unemployment

Job Numbers Hype: It's Bad Politics and Worse Policy

Richard Eskow — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:18:30 -0500

The reaction to January's jobs report shows how tragically our expectations have fallen, especially among some Democrats and their supporters. Their cheerleading isn't just bad policy or bad politics, although it is both of those things. It's also callous and insensitive to the misery of millions.

It's important to keep explaining what needs to be done to end that misery. To do otherwise is to serve, however unintentionally, an insidious agenda from the right that would lower our expectations until these tragic levels of unemployment are seen as the "new normal."

An increase in jobs is a good thing, of course, even if it's far from what's needed. Here's something else that was good about the report: Conservatives keep telling us that manufacturing jobs have moved offshore permanently, but 50,000 of them were created last month. Now we can put that argument to bed and can get to work creating more of them.

The Good, the Bad, and the Urgent

But millions of Americans - including minorities and the young - have already endured years of catastrophe, with years more to come if nothing is done. Why won't more people express support for their plight and explain what needs to be done to help them?

Here's the real story: Government intervention has created millions of jobs. But those interventions were too small, so we're still years away from fixing the problem. To claim anything else is to reinforce the delusions that created the problem in the first place.

If the President and his supporters make that case clearly and forcefully, the country will be able to choose between competing visions in November. It's more likely to choose an end its misery. The pitch is pretty simple, really: The medicine's working, but let's not stop before the patient gets well. And despite this month's report, the patient is still very, very sick.

Help is needed urgently.

The New Abnormal

At December's rate of job growth (200,000 jobs) we won't reach an acceptable level of employment until 2024. At this month's rate of growth (243,000 jobs) it will still take us until 2019. Even if we accelerated that rate of growth to 400,000 jobs per month, it would still take us until 2015 to get back to our customary and normal rate of employment.

There would be room for celebration - cautious celebration - if we were protected from more economic shocks, which could come at any time from our under-regulated and too-big-to-fail banks. But we're not. Or if the Republicans and 'centrist' Dems (including the President) weren't pushing to cut government jobs, which will slow the rate of growth even more. But they are. Or if the President were pushing for bigger initiatives, on the scale that's really needed, while making the case for the kind of short-term help we need to get this country on its feet again.

But he isn't.

The President's current jobs proposals would help somewhat, but they're still much too small. What's more, they're filled with policies that are too easy for Republicans to poke holes in. Unless he comes up with a bolder, simpler, and stronger plan, Republican rhetoric will regain a credibility it doesn't deserve - and the government solutions that have always worked in the past will be discredited through half-measures that fail to solve the problem.

If that happens, our abnormal level of pain really will become the "new normal."

Economic Apartheid

This month's reported unemployment level dropped to 8 percent for adult males. But women gained only 89,000 jobs, which is a little more than a third of the total. (They got 42 percent of the jobs in the private sector, but were heavily affected by government cutbacks brought on by misguided austerity thinking - thinking that the President has sometimes encouraged with his rhetoric.)

The seasonally adjusted white unemployment rate for January was 7.4 percent.

For young people 16-19, it was 23.1 percent.

For African Americans, it was 13.6 percent.

For young African Americans, it was 38.5 percent.

To be clear, all of those numbers have seen some reductions. But those who say the current pace of recovery is acceptable are also saying that a devastating job situation for young people, African Americans, and those who are both, is an acceptable state of affairs for years to come. That means untold harm to human wellbeing, career opportunities, future health, lifetime earnings, and entire communities across the country.

It also means endorsing a state of "economic apartheid" that's unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. That's not the kind of country that the Democrats or their supporters should be tacitly endorsing, even if only by failing to consider the long-term consequences of what's being done and said today.

And in an equally devastating finding, long-term unemployment figure was still 5.5 million. These Americans have been thrown from a life of earning and security into hopelessness and spiraling poverty - and they're being ignored.

Falling Behind

The numbers tell another story, too: People with jobs are falling behind. That's why the middle class really is in a process of slow decay. This chart tells the story:

After a period of long-term stagnation, wages only grew by 1.9 percent and there's no sign that will change. There are lots of working people who will find nothing to celebrate in this report.

Champagne Corks

Nevertheless, a number of Democrats and allies took a premature and ill-considered victory lap today. That won't help the country get the policies it needs, and it won't help them politically either. When sympathetic writers like the one quoted by Ezra Klein write of "champagne corks popping at the White House," the image seems inappropriate at best and Marie Antoinette-ish at worst.

The President, his party, and their allies need to send a clear message about these job numbers: that they disprove the conservative argument, but that whole segments of the population were left out of the good news and we're facing many years of pain and stagnation unless government steps up its efforts.

That means they must face facts and make the only argument that will resonate with the American people: That what President and his party have done has helped, but not nearly enough, and that what he is proposing will also help, but not nearly enough. His job creation proposals will be blocked by the Republicans either way, so why not use them to tell the American people what needs to be done?

The President has learned a lot, politically and economically, from the pressure he's received from the left. He's getting better at making the rhetorical case for economic justice. Now he needs to get better at losing, by losing Congressional battles with a set of solutions that the public will understand and support. It's incomprehensible that Republicans would oppose a jobs bill for veterans, but they will.

But it's equally incomprehensible that a Democratic President would offer small responses to such a large disaster. (I include the Jobs Act in the category of "small responses," since such a large chunk of it is dedicated to ineffectual tax cuts for business. But it would help.)

And it's a measure of our mad times that CNN is able to call the proposal for veterans' employment as "hefty" with a straight face. At these levels of unemployment, its estimated $5 billion price tag is almost homeopathically small.

Recovery Winter

Some people are talking about a "recovery winter," an ironic reference to the Administration's premature declaration of "recovery summer" in 2010. For too many Americans, "recovery winter" feels like more like nuclear winter.

The young people and minorities who weren't invited to the party last month can feel it. What's more, this good news could shift dramatically in coming months - if Europe collapses, if a major US bank goes down, or if the periodic recessionary cycle that's built into our under-regulated system strikes again this year.

Nevertheless, some liberals are celebrating. Ezra Klein waxes enthusiastic at the Washington Post, writing that the January report "is pretty much all good." C'mon, Ezra. All good? 23.1 percent for young people? More than 13 percent for African Americans and more than 38 percent for young African-Americans?

Klein is right when he says that revised figures for earlier periods "are positive,"at least where jobless figures are concerned. But adjusted population figures added 1.7 million people to the workforce, which means we need even more growth - and quickly. It means that overall labor force participation is at the unacceptably low level of 63.1 percent.

