"The Get America Working! approach would work, in effect, by correcting a major price distortion. The current U.S. Internal Revenue Code taxes employment far more heavily than it does the use of natural resources. This distortion has grown progressively worse as payroll taxes have grown. Revising this distortion would increase employment, equity and overall economic vigor importantly. And it would do so by responding to market price signals, not through clumsy and expensive government interventions."
"It's Time to Get Help"
Date:
Mon, 09/07/2009
Source:
New York Times
Maybe the economic stress has been too much. Looking back at the past few months, it’s fair to wonder if the country isn’t going through a nervous breakdown. . . . This recession, a full-blown economic horror, has left a gaping hole in the heart of working America that is unlikely to heal for years, if not decades.
Fifteen million Americans are locked in the nightmare of unemployment, nearly 10 percent of the work force. A third have been jobless for more than six months. Thirteen percent of Latinos and 15 percent of blacks are out of work. (Those are some of the official statistics. The reality is much worse.)
Consider this: Some 9.4 million new jobs would have to be created to get us back to the level of employment at the time that the recession began in December 2007. But last month, we lost 216,000 jobs. If the recession technically ends soon and we get to a point where some modest number of jobs are created — say, 100,000 or 150,000 a month — the politicians and the business commentators will celebrate like it’s New Year’s.
But think about how puny that level of job creation really is in an environment that needs nearly 10 million jobs just to get us back to the lean years of the George W. Bush administration.
