctioned by the constitution. No one in Washington knows how to balance the budget and get back to some semblance of limited federal government. Our society is completely dependent on this government drug. It's time for some cold-turkey remedies before we all go broke and our children go broke and are indebted to the Chinese for life.
taxes and government
Then make sure you: stop driving on our roads, stop flying through our airports, stay out of our trains and buses, don't call our fire departments, police departments, ambulances, stop using our mail system, don't attend or send anyone to our schools, don't rely on our military for defence, stay out of our national parks and forests, don't use our electricity, don't buy our gas/diesel, ...
well you do get my point ? In fact, the best thing you can do is move out into the country and don't bother us again. Peace.
Capitalism is the only
Capitalism is the only economic system that enslaves people with crushing debt, which Americans are now re-learning.
boy are you stupid TPX
We are only indebted when our government steals from us and mortgages our future through programs like social security, now health care. As a society, the only people who are otherwise indebted are those that take out more than they can afford to pay back.
California has not increased discretionary spending.
Instead it is caught between the fool proposition system, by which the voters mandate lots of new spending, without considering how it will be paid for, and the Republican state legislators who vote no for any nex taxation whatsoever. So since prop 13 was passed, it has educational standing traversed from the top of the tables, to nearly the bottom. Proof that giving the average voter 30 seconds to decide an issue of programs and spending does not lead to better policy.
Yes, you couldn't design a
Yes, you couldn't design a worse way to run a state.
The elephant in the room
Big Tom comes pretty close to what I was thinking. I would add that the inability of the economy to produce enough unskilled jobs may mean that there are just too many people for the natural resources available to grow the economy.
Exponential growth, like we've enjoyed up until recently, cannot continue indefinitely. We are setting ourselves up for the kind of scenario Jared Diamond described in Collapse, but on a much larger scale.
Instead of economic growth, maybe it's time to think of economic stability or sustainability.
Controlling population growth would be a good place to start and would deliver other, non-economic, benefits, as well. Since every human consumes resources and produces waste, including C02, a zero-population-growth policy would be a highly effective way to conserve finite resources, reduce waste and pollution, and slow down global warming. For couples to limit themselves to two children doesn't seem like that big a sacrifice.
I don't know why people keep
I don't know why people keep on saying there is a shortage of unskilled jobs. There are plenty of crappy positions at shitty pay from what I can tell. The problem is getting a job at decent pay that does not require a professional degree, those are the jobs that seem to be disappearing.
I have no stats to back me up, so may be I'm comletely wrong, but that's what I observe.
New Way of Measuring Growth and Wealth Urgently Needed
tagged as:- solution
We urgently need a new measure of economic growth that places much higher value on natural resources and ecological services and less value on the accumulation of personal stuff. Rather than measuring growth by discounting the future like GDP does we need a new definition of the common wealth which places much higher value on finite resources, ecosystem health, natural communities, livable cities, etc.
Think about this. What other potential means of huge employment opportunity could there be than caring for the earth? Both skilled and unskilled labor -- jobs potentially in the hundreds of millions -- would be needed to restore ecosystem health world wide. Let us not forget that our own economic health and security now depends on finding employment for the vast masses of the unemployed in developed and developing countries around the world.
Unless we dump this badly maladapted meaure of growth, GDP, we are just doomed to continue our grossly delusional group thinking that is leading us to a state of collapse.
We need to radically rethink how we live on earth. We do it very badly. Just how free are we if we feel that we are trapped in a system that dooms us to lives of paupers on a terribly degraded earth? That is where we are headed folks.
Good point. For the past
Good point. For the past thirty years the economy grew but all of the growth accrued to the already wealthy. Despite stagnant wage growth for the bottom 85% economists said the economy was robust and politicians assured everyone the economy was sound, and, of course, the greatest in the world. The best metric for measuring an economy's value should be distribution of income, not wealth creation.
"The economy was growing
"The economy was growing under Bush before the mortgage meltdown and tax receipts went up between the mini-recession after 9/11 and the mortgage meltdown." [MacGruber]
There was a housing bubble, and an unsustainable trade deficit during this time. Of course, Bush was running around telling everyone that the economy was booming because of his tax cuts. Too bad the economy crashed before he had a chance to leave office...
Interesting. Part of the
Interesting. Part of the problem is education which is SO dumbed down that kids (meaning those in their 20's and 30's) can't even make change today. They can't do math in their heads, they don't much think. They certainly can't spell.
So they are going to be in the lower classes and maybe it's going to be a permanent lower class. Agreed-- importing unskilled labor has hurt us terribly. Drs., scientists-- those we need. But here in the West, we have millions of illegals who take from the system, whose kids take from the system, and don't give back much (tho, yes, they DO work hard and generally are nice people).
When I was growing up in the last ice age kids cut lawns. Kids delivered papers. Gee... is it gonna go back to that? White laborers? wow.
