ok, this is complicated, but follow me: the easiest way to create millions of jobs is to HIRE people

i know, i know. you really need an advanced degrees in economics, politics, finance, accounting, business and government, not to mention decades of experience running your own small business and becoming a billionaire by your bootstraps as well as several terms as a congresscritter to fully appreciate the ins and outs of the complex system that is the american economy.

so it's not surprise that a solution as complicated as this hasn't been seriously discussed in the media or on washington, but well, there it is. they prefer the simple solution of tinkering with tax incentives to coax private sector businesses that profit from layoffs to hire people to sell to consumers who can't afford to buy anything. that sounds so much simpler, i know.


if the government hires a ton of people, guess what? there are a ton fewer unemployed people. and in fact, it's better than that, because as these people would then have paychecks, they would spend the money they finally have, and rich people would want to hire some people to go sop up that extra gravy floating about. if people are finally able to spend, then businesses are finally able to sell and make a profit by delivering goods and services, as opposed to laying off people.


wait, i know you're going to object about the cost. turns out that it doesn't cost nearly as much. each dollar spent on extra jobs is offset by fewer dollars in unemployment insurance, welfare, aid to states and other forms of direct or indirect assistance. then some of those dollars come back in the form of income taxes. and remember that knock-on effect, where those new hires spend money and the businesses finally get going? that means more taxes from them as well. so the overall cost isn't nearly what you might think. and whatever you need, you could borrow and nearly zero percent and/or tax the seriously undertaxed rich.

are you worried about inflation if we borrow too much for this? well, aside from the fact that inflation doesn't seem to be a problem these days, IF we should actually get serious inflation, it turns out that THAT problem we know how to solve. remember when carter's fed appointee paul volcker jacked up interest rates sky high? yeah, it sucked for a few years but it worked, and we haven't had serious inflation since.



and what do i say to people who say "but that's socialism"?
i say, no, it's having someone bust their butt 40 hours a week to repair a bridge or a road that's open to everyone and every business in the public to benefit from, then compensating them with a few bucks so they can pay their bills and eat and sleep in some level of comfort and sanity instead of letting them suffer and die. if you're more worried about a stupid and innacurate label that might get attached to an idea than you are about the fate of the economy and millions of americans, then i'd suggest that your priorities need a serious readjustment.

our economy has been screwed up long enough. people have been unemployed long enough. it's time to stop hoping that tinkering around the edges will nudge the economy back to some minimally acceptable level of jobs creation.

just hire people and keep hiring people until there's no serious unemployment problem.
PROBLEM SOLVED.

then move on to the next problem.
there's always a next problem.
don't worry, there's always a solution, too.

and taxes on the rich would curb inflation.

Saying the government doesn't have to borrow sounds a little too GOP for me. Not a comment about you personally. :hi:

We have sovereignty over our currency. Our government spends US dollars into existence.

Most Republicans wrongly assume this would cause hyperinflation based on their faulty Chicago School economic theories.

(sorry, it's late -- good post) :D

instead of the crappy republican we accidentally elected. x(

He did a good job a sounding like a democrat while he was on the campaign trail. He had lots of democratic advisers and PR aides.

But the moment he won the election he fired all of them and suddenly he was only surrounded by all these conservative and republican advisers and lobbyists.

He even announced that he was going to keep the last republican presidents policies in place, and defend the bad stuff the last republican administration kept doing that we thought he was supposed to expose and bring to trial.

We totally got lied too, and we're still getting lied to. He's talking about a jobs program, but it's going to be built by destroying the programs that protect senior citizens and people with disabilities, and he thinks we're not smart enough to notice. (except some people apparently aren't smart enough to notice, or maybe just don't care) :(

What the hell do we need to do to get a smart democrat in office, instead of this game-playing republican? x(

Huge inflation, the only reason you don't see the price of bread over $50 is the systemic price fixing. The dollar is in the exact same bubble that housing was in in '06. It's GOING TO POP. There is no getting around it. Fiat money never lasts. Its not the end of the world but the longer you hold onto something broken the worse it gets. A jobs program is NOT the answer. The whole economy is overleveraged and is bleeding out through the big corporations & the criminal banks. Even if we all had jobs nobody could ever service all this bullshit fraudulent debt. There's more debt than money by A LOT. we gotta fix the system first, there's no other way to do it. If John Maynard Keynes were here he'd say the same thing.

and people are going to need to go to jail.