Klein correctly cites most other areas of concern, including lost public sector jobs and the gap between needed job growth and current figures. But he writes that " this isn’t just a good jobs report. It’s a recovery jobs report." He couldn't be more wrong, in my opinion - unless he's talking about a recovery in 2019.

And I hope Democrats don't listen when he calls these results "the sort of numbers that win elections." Current projections show unemployment rising to 9 percent again before November. This lagging recovery will give credibility to the President's opponents while discouraging his opponents, especially young people and minorities.

Steve Benen of the Maddow Blog understands what's going on behind the figures, yet still says "it's hard not to feel good about the surprising strength" of this report - a sentiment that few of the long-term unemployed would share. Jamelle Bouie of the American Prospect called the report "blockbuster" and said "the economy is looking good."

All this cheerleading feels more than a little unseemly in the face of so much misery - especially when the misery's likely to continue for years if more isn't done.

Some media types might want to be more cautious, too. A headline writer for McClatchy, which has often distinguished itself with terrific financial reporting, missed the mark by writing "January jobs report sizzles ..."

The body of McClatchy's article is much more accurate and objective, correctly noting that the figures were "better than expected" and quoting everyone from a market analyst who cheerleads the numbers for different reasons, to the President and House Speaker John Boehner. But the title's pure hype - unless they meant "sizzle" as in that old expression about "separating the sizzle from the steak."

The Balance

It's time for Dems and their allies to stop partying like it's 2019.

It's not hard to strike the right balance between encouragement and admonition. Alan Krueger, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, came close. “It is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the recession that began at the end of 2007,” wrote Krueger, who called the report "an encouraging sign."

“Nonetheless," Krueger added, "we need faster growth to put more Americans back to work.”

That wasn't hard. Jared Bernstein struck the right balance, too, calling on Congress to "seal the deal" and saying "let's not screw this up." (Although I wish he had explained what a full recovery plan could do.)

The Republicans struggled to respond today."These numbers are encouraging," said Eric Cantor, "especially for those millions of Americans out of work, but we should aim even higher.”

Great, the President should say. I'll take you up on that.

The Message

The right message is clean and simple:

1. What we did worked. But we need to do more of it.
2. So let's stop the bleeding of public jobs. We've seen the damage that's caused in Europe and we don't want that here.
3. The deficit is a legitimate concern - after we address today's crisis with "the fierce urgency of now."
4. The best way to cut deficits in the long term is to put Americans back to work so they can pay their taxes and buy things that create even more jobs.
5. We tried to compromise with our opponents, because we thought they'd be reasonable. They weren't.
5. So here's what it takes to get that done, with no games or pretense. Let's go to work, and if the Republicans won't help, please vote for people who will.

See? The right message is simple, clean, honest, and easy to deliver. It's cheap, too: No champagne corks necessary.

Republican Hostage-Taking Threat Again! Guess Who Benefits?

Dave Johnson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:23:37 -0500

Once again, Republicans are holding government hostage, trying to force through unpopular cuts to the things We, the People -- "the 99%" -- do for each other and our economy, while giving handouts to the 1% who pay for their campaign ads and smears. Once again they are threatening to just shut down the whole government if they don't get their way This time the hostage is unemployment benefits for 2 million people and the payroll tax cut that is the only stimulus left to keep the economy going. Here's the thing, they say they want "cuts" but what they are really doing is shifting costs from the 1% on to the rest of us.

The current 112th Congress is the first Congress elected under the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates of corporate money in elections. Remember the flood of ads accusing Democrats of "half a trillion in cuts from Medicare" that got them elected -- paid for with corporate money? Those ads swung the electorate toward Republican candidates, and now we are seeing the results -- including cuts in Medicare and even plans to privatize it entirely.

How Many Times?

To get their way Republicans have already nearly shut down our government or just shut down parts of it several times. Shutdown. Hostage. Shutdown. Shutdown. Shutdown and hostage. Shutdown. Shutdown. Shutdown. Hostage. Shutdown. Shutdown. Hostage. Hostage. And on and on...

This Time

Here are just some of the Republican demands this time if we want the hostage released:

Approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline project.
Block rules reducing air pollution from industrial burners.
Drug tests for people receiving unemployment benefits.
Reduce the duration of jobless aid from 99 to 59 weeks.
Allow states to cut benefits even more.

Even Worse Than That

The National Women's Law Center writes, in, House Bill Cuts Unemployment and Health Benefits, Domestic Programs, Child Tax Credit and More that there are many other reasons to be concerned:

Slashes federal emergency unemployment benefits for long-term jobless workers by more than half—and hits the states with the highest unemployment rates the hardest.
Makes permanent, mean-spirited changes to the basic unemployment program, such as requiring claimants to have a high school diploma or GED and making unemployed workers pay for re-employment services offered by the government.
Reduces health benefits by reducing financial protections for low- and moderate-income families purchasing health insurance, cutting funds to providers serving low-income populations, and slashing prevention and public health funds.
Denies the refundable Child Tax Credit to low-income immigrant families by requiring a Social Security number to claim the credit.
Cuts funding for non-security discretionary programs by over $26 billion—on top of the cuts already imposed by the Budget Control Act.

The European Lesson

Republicans claim that cutting back government is good for the economy and creates jobs. (Note -- they always claim that anything for the 1% is good for the economy and creates jobs, whether or not it really is good for the economy and creates jobs or not.)

But is it really good for the economy to cut back on the things government does for the people and the economy? Let's look to Europe, where they have been cutting back on government in a grand experiment to see if that helps the economy. (Hint: it has really, really, really hurt the economy.) Reuters: Analysis: Europe's austerity zeal risks killing the patient,

Europe's "no pain no gain" attitude to solving its sovereign crisis risks exacerbating the bloc's problems, choking off the very growth needed to raise the money to pay down the debt.

... The austerity zeal risks tipping the continent back into recession and a downward spiral of austerity as pitiful growth prospects undermine budgetary targets and ramp up debt burdens, meaning further austerity is required.

"The expansionary fiscal contraction story says that you cut, you show you are serious about cutting and then the confidence fairy will come along and she will start pulling in private investment," said Stephen Kinsella, professor of economics at the University of Limerick.

"The expansionary fiscal contraction story is a lie. You don't cut your way to growth."

