The fact that we use U3 unemployment as the measure of official unemployment fairly dramatically understates the actual labor slack in the economy. Looking at a measure like U6 (which is U3 unemployment plus people who've stopped seeking work for economic reasons, people who would like a job but haven't looked recently, and people who are working part-time for economic reasons but want to work full-time), that measure of unemployment is up around 17%. And the spread has increased. 3 years ago U3 was 4.7% and U6 was 8.5%. Today it's 9.8% and 17.0%. It's a lot easier to tell people they should care about austerity and so forth when you can claim unemployment is 9.8% than if you have to acknowledge it's at 17%.
Also, a pretty good graph of the effect of different kinds of economic stimulus, from Moody's a couple years ago when they were looking at this stuff the first time around: http://motherjones.
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Very true, thanks J. Yeah U3 is a pretty limited metric and doesn't capture real labor market conditions. I don't know why more economists and politicians don't cite the U6 data - that should shock anyone that almost 1 out of 5 able-bodied people can't find work or can't find enough work. That's about 25.5M people, and many more if you include dependents. That is a critical mass for voting leverage. Well, the unemployment rate among white collar workers is quite a bit lower, and if they and the retired are doing most of the voting, well then we know what kind of economic policies we'll get.
"Managers and college grads still are more likely to be working than Americans overall. The unadjusted unemployment rate hit 8.5% in January, compared with 4.1% for management and professional workers and 3.8% for college graduates." (I'm assuming these %s are based on U3 from 2009).
http://www.jsonline.com/
Haha, so all the tax cuts that the GOP loves (dividends/cap gains, Bush cuts, corporate cuts) deliver the least bang for buck, while all the spending they want to cut (food stamps, unemployment) are the best. When will America wake up to this? Good job to the GOP governors who refused stimulus money for infrastructure projects and such (and often those red states are the ones with the weakest economies and most crumbling infrastructure, like Gov. Jindal's Louisiana). Yeah it's totally ridiculous that companies get to report accelerated depreciation to the IRS but use more conservative depreciation measures for SEC filings. So they pay less tax and appear more profitable to shareholders?
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/09/
NPR was interviewing #3 GOP Senator Alexander yesterday (who sits on the Appropriations, Budget, Health/Labor Cmtes. so he should understand this stuff) about the tax cut deal, and the host kept prodding him to explain why it's justified that high earners get a tax cut, and in fact a disproportionately expensive cut vs. lower earners (1/4 of the amount goes to the richest 1% of Americans). Instead of an intelligent response, he parroted the cliche "We are trying to create jobs and you don't raise taxes on anyone during a recession." Then why did they oppose Obama's stimuli, which included tax breaks for businesses that hire new workers? Isn't that better than giving every rich person money even if they don't preserve/create a single job?
He also stressed that this was not a tax cut, since the taxes are currently low but are scheduled to increase. So letting the cuts expire would actually be a tax hike (I guess if the Dems let the cuts expire, the GOP plans to blast them for "raising taxes"). But that is ridiculous logic. It was a temporary tax holiday all along (since Bush and the GOP in 2000 didn't have the votes to make it permanent); the regular tax rate is the higher one. That's like me taking a vacation from work, and when I return, I complain to my boss that he's increasing my hours! I guess Alexander realized that he couldn't give a good answer to the question, so might as well kill the conversation with some misdirection. He is a lawyer after all.
It's just sad to see Obama and Summers defending this tax cut BS so fervently, and to their fellow Dems to boot. I don't really blame Obama for his actions considering the circumstances, but stop trying to polish a turd. They are actually saying that if we extend the tax cuts, we'll certainly avoid a double-dip recession. I guess the GOP isn't the only party engaged in fear-mongering.
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I think the attached chart pretty much lays out the answer to your question as to why there's such intense pressure to ditch the unemployment insurance and extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. (as you might imagine, education and income are pretty highly correlated)
I was just reading a paper the other day about how much more pro-poor the US would be if elections were held on the weekends (most poor people can't get off time to go vote on weekdays like high-income people can). It's no surprise that the most conservative states often have the shortest voting hours and the most onerous voting registration requirements.
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Thx, A. I wonder why community organizers don't try to mobilize the urban poor more during elections. Maybe since most cities vote liberal anyway, and minorities/lower income folks are more likely to be Dems, less of a need? I know there were allegations of people getting packed into buses from the ghetto and whisked to the polling stations, but I'm not sure if it was just propaganda, and also not sure if there's anything wrong with that.
As you said, our voting system is the most inaccessible of all modern, developed democracies. In France I believe the window to vote is several days if not weeks, India too (due to people living in remote areas maybe). In other nations voting occurs on weekends or national holidays. There is absolutely no damn reason to have an election on a work day, especially when the working poor can't get paid time off and may work 12 hours a day over multiple jobs. Plus in other nations there isn't so much red tape for registering. In many cases a voter can "register" (or whatever equivalent) on election day. Hell, even in Iraq the polls stay open Fri-Sun. But all those scenes of Americans waiting in lines all day to vote in inner-city areas is just unacceptable. Voting shouldn't be such a sacrifice, unless the system is designed to prevent those people from participating. Making voting nearly impossible for the lower class is one thing, but how do we control the influence of the rich in politics? The 1st Amend. seems to protect an individual, org, or corporation's "right" to basically contribute limitless cash to political causes, and the Supreme Court seemed to affirm that last year.
