In These Times: How to Create Good Jobs Now

[marmar]

How to Create Good Jobs Now
A bold proposal for meeting human needs through a permanent U.S. employment program.

By Sidney Hollander


This article was written by Ron Baiman, Bill Barclay, Sidney Hollander, Joe Persky, Elce Redmond, Mel Rothenberg.

For the last three decades, U.S. public policy makers have operated on the theory that individual entrepreneurial freedoms are essential to the creation of wealth and thus to the well-being of individuals and society as a whole. One of the great failures this “neo-liberal” approach to economics has been its inability to create enough jobs to keep pace with population growth.

Between 2001 and 2007, the working-age population in the United States outpaced job creation by 10 million individuals. Projections indicate that the shortfall will include another 17 million persons by 2016, making a 16-year total of 27 million missing jobs — 27 million people, in other words, who will have been pushed out of the labor force.

If current trends continue after 2016, labor force participation will have fallen to barely half the working-age population, down from a pre-2000 level of about two-thirds.

The scale of the problem—and program

To confront the growing poverty and social misery that is engulfing the poorest 40 percent of Americans, the United States will require a national jobs program based on significant public investment in the economy. We propose a program that would pay workers the current median wage ($18 per hour), which is a living wage that still allows room for promotions and pay raises. As we will demonstrate, this program can be funded easily by progressive taxes, cuts in defense spending, and taxes on carbon-emitting production. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5147/how_to_create_good_jobs_now

[endless october]

1. it's a simple choice. bring back manufacturing, or kiss much of the middle class goodbye.

[Nay]

2. Don't they get it at In These Times? They don't CARE if we have

jobs. They'd just as soon we crawl away and die somewhere. It's not a lack of planning or imagination -- they are planning and imagining our DEMISE. Wake up!