Shifting Not Cutting

Do cuts in government spending actually cut spending? Consider what happens when you cut health care spending. The need for the health care certainly doesn't go away, but the cost of it is shifted away from government and on to individuals. Since iIndividuals do not have the economy-of-scale bargaining power and ability to protect themselves from scams and schemes that government does, their own individual cost is often much higher. So when these costs are shifted from government the cost to the larger economy is actually increased dramatically.

The things government does are done because they need to be done. So if government doesn’t pay for them, does the need go away? No, when you cut government the need is still there. The costs are still there. But the power to bargain and to protect is gone. By cutting the 99%'s ability to protect themselves from scams and schemes, the 1% are better able to prey on them.

So, no, cutting government does not cut the costs of the things government does, it just shifts those costs from government onto the larger economy -- the 99% -- and even increases them, to the benefit of the 1%.

Who They Are Protecting And Who They Are Hurting

Why else do the 1% push so hard for government budget cuts, even though they really just shift the same costs onto the larger economy? Because this cost-shifting takes the tax pressure off of the 1%. Government collects taxes to cover the things regular people need, the cost of maintaining and modernizing infrastructure, etc. Of course, these are all good for the economy, the country, and the people. But since the 1% make most of the money and hold almost all of the wealth these prime beneficiaries of the economy are the obvious people to collect taxes from. So by cutting back on government they cut back on government's need for taxes -- from them.

And they get the added benefit of cutting back on government interference in their schemes and control.

In the long game of cuts and consequences, a society cannot win. In the 1980s we cut taxes and started cutting government. As a result we now have crumbling infrastructure, bad schools, unaffordable universities, etc. This is because government cuts do not cut the need out of the larger economy, they shift the costs of needed things away from causing tax pressure on the wealthy.

They don't care if the larger economy suffers as a result, they're already the 1%.

What To Do

Tell Republican leaders to stop sabotaging the economy. Renew the payroll tax cut and long-term aid for the jobless.
Sign the petition.

Invisible Americans: The Overlooked Millions Inside Those Job Numbers

Richard Eskow — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:08:45 -0500

Some politicians are saying that the latest unemployment report is good news, but it's not. It shows us that this country is still in crisis. It shows us that the government needs to act quickly and aggressively to create jobs, and to restore the lost earning power of the average American who has a job.

Mos of all it shows us that millions of struggling people are still invisible in the Nation's Capitol.

This week the Occupy movement is holding a series of "Take Back the Capitol" events in Washington. Let's hope it shines some light on the country's unemployed, under-employed, and under-earning millions. Until now, they've been pretty much invisible in that town.

The Invisible Americans are all around you. They're in your state, in your community, maybe in your family. Maybe they're your kids, just out of college. Maybe they're your fifty-something uncles and aunts, your grandparents, your grandchildren. They're right there in the jobs report, for anyone with the eyes - and the willingness - to find them.

Invisible: Millions of the long-term unemployed.

While some celebrated an unemployment rate of "only" 8.6 percent, half that change was explained by the fact that 315,000 people dropped out of the labor force. Job creation barely kept pace with the entry of new people into the workforce.

Those 315,000 people join the 5.7 million people officially classified as long-term unemployed. That number is at historically high levels, representing nearly half (43 percent) of all the jobless people in this country.

It's not that they don't want jobs. Most of them have fallen into despair. Even worse, what they may have fallen into is realism. Unless we use the power of government to do something, some of them will never work again. They're falling out of the "normal" economy and into a new reality of persistent joblessness and, for some, eventual poverty.

Invisible: Segregation on the unemployment line.

The official jobless rate for white people is 7.6 percent, versus 15.5 percent for African Americans and 11.4 percent for Hispanics.

And those are only the official numbers. The figures are much higher if you count the long-term unemployed, the under-employed, and "discouraged" workers.

In a nation that prides itself on being the land of opportunity, we're denying entire groups of people the chance for a better life.

Invisible: The jobless generation.

There's a silent epidemic of youth unemployment. Official teenaged unemployment is 23.7 percent, and the real rate is much higher. Recent college graduates face historically high jobless rates - along with historically high student debt.

Studies show that young people who begin their work lives un- or under-employed face an entire lifetime of lower income. By failing to act, we're betraying our own children and throwing away an entire generation of young people.

Invisible: The under-employed.

There's a silent epidemic of under-employment. There are 8.5 million people who want to work full-time but can only get part time work. in that category. That figure dropped slightly, but we don't know how much of the drop was due to people finding full-time work or being laid off altogether.

And remember, underemployed people aren't just making less money. In most cases they're also going without health insurance or other benefits. They're struggling on the margins of working America, barely surviving and never knowing how much money the'll earn from one week to the next.

Invisible: The vanishing public servant.

While Washington politicians drone on about "budget cuts," there's not much discussion of the fact that many of those cuts increase unemployment - at the Federal, state, and local levels. Government jobs have been dwindling since 2008, and the shrinkage is continuing a time when we need more of them.

Teachers, police officers, highway toll takers, postal workers - you name it, they're losing their jobs. And the only debate in Washington seems to be, How many more of them can we make unemployed?

Invisible: The drowning middle class.

Average hourly earnings for all nonfarm employees decreased last month by 1 percent. Average hourly earnings increased by only 1.8 percen over the last year, while the cost of living (measured by the Consumer Price Index) increased 3.5 percent.

Once again average Americans have fallen behind in earnings and has seen their standard of living decline. Meanwhile, incomes continue to skyrocket for the wealthiest Americans. Income inequality is the worst it's been since the Great Depression.

Welcome to the New Gilded Age.

Political Blindness

This week we heard almost nothing in Washington about direct action to address these crises. The Democrats' "payroll tax holiday" would provide urgently needed ongoing relief for the battered middle class, and would also have a mild job-creating effect. But it would do so in an inefficient way, and also needlessly and recklessly endangers Social Security.

Republicans have no solution at all - just more of the same policies that caused these problems in the first place.

Our neighbors deserve better than this. We deserve better than this. Change starts with a simple statement we can make to those around us, and they can make to us: You're not invisible. I see you.

People in Washington over-complicate the debate by tinkering at the margins: tax-break this, incentive that. Those things will have some effect, but there's a simpler and better way to fix the joblessness problem: Put people to work. At a time when this country needs trillions of dollar in infrastructure repair, government should hire people and get on with it.

