A federal program of direct job funding, even at a time when unemployment is expected to exceed 10 percent for the next several months, is the third rail of any discussion about reducing unemployment. more »
post-gazette.com — Roosevelt attacked the root cause of The Depression — the failure of middle-class purchasing power to grow, which caused income inequality to spike in the 1920s while speculation by the well-to-do generated a stock market bubble. (Sound familiar? It should.)To get middle-class consumption going again in the 1930s, Roosevelt championed the "Big Four" social policies. There are some ideas kicking around the margins that can help shape what today's Big Four might look like. Three of the best ideas would update elements of the New Deal.
nytimes.com — If you’re looking for a job right now, your prospects are terrible. There are six times as many Americans seeking work as there are job openings, and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work — is more than six months, the highest level since the 1930s. Yert, there’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers. This is wrong and unacceptable.
On a conference call today with economists who blog and folks who blog on the economy, Speaker Pelosi sought to bridge the gap between progressive proponents of public investment to create jobs, and right-leaning Democrats touting austerity for immediate deficit reduction, by saying: "We will never have deficit reduction without job creation." more »
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