"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."
The Jobs Solution
Date:
Thu, 04/02/2009
Source:
The Nation
Leo Hinderly, Jr., Chair of New America Foundation's Smart Globalization Initiative and a former telecommuncaiton executive, and Donald Riegle Jr, a former Michigan Congressman, focus on the need to create jobs and the larger than officially reported level of unemployment in the U.S.
" . . . There are 12.5 million officially unemployed workers, and America's nominal unemployment rate is 8.1 percent. But these numbers tell less than half of an already dismal story that just keeps getting worse, with record increases in the number of Americans claiming unemployment and the highest number of officially unemployed workers on records dating back to 1967. When we more accurately and honestly include the 10.7 million workers who are underemployed--either part-time of necessity (8.6 million) or otherwise marginally attached (2.1 million)--and the 3.7 million who are in the "labor force reserve" (because they have abandoned their job search), then the unemployment rate rises to a staggering 16.7 percent."