George W. Bush had no problem doing that a few years ago. He signed a bill spending more than a quarter of a trillion dollars on infrastructure spending while the Republican Speaker of the House bragged about creating. But Republicans would apparently rather prolong the suffering so they can defeat Obama and the Democrats in 2012.

As for the Obama Democrats, either they don't understand the problem or they don't think it's politically smart to propose fixing it. I suspect it's the latter - and they're dead wrong. The President's jobs bill had some useful ideas. But the President went small on the fixes and, in his typical fashion, couldn't resist pushing useless conservative "job creation" ideas along with the good ones.

Far-Sighted

We need a massive jobs program now to fix our crumbling bridges, highways, railroads, dams, and public buildings. We need to fix wage stagnation by going back to the policies that built the middle class, beginning with stronger collective bargaining rights for working people. Unions were one of the engines of post-World War II prosperity, and the war on unions needs to stop.

We also need higher taxes for the wealthy, tax advantages for companies that hire, and higher taxes for those who make money by gambling, trading other people's debts, or hedging against the success of the American economy. We need to downsize the financial sector, which is capturing too much corporate profit and squeezing out job-creating businesses.

And we need to rebuild the firewall between banking and speculating, so we can end too-big-to-fail and the boom-and-bust cycle that keeps crashing the economy.

Vision Test

Some political party, maybe one that has had a reputation for defending the middle class, ought to say something this: We know what's going on out there. We understand the problem. Here's how we would fix it. We're going to introduce these measures in the House and Senate wherever and whenever we can, so you can see who's fighting for the Invisible Americans, and who's fighting against them.

But no party appears willing to do that, at least not without the presence of a non-partisan movement that forces it to act.

Someday historians will review this country's history to find those times when our people and our leaders responded to a crisis with vision and courage. They'll see the millions of Americans who rose to the occasion during the War of Independence, the Civil War, World War II, and the Great Depression.

But will they see us, or will we have become ... invisible?

Our political leaders need to be pressured - a lot - which is why the Occupy events in Washington are so important. We need to build and maintain a movement for real change, a movement that sees the invisible ones among us, a movement that sees each of us and makes us visible, a movement that fights unrelentingly for a better society.

Hope to "see" you soon - on the barricades.

Giving Thanks for the Occupation, Election, Demonstrations

Leo Gerard — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:29:51 -0500

I want to thank you, thank you
Thank you, thank you,
Thank you, thank you,
Thank you, thank you. ~ Natalie Merchant, “Kind and Generous”

This week’s holiday mandates giving thanks. For many Americans, that is complicated by the harsh years since 2008.

There’s the bitterness of lost jobs, foreclosed homes and diminished opportunity. There’s the resentment over bailing out Wall Street, then watching banksters grant themselves sensational bonuses while denying Main Street loans to save businesses. There’s the fear generated by county club conservatives demanding draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It’s hard to muster gratitude while suffering, to feel appreciative while dreading a meaner future.

The past two months, though, produced glimmers of hope -- the occupation, the election and the mid-November demonstrations. These events suggest empowerment of the 99 percent and emergence of change. They’re reason for thanks giving, especially by those formerly in the middle class who will for the first time experience this holiday without the traditional feast.

Change began in September with the launch of Occupy Wall Street. Previously, the disaffected had rallied and protested. The newly-homeless had held signs. The jobless had marched on Wall Street, the epicenter of the economy’s crash. But this was different. These rabble-rousers didn’t protest and go home. They dug in. They offered no end date for their cries for justice. Like the sit-down strikers who inhabited the General Motors plant in Flint, Mich. for 44 days in 1936 and 1937, these protesters are determined to stay as long as necessary.

The New York occupiers’ gumption and message – “we are the 99 percent” -- inspired a movement worldwide. Activists encamped in more than a 1,000 cities. And when police tried to rout them, the occupiers defied the official oppression, just as the sit-down strikers did. Emblematic is the 84-year-old Oakland, Calif. protester who said after police pepper sprayed her in the face that the experience energized her.

Before this movement began, country club conservatives had confined political discussion and concern to government deficits. No one acknowledged the unemployed, the impoverished or the foreclosed on – except to condemn them. The occupations changed this. Suddenly, the media talked of the problem of sharply higher income inequality and wrote about highly profitable corporations dodging taxes. Abruptly, politicians recalled the agony of joblessness and homelessness. Amazingly, there was new emphasis on polls showing massive majorities opposing austerity for the 99 percent and supporting higher taxes on the 1 percent.

For those of us in warm homes, Natalie Merchant’s words send a perfect message to those encamped:

“For your kindness, I’m in debt to you,
And I could never have gone this far without you,
For everything you’ve done,
You know I’m bound – I’m bound to thank you for it.”

On Election Day, the majority put the 1 percent and their purchased politicians on notice. The problem for the 1 percent in a one-person-one-vote democracy is that they’re outnumbered. In referendums on Nov. 8, the majority rebuffed attempts to restrict the ability of citizens to vote and to collectively bargain.

Mainers reversed a Republican attempt to limit balloting. The majority there restored Election Day voter registration – a right they’d exercised without problem for 38 years before the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and GOP governor passed a law eliminating it. The 60 percent vote for reinstatement served as public censure to Republican lawmakers nationwide who have worked to suppress voting.

In Ohio, citizens reversed a Republican attempt to sharply constrict the right of public employees to collectively bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Ohio citizens affirmed their belief in unionization as a way to move workers into the middle class. The vote was 61 percent in favor of union rights, a margin that chastened country club conservatives, including Ohio’s GOP Gov. John Kasich, who said afterwards that he would “pause” to reflect because: "The people have spoken clearly. You don't ignore the public.”

To the voters in Ohio and Maine:

“Oh, I want to thank you for so many gifts. . .
I want to thank you for your generosity . . .
I want to thank you, show my gratitude. . .” ~Natalie Merchant

The following week, two demonstrations reinforced the election’s message of hope for the 99 percent. On Nov. 16, two dozen millionaires climbed up Capitol Hill and told Congress they wanted their taxes increased. Really. The following day, on the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street’s birth, activists and unionists took to bridges nationwide in demonstrations for jobs.

The rich guys, the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, told Congress to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the rich to help balance the budget. This group of 200 members of the 1 percent offered a solution very different from the Republican austerity demand that had dominated discourse for months.

Similarly, the protesters who occupied bridges across America sought federal investment in infrastructure to create jobs, which would help relieve the recession. Jobs, not cuts.