In Australia and Belgium (among others), voting is mandatory with small fines for absentees. Maybe that wouldn't fly here, but I know Arizona passed a bill to include a cash lottery as incentive to get people to the polls. We'll see how effective it will be. I wonder if even mail-in or online/phone voting would help the poor that much (Wikipedia says internet voting is already in place in the UK, France, and Switzerland, but I haven't been following that). Oregon, which has a fully mail-in voting system, is slightly better than the US average for turnout (US avg. for 2008 pres. election was 62%, OR was 67%).
http://www.slate.com/id/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://elections.gmu.edu/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/
"Managers and college grads still are more likely to be working than Americans overall. The unadjusted unemployment rate hit 8.5% in January, compared with 4.1% for management and professional workers and 3.8% for college graduates." (I'm assuming these %s are based on U3 from 2009).
http://www.jsonline.com/
Haha, so all the tax cuts that the GOP loves (dividends/cap gains, Bush cuts, corporate cuts) deliver the least bang for buck, while all the spending they want to cut (food stamps, unemployment) are the best. When will America wake up to this? Good job to the GOP governors who refused stimulus money for infrastructure projects and such (and often those red states are the ones with the weakest economies and most crumbling infrastructure, like Gov. Jindal's Louisiana). Yeah it's totally ridiculous that companies get to report accelerated depreciation to the IRS but use more conservative depreciation measures for SEC filings. So they pay less tax and appear more profitable to shareholders?
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/09/
NPR was interviewing #3 GOP Senator Alexander yesterday (who sits on the Appropriations, Budget, Health/Labor Cmtes. so he should understand this stuff) about the tax cut deal, and the host kept prodding him to explain why it's justified that high earners get a tax cut, and in fact a disproportionately expensive cut vs. lower earners (1/4 of the amount goes to the richest 1% of Americans). Instead of an intelligent response, he parroted the cliche "We are trying to create jobs and you don't raise taxes on anyone during a recession." Then why did they oppose Obama's stimuli, which included tax breaks for businesses that hire new workers? Isn't that better than giving every rich person money even if they don't preserve/create a single job?
He also stressed that this was not a tax cut, since the taxes are currently low but are scheduled to increase. So letting the cuts expire would actually be a tax hike (I guess if the Dems let the cuts expire, the GOP plans to blast them for "raising taxes"). But that is ridiculous logic. It was a temporary tax holiday all along (since Bush and the GOP in 2000 didn't have the votes to make it permanent); the regular tax rate is the higher one. That's like me taking a vacation from work, and when I return, I complain to my boss that he's increasing my hours! I guess Alexander realized that he couldn't give a good answer to the question, so might as well kill the conversation with some misdirection. He is a lawyer after all.
It's just sad to see Obama and Summers defending this tax cut BS so fervently, and to their fellow Dems to boot. I don't really blame Obama for his actions considering the circumstances, but stop trying to polish a turd. They are actually saying that if we extend the tax cuts, we'll certainly avoid a double-dip recession. I guess the GOP isn't the only party engaged in fear-mongering.
-------------
I think the attached chart pretty much lays out the answer to your question as to why there's such intense pressure to ditch the unemployment insurance and extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. (as you might imagine, education and income are pretty highly correlated)
I was just reading a paper the other day about how much more pro-poor the US would be if elections were held on the weekends (most poor people can't get off time to go vote on weekdays like high-income people can). It's no surprise that the most conservative states often have the shortest voting hours and the most onerous voting registration requirements.
-------------
Thx, A. I wonder why community organizers don't try to mobilize the urban poor more during elections. Maybe since most cities vote liberal anyway, and minorities/lower income folks are more likely to be Dems, less of a need? I know there were allegations of people getting packed into buses from the ghetto and whisked to the polling stations, but I'm not sure if it was just propaganda, and also not sure if there's anything wrong with that.
As you said, our voting system is the most inaccessible of all modern, developed democracies. In France I believe the window to vote is several days if not weeks, India too (due to people living in remote areas maybe). In other nations voting occurs on weekends or national holidays. There is absolutely no damn reason to have an election on a work day, especially when the working poor can't get paid time off and may work 12 hours a day over multiple jobs. Plus in other nations there isn't so much red tape for registering. In many cases a voter can "register" (or whatever equivalent) on election day. Hell, even in Iraq the polls stay open Fri-Sun. But all those scenes of Americans waiting in lines all day to vote in inner-city areas is just unacceptable. Voting shouldn't be such a sacrifice, unless the system is designed to prevent those people from participating. Making voting nearly impossible for the lower class is one thing, but how do we control the influence of the rich in politics? The 1st Amend. seems to protect an individual, org, or corporation's "right" to basically contribute limitless cash to political causes, and the Supreme Court seemed to affirm that last year.
In Australia and Belgium (among others), voting is mandatory with small fines for absentees. Maybe that wouldn't fly here, but I know Arizona passed a bill to include a cash lottery as incentive to get people to the polls. We'll see how effective it will be. I wonder if even mail-in or online/phone voting would help the poor that much (Wikipedia says internet voting is already in place in the UK, France, and Switzerland, but I haven't been following that). Oregon, which has a fully mail-in voting system, is slightly better than the US average for turnout (US avg. for 2008 pres. election was 62%, OR was 67%).
http://www.slate.com/id/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://elections.gmu.edu/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/
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