Nope, didn't listen to the speech but here's my analysis

Last edited Thu Jul 25, 2013, 07:24 AM - Edit history (1)

The President said a lot of the right things. Points for even mentioning the working poor and the export of jobs; unions and the 1%. BUT, in the context of the TPP which is oriented toward profits and "rights" for corporationsm it's difficult to reconcile his language with the reality of a super charged NAFTA style "trade" agreement.

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But over time, that engine began to stall -- and a lot of folks here saw it -- that bargain began to fray. Technology made some jobs obsolete. Global competition sent a lot of jobs overseas. It became harder for unions to fight for the middle class. Washington doled out bigger tax cuts to the very wealthy and smaller minimum wage increases for the working poor.

And so what happened was that the link between higher productivity and people’s wages and salaries was broken. It used to be that, as companies did better, as profits went higher, workers also got a better deal. And that started changing. So the income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, but the typical family’s incomes barely budged.

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The claim that the U.S. economy has surged back is a hollow one for the working poor and the middle classes. And few of the accomplishments the President touts have come to fruition. There really are no tough new rules for big banks and mortgage lenders are still free to engage in ugly practices- as are credit card companies. The tax hike on those at the top is so small as to be close to inconsequential. New jobs? According to most analysis, these are low paying jobs and part time jobs.

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Now, today, five years after the start of that Great Recession, America has fought its way back. (Applause.) We fought our way back. Together, we saved the auto industry; took on a broken health care system. (Applause.) We invested in new American technologies to reverse our addiction to foreign oil. We doubled wind and solar power. (Applause.) Together, we put in place tough new rules on the big banks, and protections to crack down on the worst practices of mortgage lenders and credit card companies. (Applause.) We changed a tax code too skewed in favor of the wealthiest at the expense of working families -- so we changed that, and we locked in tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans, and we asked those at the top to pay a little bit more.

So you add it all up, and over the past 40 months, our businesses have created 7.2 million new jobs. This year, we’re off to our strongest private sector job growth since 1999.
I read every frickin' word- more than once. so yeah, here's my take.

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The President goes on to state that the paradigm of the past decade or so of the 1% gaining while everyone else loses, have been made worse by the recession. Aren't they even more, the result of deliberate policies?

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So in many ways, the trends that I spoke about here in 2005 -- eight years ago -- the trend of a winner-take-all economy where a few are doing better and better and better, while everybody else just treads water -- those trends have been made worse by the recession. And that's a problem.

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He blames this toxic stew on "Washington".

He doesn't really lay out specifics. He says he'll be doing that in coming weeks. Fair enough:

Here are the specifics he does lay out. They're not really very specific.

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Now, over the past four years, for the first time since the 1990s, the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually gone up instead of down. That's the good news. (Applause.) But we can do more. So I’m going to push new initiatives to help more manufacturers bring more jobs back to the United States. (Applause.) We’re going to continue to focus on strategies to make sure our tax code rewards companies that are not shipping jobs overseas, but creating jobs right here in the United States of America. (Applause.)

We want to make sure that -- we’re going to create strategies to make sure that good jobs in wind and solar and natural gas that are lowering costs and, at the same time, reducing dangerous carbon pollution happen right here in the United States. (Applause.)

And something that Cheri and I were talking about on the way over here -- I’m going to be pushing to open more manufacturing innovation institutes that turn regions left behind by global competition into global centers of cutting-edge jobs. So let’s tell the world that America is open for business. (Applause.) I know there’s an old site right here in Galesburg, over on Monmouth Boulevard -- let’s put some folks to work. (Applause.)

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One of the most hopeful things he touched on, is the decaying infrastructure in the context of rebuilding and providing jobs:

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Businesses depend on our transportation systems, on our power grids, on our communications networks. And rebuilding them creates good-paying jobs right now that can’t be outsourced. (Applause.)

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http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-07-24/transcript-obamas-speech-economy.html

He goes on, but it's largely boiler plate. Nothing inherently wrong with that. The White House has said that this is only the first in a series. The speech as a whole is not anything new, and it's a good speech as have been many of the ones that come before. It's just that his fiscal proposals aren't exactly bold and policy wise, they haven't really veered from those that continue to support growing inequality.

We'll see. I'm somewhat of a sucker. I keep hoping. You know: That damned feathered thing.