To the Patriotic Millionaires and the protesters,

“Oh, I want to thank you, thank you,
Thank you, thank you,
Thank you, thank you. . .” ~Natalie Merchant

Because of them, because of wise voters in Ohio and Maine, because of the Occupiers, there’s reason for gratitude this Thanksgiving.

Walker's "Anything But Jobs" Special Session Wraps

Mary Bottari — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:40:11 -0500

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has promised to create 250,000 new jobs. In advance of a planned gubernatorial recall election, Walker announced last month that the State Legislature would focus "like a laser" on job creation. With his "special session" on jobs now concluded, it is clear that the legislative package had little to do with jobs and much to do with spin, special interests and the illusion of momentum.

old bicycle This is the second time legislators have met in special session to address jobs this year. The first special session produced the now-infamous Act 10 that stripped public workers of collective bargaining rights. Wisconsin is starting to feel the impact of that bill. The state lost an eye-popping 11,500 public sector jobs in September.

Wisconsinites had good reason to be worried about a new special session.

Bicycles, a Wing and a Prayer

The new session started with a prayer and a distinct lack of ambition. With a straight face, Republican State Representative Alvin Ott prayed for deregulation: "Father, we ask your blessing today as we start a session again and as we become busy and try do things that will help the people of the state of Wisconsin, create jobs, lessen regulation and so on and so forth, dear Lord," said Ott.

Republican Rep. Jim Steineke set the bar low: “The focus has been and remains to be on job creation, but government can not create jobs, all we can do is give the private sector the tools they need to feel confident in expanding and hiring new workers."

When you believe philosophically that you can't do anything to create jobs, some very interesting proposals emerge. For instance, the legislature passed new rules that change the definition of bicycles and make it easier for cars to pass bikes (AB 265). The bill would exempt bikes from the 15-mph speed limit for vehicles equipped with metal tires. Now bikers can speed their goods to port.

The GOP also reached out to Hollywood, reducing the application fee for a film and franchise tax credit from $5,000 to $500 (SB 3). Do you hear that, Tom Cruise? Wisconsin is open for business!

Another innovative bill says that a property owner is not liable for injury or death of a person trespassing on their property (SB 22). So if a kid gets killed falling out of a tree in your backyard -- no worries!

The legislature passed a bill that would reduce the interest rate that major corporations have to pay on court-ordered payments to consumers injured or killed by dangerous products to 4.25 percent (SB 14). Another bill would cap the fees that lawyers could receive in this type of civil case (SB 12). While these ALEC-inspired "tort reform" bills surely harm consumers and their lawyers, it is less clear how they create jobs.

The most controversial measure in this special session's package dealt with the state's Department of Natural Resources permitting process. The bill would make it easier to pollute the state's waterways with mining waste, among other things (SB/AB 24). Apparently you have to pollute to create jobs. For now, that bill is stalled.

Sex Ed, Guns and Deer?

Rather than focusing "like a laser" on the economy, hands-off legislators threw in everything but the kitchen sink. Lawmakers mandated abstinence-based sex education and reversed an earlier decision to allow for teaching about contraceptives (SB 237). Public health experts kindly called the bill “scientifically inaccurate.” Democrats were more blunt: "We’re taking a step back to the Flintstone era," said Senator John Erpenbach.

Wisconsin deer hunters will no longer have to kill an antlerless deer before they bag a trophy buck, perhaps giving a boost to the taxidermy industry in the state (SB 75). Hunters and taxidermists can also celebrate the new law that allows them to buy beer at 6 a.m. rather than 8 a.m (AB 63).

The legislature also passed the ALEC-inspired “castle doctrine” legislation long promoted by the National Rifle Association, a "shoot first, ask questions later" bill that gives a person immunity from civil and criminal liability if they kill another in their home, work, or vehicle and allege self-defense (AB 69).

Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan hit the mark when he dubbed it the "anything but jobs" session. Wisconsin is increasingly becoming a national laughing stock, especially as the legislature secures the arrest of 18 people for carrying cameras in the Capitol at the same time that they move forward with a measure to allow concealed guns in the Capitol and right onto the Assembly floor.

WI Unemployed Have Been Abandoned

The Wisconsin AFL-CIO released a common sense jobs plan that calls for investment in infrastructure and retrofitting to reduce energy costs, procurement policies that stimulate local businesses by "buying local," and investment in the technical college system, but not a single one of these measures was considered.

As the state enters its fourth month of negative job growth, the unemployed in Wisconsin have been cut loose by Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP. At the federal level, Republicans are actively sabotaging any bill that would aid the economy in order to ruin Obama's chance of reelection.

For America's 30 million unemployed and underemployed, it is going to be a long, hard winter.

Sacrilege: Wall Street Worship

Leo Gerard — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:05:26 -0400

Americans have been worshiping a bull. Too many citizens, and particularly politicians, prostrate themselves to Wall Street’s bronze idol.

They revere financial titans who pay themselves and their minions millions to manipulate money and gamble recklessly. Politicians gave tribute to the financiers with tax breaks and bailouts when the bankers’ bad bets threatened to bankrupt their institutions.

This false idolatry produced a nation gripped by massive unemployment, a nation in which destructive income inequality has risen beyond robber baron levels, a nation where greed has been perverted from sin to good, a nation where politicians genuflect to money changers, not majority citizens.

Salvation for the majority is not more failed trickle-down economics or more deregulation so that Wall Street can resume committing unfettered wagering. Redemption is political and economic systems devoted to serving the common good, not the affluent few.

These concepts -- that governments should protect majorities and that the international financial collapse is an opportunity to transform the system into one supporting a more fraternal and just human family -- are contained in a report released last week by the Pope’s Council for Justice and Peace. It says:

“The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence.”

Those values mandate economic and political systems that transcend “personal utility for the good of the community,” the report says, then adds:

“The primacy of the spiritual and of ethics needs to be restored and, with them, the primacy of politics, which is responsible for the common good – over the economy and finance.”

This is exactly what the 99 percenters -- the Occupy Wall Street activists of every faith -- have been saying. They want systems that work for the vast majority of citizens, not just the 1 percent at the top.

A day after the Pontifical Council reported that inequitable distribution of wealth has increased both between individuals and nations, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office documented a massive spike in income inequality within the United States from 1979 to 2007.

The household income of the nation’s richest 1 percent grew 275 percent during that nearly 30-year period, according to the CBO report.