The Future
I disagree. I think, for the most part, that kids growing up today (those entering the workforce right now and beyond) are going to completely change things. Unlike their parents, the next generation is growing up digital. They may not be able to make change, but they have a skill set that the blue-collar wage earners in the past didn't have. The reality moving forward long term is that either you can work with a computer and make money or you can work low-skill labor and make diddly squat.
Those of us in our 40's and up remember a time when the first job a kid got in high school was in fast food. Or maybe in retail at the mall. The fast food jobs have all gone to low wage adult workers. So have the lawn mowing, paper route and most other limited skill jobs. The jobs for the next generation involve a lot of computer use - jobs that are harder off-shore to third world countries with poor education systems. The new reality in our country will be that either you have strong computer skills or you are in a low-wage dead end. The problem will be this transition period where we still have a lot of workers without the skill set needed for this change.
I submit that kids are not our problem going forward, keeping their parents employed will be.
Also
I also want to add: I'm not sure stagnant wages are really the problem. If you go back and look at Elizabeth Warren's research on where the rise in expenses have been for the middle class, the thing that jumps out at you is the cost of housing. Particularly the cost of housing in relation to schools. Wages are a problem because of the cost of housing, bring the cost of housing down to something sane and the wage issue goes away.
The cost of housing is tied to the schools. If all public schools were performing at a high enough level that parents could live pretty much anywhere and be assured of a quality education, the price of housing comes down.
Housing and medical expenses
Housing and medical expenses are certainly eating into living expenses, but there is no denying that wages for the lower and middle classes haven't kept pace with the increase in wealth of the society. Data shows a huge increase in compensation for the upper tiers, while everybody has seen pay stagnate or go down over the past two decades.
So most people get hit both ways -- higher expenses and lower relative compensation.
The way I see it, employers want to maximize profits, so they minimize worker pay. But they need to sell goods to consumers, who are being impoverished by their employers. This contradiction between private and public interests eventually led to a crisis.
I completely agree - except
I completely agree - except the big picture is bleaker than just raising wages for workers. We are going through a period of global wage arbitrage. The USA can't compete on the raw labor front because our wages are too high (yeah, go figure.) Unless we decide to enact a serious protectionism plan (which I don't see happening) our wages have to drop while wages in China, India and Mexico have to rise. Until there isn't anyplace left with rock bottom labor wages, our fine corporations and manufacturers are going to keep moving operations to the county with the lowest wage base.
I could be wrong, but I think what will happen longer term is the same pattern we saw in housing prices. The lower end got clobbered first and eventually the upper began to crumble. Entry level housing is pretty close to a bottom right now and mid to upper end housing is going to be a bloodbath over the next 3 years as those prices come to their natural bottom as well. I'd hazard a guess that wages on the low end will fall badly, which is already happening, and wages on the higher end will fall in due time as those compensation levels become unsustainable.
The tragedy of the commons
Great discussion here. Well, with the exception of the proponents of the ancient chestnut "cut taxes and government spending." In MN and most other states we have that exact situation, so which would you rather cut, road maintenance (affects businesses and everyone else right NOW) or education (affects some people right NOW, and everyone in the future).
Those are the significant budget areas left to be cut. So you tell me, which is it going to be? Pawlenty, our fly-by-night governor, has made the decision - cut education and use accounting tricks to kick the rest of the problem down the road for the new governor to handle why he pursues the Presidency. My God he is acting like a flimflam man heading out of town before he is caught.
And I agree that naked capitalism is a BRUTAL and cut-throat system of social darwinism with a handful of winners and a majority of losers. The question is - is that the kind of system you want to live in? Before you answer, at least admit you have never really seen naked capitalism in action, with unemployment rates over 80% and extreme poverty where starvation is rampant. I've seen that firsthand with my own eyes in Kenya, one of the better run African countries. Go there and see that before you go proposing that we go any farther in that direction.
But back to my title - the tragedy of the commons. Businesses cut wages to maximize profits, which makes sense to them, but that also reduces their market of consumers, which hurts everyone. People cut unnecessary consumption and try to save more which makes sense to them but also hurts the overall economy.
We are caught in the trap where everyone does what is best for themselves while we all drive towards the cliff. Everyone wants the other guy to change.
So we argue over who needs to do the changing. You know my answer to that. You want to kickstart anything you ask those with the most power to do it.
If you don't want to tax the money from the corporate executives then the stockholders are gonna have to make the corporations cut executive compensation so they can increase worker pay and cut product cost. Otherwise the execs will simply ride the ship down and jump off with their golden parachutes and treasure chests, which is bad for everyone else, stockholders, workers, customers, society.
Tripp
The system collapsed because
The system collapsed because the right wing succeeded in distorting it beyond recognition. By vacuuming up the lion's share of income and using scorched-earth tactics to amass absolute power for eight years, BushCo destroyed the social contract in America and quite possibly our society. Of course, they wouldn't know that because they're ignorant of history, philosophy and anything else taught in those commie, lib'rul universities. Greed and brutality are not the basis for a civilization -- quite the contrary.
