jobs

Before leaving on vacation President Obama said he is going to talk about creating jobs in September. The latest word is he will give this speech next week. Campaign for America’s Future has put together some ideas for creating jobs. See our series Big Ideas To Get America Working: more »

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Problem: Your right-wing brother-in-law is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "Stimulus" just made things worse. Solution: Here are three "reality-based" charts to send to him. These charts show what actually happened.

Spending more »

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Young Americans are a generation betrayed. Official unemployment is more than 25% for those aged 16-19. That means the real figure is much worse, especially in minority communities and depressed parts of the country. But jobs are scarce for everyone. College students are graduating with record levels of student debt before entering the worst job market for graduates in recent memory.

We're handing them a nation of crumbling infrastructure, lost ambitions, diminished prospects - and a seemingly endless parade of baby-boomer pop culture references, too. They deserve better than this legacy of dust and ashes. Since we've made such a mess of things, why not hire them to build the nation - and the future - that they deserve?

We can do it. Better yet, we can help them do it. A WPA-like program for younger Americans would give them a brighter future by hiring them to rebuild our infrastructure, develop imaginative new business ideas, create alternative energy sources, and become tomorrow’s artists and writers. We can give them control over their own destiny, too.

But first, a look at the mess we've created for them. more »

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I don't think anyone has ever even tried to make the argument that education and jobs are not in any way linked. But the economic argument for education is not well understood even by those -- politicians especially -- who are most apt to make the connection.

So before we demand that political and civic leaders at all levels turn around our troubled economy by increasing investment in public education, we need to get the framing right. You can't blame the bad economy on education. But you can blame education cuts for a bad economy. (Part III of a series.)

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Here is everything you need to know about how to fix the deficits and jobs problems. This is a chart of job creation over the last few years:

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The Contract for the American Dream consists of 10 critical steps to get our economy back on track:
I. Invest in America's Infrastructure
II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs
III. Invest in Public Education
IV. Offer Medicare for All
V. Make Work Pay
VI. Secure Social Security
VII. Return to Fairer Tax Rates
VIII. End the Wars and Invest at Home
IX. Tax Wall Street Speculation
X. Strengthen Democracy

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It's beginning to look like there's an economic shipwreck dead ahead. That plunging stock market is the wealthy passengers, trampling the children as they rush headlong toward the lifeboats. The nation's capital, the bridge of our ship of state, lies abandoned.

The officers have gone to their quarters, the wheel's left unattended, and nobody's trying to turn the ship around. If you're not sounding the alarm, you aren't paying attention. And it looks like a lot of people aren't paying attention.

Rough seas

Sure, this month's jobs report is slightly better than the last couple of months, but that just means the drowning passengers are a couple of inches closer to the surface. That's not much comfort to them, since they're still drowning, but it seems to cheer up the ship's officers. Now that Congress has concluded its debt-ceiling deal they've all gone home.

The President's economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, is plaintively whispering the words "unemployment insurance" to their receding backs, but it wasn't important enough to be included in the deal. And the "bipartisan" mantra forced Goolsbee to mention two free-trade deals in the same breath. That's like throwing a brick to a drowning sailor, rather than a life preserver.

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In the wake of a deal that included all the wrong things, today the President finally said all the right things. His agreement with the Republicans included no investment in economic growth, no job creation, no tax increases on the wealthy, no closing of corporate loopholes, no protection for entitlements - not even include an extension of unemployment benefits for the victims of Wall Street's last greed-and-gambling spree. That's why three-quarters of the Republicans in Congress - and only half the Democrats - voted for it. It's why most of the Tea Party Caucus supported it, and why most of the Progressive Caucus rejected it.

As Nate Silver explains, the numbers show that the President could have pushed for a better deal and he probably would have prevailed. This deal appears to be the latest in a series of agreements where the President seems to have gotten what he wanted, while at the same time claiming it was the best he could get. He's spent far too time much echoing the destructive austerity rhetoric of his opponents, and he has pushed for far too many of their policies. He has opposed positions that are supported by an "American Majority" made up of Democrats, independents, and in many cases by Republicans too.

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Enjoying the debt ceiling talks? The posturing, petulance, brinksmanship, bluffing? Well, let me make it a little bit more nauseating: China has pulled up a seat at the table. China’s leaders more »

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Yesterday we learned that the trade deficit exploded in May, especially (as always) with China. more »

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