By contrast, the income of the middle class rose by one-seventh of that -- 40 percent. For the poor, the increase was one-fifteenth of that for the rich -- only 18 percent over 30 years.

The result is that the richest 20 percent of households got more money in those 30 years than the entire bottom 80 percent. That is redistribution of wealth – moving it from the poor and middle class to the richest.

The CBO study cites several factors contributing to the rising inequality, including federal tax policy. The CBO says tax policy fed inequity as the incomes of the wealthiest rose astronomically and their federal tax burden shrank.

This pattern is consistent internationally. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development determined that from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s income inequality increased in three-quarters of the 30 developed countries studied.

If basic morality fails as a reason to reverse these trends, then the Pontifical Council suggested another. Such inequality leads to instability and violence:

“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid.”

So far, the violence surrounding the 99 percenters in the “Occupy” movement has come from the government and police and not the other way around, thus the photos and videos of defenseless women pepper-sprayed by an officer in New York and a bleeding, critically-injured Iraq war veteran struck down by police in Oakland.

Historically, it wasn’t always that way. During another spike in the nation’s history of income inequality, in the first two decades of the 1900s, violence was turned on the rich. An anarchist shot robber baron Henry Clay Frick and bombings terrorized industrialists. As the socialist movement surged, Andrew Carnegie wrote that the gulf between rich and poor threatened the survival of capitalism.

Also ignoring morality, just consider that income inequality impedes economic development. An International Monetary Fund study found high levels of inequality retards economic recovery while relatively equal income distribution supports sustained growth. Numerous academic studies have reached the same conclusion – inequality diminishes economic expansion, for many reasons, including its tendency to provoke political and social unrest.

Yet conservative politicians continue to demand changes that would make matters worse. Candidates Herman Cain and Rick Perry, seeking the Republican nomination for president, have proffered flat tax plans that would compound the burden on the middle class and poor. On being informed that his would increase income inequality, Perry said, “I don’t care about that.”

When Democrats on the debt-reduction super committee suggested raising $1.3 trillion in tax revenues, including levies on the rich, a measure consistently supported by huge majorities of the American public, Republicans summarily rejected the proposal, calling it absurd.

The answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?” in this case is clear. The only gospel story in which Jesus engaged in violence is the cleansing of the temple of moneychangers. Morality demands an end to Wall Street worship and a new era in which both politics and financial markets work for the majority, for the common good.

The Week of Walking Backwards

Leo Gerard — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:01:36 -0400

As the Occupy Wall Street movement spread across the nation last week, politicians in D.C. flipped the bird at protesters – including those camping in Washington’s McPherson Square.

Here’s how: While occupiers sought political focus on the unemployment, impoverishment and foreclosures suffered by the nation’s non-rich 99 percent, politicians considered three major pieces of legislation and passed only the one that will help the wealthiest 1 percent and hurt the remaining 99 percent.

Senate Republicans murdered-by-filibuster the American Jobs Act, which would surtax the 1 percent to provide jobs for the 99 percent. The Senate did pass the currency manipulation bill, but House GOP leaders refused to schedule a vote on the measure that would protect jobs for the 99 percent by punishing countries that undervalue their currencies to artificially lower prices on their exports.

By contrast, both houses of Congress adopted the so-called Free Trade Agreements with Panama, Colombia and Korea, which will, just like their predecessor NAFTA, destroy jobs held by the 99 percent.

It’s incredible. Inexplicable. Inexcusable. In a country where joblessness is a painful 9.1 percent. Where one in five children lives in poverty. Where foreclosures rose again last month. Where a whole movement is growing to protest the appeasement of the rich at the cost of the middle class. In that place, Congress chose to walk backwards. It didn’t take two steps forward – which it could have by passing the currency bill and jobs act. No. It just took a giant step backward by embracing job-killing trade agreements.

It all forces the 99 percent to demand even more loudly: Where’s the jobs?

WHERE’S THE JOBS?

Either the Occupy Wall Street protesters aren’t loud enough or the politicians in Washington refuse to listen. It’s not just street demonstrators who politicians can’t seem to hear. Poll after poll has shown Americans’ first priority, their major concern is jobs.

Yet when President Obama proposes the American Jobs Act, a measure that would create 1.9 million jobs and ease taxes on the middle class and small businesses, Republicans in the Senate rebuff it. If the majority ruled, the jobs act would have passed the Senate with 51 Democrats in favor. But in the Senate, the GOP stops all action by requiring 60 votes to end their filibusters. They talk and talk and talk. And Americans who need jobs get nothing.

Where’s the jobs?

Amazingly, in a city frozen by political gridlock, the Senate passed with bipartisan support the currency manipulation bill. The legislation would make it easier for the United States to punish market-distorting currency undervaluing by imposing tariffs. The measure is crucial to stop what now seems an inexorable rise in the U.S. trade deficit with China, which continuously kills American manufacturing and jobs.

Last month that deficit rose to a record $28.96 billion, an increase of $2 billion over one month’s time. Over the past decade, 57,000 U.S. factories have closed and 6 million jobs have disappeared, with deliberate currency undervaluing by China a major factor. Though employment rose overall last month, the nation lost 13,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs.

The currency manipulation bill has 225 co-signers in the House, more than the majority it needs to pass. But Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has said he will not permit the chamber to vote on it. He will thwart an attempt to end the practice that is destroying American jobs – even though Republicans in both the House and Senate support it.

Where’s the jobs, Boehner?

Then Congress passed the Free Trade Agreements. Despite the incessant claims that the three will create “tens of thousands of jobs,” it’s clear that they won’t because simultaneously Congress finally renewed the lapsed Trade Adjustment Assistance for workers who lose their jobs as a result of free trade.

Here’s what the New York Times said about the agreements and jobs:

“Economists generally predict that free trade agreements, which eliminate tariffs and other policies aimed at protecting domestic manufacturers, benefit all participating nations by creating a larger common market, increasing sales and reducing prices. But such deals also create clear losers, as workers lose well-paid jobs to foreign competition.”

The United States can’t afford to lose any more manufacturing jobs. Yet it is projected that these agreements will particularly damage the U.S. textile, electronics and auto supply industries.

Again and again, politicians told Americans that NAFTA would create hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs. It did the opposite. Why would something different occur with these three copycat deals?

Where’s the jobs?

This is what the Times editorial board said about Republicans:

“The Republicans offer no actual economic plans, only tired slogans about cutting regulations and spending, and ending health care reform. The party seems content to run out the clock on Mr. Obama’s term while doing very little. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, accused Republicans of trying to “suffocate the economy” in hopes that the pain would work to their political advantage. They are doing little to refute that charge.”