Lump of labor fallacy fallacy
tagged as:- solution
On July 10, 2009 at 2:28pm alex wrote:
The lump of labor has "never come to pass" only if you don't count the cyclical depressions of the 19th century or the great depression of the 1930s. In the "long run" jobs have grown for more than two hundred years. In the short run people starve, lose their homes, become destitute. In the long run, prodigious waste and planned obsolescence have become the keys to perpetually expanding employment. In the short run the artificially stimulated growth hasn't contributed to personal happiness or social inclusion. In the long run, Keynes reminded us, we are all dead.
The alleged "fallacy" of the lump of labor is an anecdotal claim, not a logical proposition. It is a claim with a long history of dissemination by anti-union propagandists, hack textbook authors and conservative newspaper editors. It has no foundation in formal economic thought. The folks who "worried" about losing their spinning and weaving jobs actually did lose their spinning and weaving jobs or had their wages cut drastically. The Luddites and frame breakers who broke machines did so because of the autocratic way they were brought in, not because they were against machinery per se. Workers at the end of the 19th century who opposed the piece-rate system did so because the system gave the employers greater control over the work process, not because they were against production, per se.
The purpose of the bogus fallacy claim has always been to misrepresent worker demands for autonomy and respect as expressions of ignorance and turpitude. The persistence of the lump of labor fallacy myth in economics exposes a fundamental bias that operates in the mainstream "discipline". Axioms of rationality aside, mainstream economics envisions workers as fundamentally ignorant, lazy and easily deceived. Employers, on the other hand are assumed to be supremely rational, dispassionate and responsive to the immutable laws of economic supply and demand. This bias is incorporated into a few key "simplifying assumptions" whose underlying justification turns out to be quite convoluted.
It is not original to observe that there is a hard core of ideology in what represents itself as economic science. But a historical study of the bogus lump of labor fallacy claim can demonstrate exactly how that ideology has been hard wired into superficially empirical and mathematical formulations.
Sandwichman
Thank you for stating in
Thank you for stating in such a succinct and eloquent fashion the thoughts that I have been pondering the last few years. I believe that capitalism has become the faith of many in this country, and economics the religion that gives shape and substance to that faith.
Excellent point, Sandwichman
Another fallacy that has been maintained at least for the last 60 years and probably a long time before that is the fallacy that any work or service is without question much better when performed by a private business and much worse when performed by a government worker.
This statement is usually prefaced by statements such as "Everyone knows" or "it goes without saying" so that it will be accepted without question. I think it must be put into every single economics test and examination and no one may pass the course without repeating the phrase without question. Maybe they put some hypnotic into the ink that is used on accounting spreadsheets, I dunno.
If ever there was a so-called scientific profession that acted so much like a religion I haven't seen it.
In my studies as an Engineer we were taught to question every assumption, to use checklists and reviews, and to add in safety factors. We were taught to know that it is a lie to state a measurement beyond the limits of the measuring tool. For example it is a dangerous lie to state that something is 12.1567843 inches long if one's ruler is precise to only three significant digits. We were taught to accept the limits of our knowledge and to be honest about it.
Over time fewer and fewer bridges have collapsed while economic breakdowns and bubbles seem to happen nearly as frequently as they always have.
Tripp
Is The Recession Ending?
It is not much noticed amid the general gloom and doom about the economy, but Wall St. firms like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are cutting their estimates for the rate of GDP contraction in the second quarter. Some are even forecasting growth. It seems all too clear that the second quarter will show dramatic improvement.
Could it be the stimulus is working? Republicans and some liberals who are over-invested in economic failure could have egg on their faces pretty soon.
There are tens of thousands
There are tens of thousands of McJobs for each opportunity for a Ph.D. physicist. Robert Reich's notions on symbolic and analytical thinkers is a bit naïve.
Part of the problem of this country is that we pay too much attention to pointy headed academic economists with their simplistic models instead of our great thinkers like Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan.
"Controlling population
"Controlling population growth would be a good place to start and would deliver other, non-economic, benefits, as well. Since every human consumes resources and produces waste, including C02, a zero-population-growth policy would be a highly effective way to conserve finite resources, reduce waste and pollution, and slow down global warming. For couples to limit themselves to two children doesn't seem like that big a sacrifice."
State-run family planning? Like in Communist China. Please, add that to your platform. Maybe then some straddlers will finally realize tha liberals = communists.
Also, you'd better hope that some families have more than two children or your "progressive" government programs will start failing like cheap ponzi schemes.
communists equal neo-conservative evangelists
Too bad Chinese women do not have Roe v. Wade to protect their reproductive rights. Communists equal neo-conservative evangelists.
truly some pivotal times...
...and I am pretty certain that we will find a way out although it may be painful. One good thing to remember is that certain parts of the economy are still chugging away and growing because there are things that we are always going to need.
Hopefully too we learn a lesson from all of this and try to prevent these from happening again. We are on the edge of our seats eager to see how it plays out...