Companies that are "too big to fail" are going to have to be forced to fail, so they can be replaced with smaller, responsible, audit-able companies.

I would have said that they need to be allowed to fail, but that clearly isn't going to happen. They are being propped up artificially by parasitically feeding off of the entire rest of the economy. That is going to have to stop, one way or another, or we are all going to keep suffering for it.

The worse its going to be for EVERYONE. You can't fix anything until the banking system gets fixed. It's like heart failure, the money is the blood and when the banks/heart stops pumping you die. We gotta jail the criminals break the big 4 WAY WAY UP into little pieces, separate the investment banks from the mortgage banks again & not let any bank be publicly traded EVER AGAIN. It'd be nice if we dismantled the Fed too but we don't absolutely have to, it can work theoretically but it has to be audited every year & be completely transparent at all times. The books have to be open at all times to everybody. Its inherent to having a free society, why don't people understand this at all? Who can say that all this can possibly be kept secret in a free country?

control of Congress. Giving it to the private banks was the worst financial decision our government ever made.

With the banks owning the fed, every dollar created is immediately one dollar of debt owed to the banks, instead of one dollar owned by the government. That's crazy.

With the banks owning the fed, the private banks have the power to expand and contract the money supply, deliberately creating economic turmoil on demand to create political turmoil, in order to force politicians to come running to them. This gives them control over politicians. It gives them ways of controlling the population, and ways of forcing us and government to borrow more money, over and over and over again. That's unethical and immoral on their part, and stupid of our government. Anyone who thinks the banks aren't using that power is an idiot.

Not only should congress take back control of the fed, we should have an amendment that prohibits ever having a privatized central bank ever again. Jefferson, Lincoln, and other presidents who fought against a central bank had it right.

But the dangers you describe are inherent to it. The transparency is the only tool available to keep this stuff from happening. There's always danger though, the reason to argue for the Fed is to offer a balance from the government getting to big for its britches the exact same way and its a perfectly valid argument. No matter who does it it can always be corrupted and used to destroy society. Its all about transparency and having the ability to rid the institutions of corrupt people. Its gets giant & scary like this on purpose but it can always get fixed by people with courage & principle willing to ignore the garbage used to institutionalize the fraud. We can do it whenever we want to, now would be nice..

Always saying that a platypus cannot understand the economy shut up for a minute or two!

Great observations, but unfortunately, at this point in time the criminals who own the top five or ten banks and financial firms like the way things are. And they own Congress and the occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania as well.

So I don't know things will be changed for the better.

I know how screwed up everything is but I will never give up advocating for freedom. Everyone has issues that are important personally and fundamentally to them & I'm no different. I'm a teacher of history & anthro & a proud liberal democrat like everyone here I hope. For a while its been my opinion that none of the big problems can be really fixed until we have real campaign finance & banking reform. Everything else is dependant upon these two issues or at least I think so. I think the best part is that these issues cross party lines, conservatives that aren't corrupted sellouts like Eisenhower was would be all for freedom. It depends on knowing what freedom is & how hard it is to protect.

I refuse to give up & I want a discussion about making it better. I'm ready to make a difference, I want to find Americans who also want to make it better & I want to join with them & learn more.

Hope you enjoy the "underground." Which needs a lot more people with your viewpoint, so this nation can return to its democratic roots.

The DLC is to democracy as oil spills are to wildlife havens.

As to "socialism - gasp"...

Socialist denmark in survey found to be world's happiest people.

Socialist Finland ranks no. one in Quality of Life Index.

Here, 10,000 die from effects of homelessness every month --( seen in some Poverty forum posts.) ------------------
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As to money, borrowing etc. ----------

WPA harnesses the production-power of hands now sitting idle. So WPA doesn't cost, it pays.

Then there's always Buffet's idea --- tax the rich (TTR). Didn't Ike, truman, JFK , LBJ have a 90% rate on them?

Result: a humming economy as gov built infrastructure ... Like the Interstate, did the moonshot Apollo, water mains, schools, GI bill so free college for vets, subsidized state college tuition, etc.

Prosperity resulted from a humming economy then.

Unlike today's RW economy. Which is a flop.
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For how to do WPA, see my Sig below:

the more spending income is available to recycle back into the economy... layoff the help brings the economy to a decline... simple econmics...