As the Occupy Wall Street movement has shown, America can’t wait. The middle class needs help now.

Where’s the jobs?

Years of Discontent Trigger American Autumn

Leo Gerard — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:15:10 -0400

To convey the significance of the Occupy Wall Street movement, NBC News anchor Brian Williams this week quoted the 1960s Buffalo Springfield song, For What It’s Worth:

“There is something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear.”

Maybe it’s unclear what the Occupy Wall Street movement ultimately will accomplish. But what’s happening – for the past three weeks in New York and now in hundreds of towns across North America – is a roiling, inspirational, grassroots expression of anger, disgust and revolution.

And, frankly, given what’s been going on in the United States since the bank bailout, it’s amazing that this uprising didn’t precede the Arab Spring. The powers-that-be, from the rich and influential to their coin-operated politicians and corporate-owned media, have mocked and belittled and ignored the protesters, the 99 percenters as they call themselves – everyone but the richest one percent. No matter what the critics say, these young people, with righteous outrage and new age communication, have launched the American Autumn.

This revolt could have started in the spring of 2009, immediately after the Bush administration pushed through Congress the Troubled Asset Relieve Program (TARP), the $700 billion in taxpayer money spent to prop up banks that had gambled and lost untold trillions. A Bloomberg News investigation later would show that the United States lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to save the banks. Despite that help, the Wall Street recklessness ruined the American economy, throwing tens of millions out of jobs and homes.

Poverty and hunger skyrocketed in the richest country in the world. As tax revenue fell, states, towns and school districts slashed essential public services and laid off teachers, librarians, firefighters and police officers.

Maybe it just took this long for the middle class to grasp all the horrible effects of the Wall Street gambling and to realize that a government held hostage by country club conservatives bent on cutting public services just made matters worse. Maybe young people looked at unrestrained war spending, Pell Grant slashing and voter disenfranchising and decided they were fed up and not going to take foreclosure of their futures anymore.

Whatever the spark, the American Autumn began three weeks ago in New York City’s Zuccotti Park, formerly Liberty Square. Late in September, some of the one percenters sipped Champaign on an upscale restaurant balcony as they looked down on the protesters in the streets below. This week, as protests spread, wealthy risk-takers at the Chicago Board of Trade put signs in the windows of their ritzy offices bragging, “We are the 1 percent.” They don’t get it.

Nor does Bank of America. Here’s a bank bailed out by taxpayers that just announced it would begin imposing a new fee – $5 a month, $60 a year – on debit card users. This bank also just announced that it would worsen the recession caused by bankster recklessness by laying off 30,000 workers.

This is a bank that engaged in the habitual, anti-capitalistic Wall Street practice of rewarding poor executive performance by giving its CEO Brian T. Moynihan a $9 million bonus immediately after the institution he runs lost $2.2 billion in 2010. Moynihan responded to criticism of the $5 fee by saying customers – and ultimately taxpayers -- must line his pockets and that of shareholders, regardless of how badly he runs the bank or how stupidly he gambles with its money. That’s because, he asserted, the bank has a “right to make a profit.” No matter what.

The media and country club conservatives belittled the protesters. Here’s what Herman Cain, a Tea Partier seeking the GOP nomination for president, said:

“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks if you don’t have a job or you’re not rich. Blame yourself!”

He continued:

“It’s not a person’s fault because they succeeded. It’s a person’s fault if they failed. And so this is why I don’t understand these demonstrations and what it is that they’re looking for.”

He called the protesters “anti-capitalist,” although it was the banks that sought a socialist bailout from the government when they got themselves in trouble.

Cain didn’t blame banksters for unemployment, even though it was Wall Street gambling that took down the economy. He blames the teachers and police officers thrown out of work by local governments that are cash-strapped as a result of the recession -- caused by Wall Street recklessness.

Cain and the media keep saying they don’t understand what the protesters want. They just don’t get it.

A specific list of demands is unnecessary. What the 99 percenters want is obvious. They want the American dream restored. Good public education for everyone. Equity in opportunity. Shared sacrifice so that the rich pay a tax rate at least equal to that charged the middle class. An end to poverty and unemployment in the richest country in the world.

In the Buffalo Springfield song, For What It’s Worth, lyrics talk of 1960s youths criticized for their protests:

“Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind.”

This time protesters will get backing. The members of my union, the United Steelworkers, get it. Members of the unions of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win federations get it.

We’re here to support the young people of the American Autumn.

Seeking a Trade Rule Enforcer

Leo Gerard — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:09:58 -0400

Leo Gerard will be addressing the Oct. 3-5 Take Back the American Dream conference about the "Contract for the American Dream" and how we can "Stop Outsourcing the American Dream." Click here to register.

America is being played.

The U.S. allowed China to join the club of trading partners in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 under the condition that China observe club rules.

Over the past decade, however, China has profited immeasurably by ignoring, flouting and circumventing the rules barring market-distorting practices. Among the most destructive of these violations is China’s deliberate undervaluing of its currency, which makes Chinese exports to the United States artificially cheap and U.S. exports to China artificially expensive.

This nurtures Chinese industry and poisons American manufacturing.

In the trade contest with China, the referees have been absent or silent or completely craven on the issue of currency undervaluation, even as it kills U.S. factories and jobs. American workers need a trade rule enforcer. With unemployment above 9 percent, the situation is desperate. American workers can’t be played anymore.

Just last week, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a non-partisan think tank, issued a report showing that the trade deficit with China cost the United States 2.8 million jobs since the WTO allowed China into the trading club. Every congressional district in the U.S. lost jobs as Chinese exports to the United States overwhelmed U.S. exports to China.

The trade deficit is the difference between the value of Chinese exports to the United States and U.S. exports to China. It was $84 billion the year China entered the WTO. Last year it grew to $278 billion – a 230 percent increase.

EPI also determined that China’s currency manipulation is a major cause of the trade deficit. The report explains that China has aggressively bought U.S. dollars and other foreign exchange reserves to depress the value of the yuan. Smart move, but prohibited under WTO rules.

Without this deliberate market interference, the yuan would have risen in value over the years as China’s productivity soared. But a stronger yuan would have increased the cost of Chinese products in the U.S. and decreased the cost of U.S. exports to China. That would have quashed Chinese exports and invigorated American exports, lowering the trade deficit.

