Friday, March 4, 2011

Guest Voz - Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

Republicans and the TeaParty continue to tell us the Middle Class is responsible for our Economic Crisis. They say Unions must be demolished. They say Teachers, FireFighters and Police should continue to take salary & benefit cuts and their pensions eradicated.
While President Obama's Jobs Bill has enabled an increase in jobs, the middle class continues to lose Salary and Benefits. Economist Robert Reich explains the REAL NEWS on Jobs!
Guest Voz -- Robert Reich: "The REAL NEWS on Jobs!"
Are we making progress on the jobs front? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 192,000 new jobs in February (220,000 new jobs in the private sector and a drop in government employment), and a drop in the overall unemployment rate from 9 to 8.9 percent. We're heading in the right direction but far too slowly to make a real dent in unemployment. To get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent by 2014 we'd need over 300,000 new jobs a month, every month, between now and then.

Overall, the number of unemployed Americans -- 13.7 million -- is about the same as it was last month. The number working part time who'd rather be working full time -- 8.3 million -- is also about the same. But to get to the most important trend you have to dig under the job numbers and look at what kind of new jobs are being created. That's where the big problem lies.

The National Employment Law Project did just that. Its new data brief shows that most of the new jobs created since February 2010 (about 1.26 million) pay significantly lower wages than the jobs lost (8.4 million) between January 2008 and February 2010. While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour. In other words, the big news isn't jobs. It's wages.

For several years now, conservative economists have blamed high unemployment on the purported fact that many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech jobs market. So if we want more jobs, they say, we'll need to take pay and benefit cuts. And that's exactly what Americans have been doing. Employers have demanded wage and benefit concessions from their unionized workers and often got them. Detroit is creating auto jobs again -- but new hires are getting about half the pay that auto workers were getting before. Airline workers are taking home 30 to 50 percent less than they did years ago. And so on.

Conservatives say it's not enough. That's why unions have to be busted -- and why some governors are seeking to abolish laws requiring workers to become dues-paying union members in order to get certain jobs. Hence, the fights brewing in the Midwest.
Meanwhile, millions of non-union workers have accepted cuts in pay and benefits just to keep their jobs. Health benefits have been slashed, pension contributions from employers dramatically cut, wages dropped or "frozen."

Millions of private-sector workers have been fired and then re-hired as contract workers to do almost exactly what they were doing before, but without any benefits or job security. The current attack on public-sector workers should be seen in this light. The charge is they now take home more generous pay and benefit packages than private-sector workers. It's not true on the wage side if you control for level of education, but it wasn't even true on the benefits side until private-sector benefits fell off a cliff. Meanwhile, across America, public-sector workers have been "furloughed," which is a nice word for not collecting any pay for weeks at a time. At this rate, the unemployment rate will continue to decline. But so will the pay and benefits of most Americans.
Conservative (Republican) economists have it wrong. The underlying problem isn't that so many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech labor market. It's that they're getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie.

1 comment:

Defensores de Democracia said...

Three VIDEOs, Famous Economist Jeffrey Sachs ( Columbia University ) : billions to Billionaires, Useless Wars, Crushing workers and Unions, disappearing Middle Class in America, Ecological Destruction of the World
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Three horrible interviews of Professor Sachs - He dislikes Republican Policies and considers them absurd. As an internationalist he worries about Food Prices, Oil, and bad crazy mad foreign policy.

House Republicans cutting essential services of Education, Health, Maintenance of Infrastructure in America.

The Middle Class is disappearing in America, it has been declining and the Super Rich are crushing it. Huge Budget Taxes because billionaires do not pay taxes.

The Myth that Republicans know what Americans want and proceed accordingly - The Tragedy of Obama and the Democrats being forced by Republicans to cut in Budget Essentials.

The Most Powerful Lobby of Private Health Insurance harms America, the Republican House Speaker wants Military Spending that the Pentagon does not want.

Giving Money to the Super Rich - Pleasing the rich to get Electoral Contributions.

Jeffrey Sachs : do not ask sacrifices to the Poorest Americans, when the Rich do not want sacrifices but only gifts of many trillions of dollars.


Uploaded by Attention101 on Feb 16, 2011

Dr. Jeffrey Sachs: Dispelling MSM Myths About "What The People Want"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVbEMuouS2k


ploaded by jpeter4333 on Feb 23, 2011


Prof Jeffrey Sachs Columbia U on Walker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvxcrFBtyfk


Uploaded by 33ItHappens on Feb 21, 2011


Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, discusses the impact of energy prices and global economic growth on food inflation. Sachs speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday." (Source: Bloomberg)

Jeffrey Sachs Interview on Food Price Inflation - Bloomberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_brjUUSoaMo

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