The currency manipulation is not surprising considering China’s other routine trade-distorting and rule-violating practices. These include giving government subsidies to factories that export. WTO rules permit governments to subsidize manufacturers that sell only within their own countries. But subsidized products can’t be exported because the government aid artificially lowers prices, which wrongly propels them ahead of unsubsidized products on the international market.

Developing countries often violate the rule anyway. They game the system. Everyone wants a leg up. It has served the Chinese economy and the Chinese people well. Progress for third world workers is to be celebrated. But it’s unjust when a country accomplishes it by defying rules it pledged to follow.

The United States has repeatedly imposed tariffs on China for exporting improperly-subsidized products. For example, my union, the United Steelworkers, filed a case seeking relief from subsidized Chinese passenger and light truck tires sold in the United States. Both the U.S. International Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce determined China breached the trade rules, and President Obama imposed tariffs on imported Chinese tires for three years. When China appealed the tariffs, the WTO concluded that Obama was right.

That’s enforcement.

And the result is that tire companies now are spending hundreds of millions to expand U.S. operations and hiring hundreds of U.S. workers.

But when it comes to currency manipulation, the U.S. government is all threats and no enforcement.

The U.S. Treasury Department has considered officially designating China a currency manipulator, a finding necessary before commencing sanctions. But it never did. The U.S. house and senate considered legislation but failed to pass it. And Obama asked China to allow the value of its currency to float up naturally. In June of 2010, China said it would.

But it hasn’t.

It’s more than a year later, and maybe another hundred thousand U.S. jobs lost. Washington seems to be listening only to greedy reactionaries who contend sanctions will spark a trade war.

They’re wrong. Every time the USW wins a trade case – including the tire case -- the reactionaries have wailed that the tariffs will prompt a trade war.

China won’t do it because the value of Chinese exports to the United States is four times that of American exports to China. China faces four times the risk in a trade war. The greedy reactionaries consist mainly of multi-national corporations that have outsourced production and jobs to China and are concerned only with profits and totally unconcerned about the U.S. economy and unemployment.

Another EPI study released earlier this year showed that if China and other Asian countries properly valued their currencies, as many as 2.25 million jobs would be created in the United States and the U.S. budget deficit would decline by up to $71.4 billion per year.
More jobs; lower debt – that’s why a bipartisan group of U.S. senators and congressmen introduced legislation last week to enable the U.S. Treasury Department to more easily declare a country deliberately undervalues its currency and to punish manipulators.

There can’t be any more dawdling or cowering or negotiating on this. American workers need enforcement now.

Labor Day: Build Esprit de Corps for Action

Leo Gerard — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:58:49 -0400

Celebrate Labor Day. Really, celebrate. It’s important.

Wear a t-shirt announcing to the world the name of your union and march in a parade, chanting and whooping it up about how glad you are to belong to an organization whose members are devoted to looking out for each other. If you’re among those without a union, proclaim your profession and declare your pride in the hard work you do. Make some happy noise. Infect your fellow marchers with your zeal.

Invite your most beleaguered neighbors, friends and co-workers over for a picnic. Raise a pint, braise some burgers and praise your companions for their skill, devotion and compassion. Recognize them for all they’ve persevered through since this relentless recession began in December of 2007. Build esprit de corps among your fellow workers.

This is one day devoted to labor, to the middle class, to the majority. One day out of 365. On this holiday, everyone gives an obligatory nod to workers. So don’t fret this Labor Day. Don’t waste it away in apathetic doldrums. Don’t let the minority rich and their purchased politicians take this celebration away from us too.

Some, including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, have called for protests on Labor Day. They say workers must use this opportunity to demand that Washington solve the real crisis debilitating this country – dogged joblessness.

Reich is right. But it’s too early for that. Ultimately, workers must flip this ugly situation upside down so that once a year it’s Rich People’s Day. Once a year, the middle class gives the frivolous Kardashians and tax-shirking GEs of the world an obligatory nod. But every other day, 364 days a year, is labor day.

Then, we would have a country committed to the wellbeing of the majority, the middle class, the workers, whose labor creates wealth.

Getting there is a long haul from where we are now, though. We must develop some self-confidence before we start protesting. Achieving the change we want requires an uprising of hope and anger. There’s plenty of anger out there. The populace is seething after suffering years of “no, not-for-you” politics from country club conservatives:

No more unemployment insurance extensions. No more Social Security and Medicare as you and your parents know it. No public option, providing health insurance for all. No end to tax breaks for corporations that off-shore jobs. No more Trade Adjustment Assistance workers who lose their jobs because of off-shoring. No end to tax breaks for corporate jets. No end to tax breaks for oil companies making billions. No end to income tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. No extension of the payroll tax break for the middle class. No reasonable restrictions on the big Wall Street banks that got bailed out with taxpayer money. No help for unemployed homeowners threatened with foreclosure. And no, there won’t be any jobs program. The country club conservatives must sustain high unemployment to regain the White House. So too bad for the jobless.

These unremitting attacks on the middle class have left workers feeling beaten up and beaten down. Workers are suffering from what author, psychologist and social critic Bruce E. Levine calls “battered people syndrome.” Exhausted, depressed, and blaming themselves for the country’s problems, too many workers feel unable to challenge the elite overlords.

This combination of anger and hopelessness produces destruction and self-destruction, like the riots that left London burning last summer. Hopeless about their future and angry at the rich for bilking the poor and at expense-padding British politicians imposing “austerity,” the city’s jobless ruffians abandoned morals, just as the wealthy and the ruling class had.

Frances Fox Piven counsels in her book, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America that hope is crucial, that constructive change arises from the mix of hope and anger. In places like Libya and Egypt this Arab Spring, wealth proved insufficient to overpower the majority invigorated by hope and anger.

The bitch for the rich in a democracy like America’s is that majority rules. And, frankly, the rich and corporations (newly dubbed persons by the U.S. Supreme Court) are a tiny minority in America.

Even though we’re the majority, workers can’t win until we hope we can, until we feel some assurance that we can overcome. It’s a long haul to hope from resignation and pessimism.

So let’s put some effort into fostering optimism. Let’s strengthen each other this Labor Day. We must raise that hope before we organize Reich’s protests.

Rile yourself up and pump up a friend this Labor Day so we can unite in anger and hope to push back the naysayers and make every day Labor Day. This video helps.

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute. He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union. Follow @USWBlogger