Dean Baker - A Competitive Dollar: The Missing Link in President Obama’s Manufacturing Agenda

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama announced a renewed commitment to manufacturing in the United States. While the commitment to rebuilding the country’s manufacturing base is welcome – manufacturing has historically been a source of good-paying jobs for workers without college degrees – he unfortunately left the most important item on the list off the agenda.

President Obama failed to commit himself to restoring the competitiveness of dollar as part of his agenda for bringing back manufacturing jobs. The value of the dollar really has to be front and central in any effort to restore U.S. competitiveness since it is by far the most important factor determining the relative cost of U.S. goods compared with goods produced elsewhere.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/competitive-dollar-missing-link-president-obama-s-manufacturing-agenda-1328028595

Bill Quigley - Working and Poor in the USA

“Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied men and women, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

Millions of people in the US work and are still poor. Here are eight points that show why the US needs to dedicate itself to making work pay.

One. How many people work and are still poor?

In 2011, the US Department of Labor reported at least 10 million people worked and were still below the unrealistic official US poverty line, an increase of 1.5 million more than the last time they checked. The US poverty line is $18,530 for a mom and two kids. Since 2007 the numbers of working poor have been increasing. About 7 percent of all workers and 4 percent of all full-time workers earn wages that leave them below the poverty line.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/19-4

Ravi Batra - The Cost of Trickle-Down Government Job Creation: $1.5 Million Per Worker

Suppose I were to tell you that for the past two years the federal government has been spending nearly $1.5 million to create one job, what would your reaction be? Would it be one of disbelief and bewilderment? But suppose I were to prove my statement by citing official data, then how would you react? Well, you make up your own mind, but my response is that the administration's advisers should rethink their approach. Does it make sense to spend so much money to generate one job when the average wage is less than $50,000 per year? In fact, this policy is so foolish that it might even be better just to hand over the average salary to the unemployed so they stay calm, make both ends meet and create consumer demand.

Let me prove my point. The administration's tack is that we should keep spending money at the current rate to preserve jobs, even though the annual federal budget deficit has been around $1.4 trillion over the past two years. In fact, the government even plans to increase its shortfall by raising the size of the payroll tax cut. It seems apparent that the main purpose of excessive federal spending is to preserve or generate jobs. This is a point emphasized by every American president since 1976, and especially since 1981 when the federal deficit began to soar. This is also how most experts defend the deficit nowadays.

Read More:

http://www.truth-out.org/cost-government-job-creation-15-million-worker/1325800265

Lisa Graves - Indiana Workers Stand against the ALEC Agenda and the Anti-Labor Bill Called the "Right to Work" (for Less)

Thousands of Indiana workers rallied outside, and inside, their state capitol on Wednesday to speak out against Governor Mitch Daniels' renewed effort to force through so-called "right to work" legislation designed to undermine labor unions and workers' rights protected by collective bargaining."This bill is no native born Hoosier idea," says Graves. "It tracks key provisions of 'model' legislation secretly voted on by corporations and politicians..."

One Victory for Democracy--Restored Access to the Indiana Capitol

Workers won a victory Wednesday when the Governor rescinded new restrictions that had been created to limit the rights of Indiana citizens to freely access their state capitol building. Prior to last year's protests, citizens in Indiana, Wisconsin, and other states had long enjoyed easy access to their state houses to express their views on legislation, but in Indiana as with Wisconsin and other states, partisan political leaders imposed supposedly "safety-based" restrictions to limit citizens exercising their freedoms of assembly and speech. On Wednesday, faced with thick lines of constituents winding down the streets of the capitol, the state lifted the 3,000-person cap on the number of people who could enter the building where legislation is being pushed to restrict workers rights.

Read More:

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/01/11215/indiana-workers-stand-push-anti-labor-laws-called-right-work-less-and-alec-agenda

Louis CK On 20 Year-Olds And Jobs

Watch Here As Well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzxcjg7YZSs&feature=player_embedded

Andre Damon and Barry Grey - Study Documents Desperate Conditions Facing the Unemployed in America

By Andre Damon and Barry Grey 

Global Research, December 5, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28047

A study published Friday by Rutgers University documents the desperate situation facing millions of American workers who lost their jobs in the recession that began four years ago. The survey of laid-off workers, conducted by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, found that only 22 percent of those who lost their jobs between August 2008 and August 2009 were working full-time as of August 2011.

Just 7 percent of the unemployed initially contacted by the Heldrich Center in the summer of 2009 say they have regained their previous income level. Another 23 percent say they are on their way back, having experienced a minor downward change in their quality of life that they believe to be temporary.

But a full 36 percent speak of “cataclysmic effects” of the recession and prolonged unemployment, including 21 percent whom the report’s authors consider to have been “devastated” and another 15 percent “who appear to have been wrecked by the recession.” (Emphasis in the original). The former category includes those in poor financial shape who have suffered a major decline in their standard of living, even if they believe it to be temporary. The latter comprises workers who are in poor financial shape, have suffered a major decline in lifestyle and believe the new state of affairs to be permanent.

Forty-seven percent of those surveyed say their personal financial situation is in “poor shape,” 58 percent say the economic crisis has had a “major impact” on themselves and their families, and 41 percent believe that the impact on their standard of living will be permanent.

The study found that the crisis has taken its biggest toll on those with no college education, 46 percent of whom have been “devastated” or “wrecked.” However, nearly a quarter (24 percent) of college graduates in the survey have likewise been “devastated” by the jobs crisis.

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Robert Reich - The Jobs Report -- Don't Break Out the Champagne

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Jobs-Report-Don-t-Bre-by-Robert-Reich-111203-637.html

December 3, 2011 By Robert Reich If Congress refuses to extend the payroll tax cut and/or unemployment benefits by December 30, it will create another drag on the economy. When people ask me what Congress is likely to do I always say the same thing: The odds are in favor of nothing. So while today's jobs report is in the right direction, it's way too early to break out the champagne. In brief: The Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey shows unemployment at 8.6 percent, and the payroll survey shows 120,000 new jobs in November (140,000 from the private sector, and a loss of 20,000 in the public sector). BLS also revised upward its job numbers for September and October. What does it mean? We're not out of the woods but we might be seeing some daylight. Maybe. Here's what you need to worry about: First, this rate of job growth is barely enough to keep up with the growth in the working-age population. So we're not making progress on the backlog of more than 13 million jobless Americans, and another 11 million working part-time who'd rather have full-time jobs. Second, retail jobs constituted a third of new private-sector employment in November. Retail jobs tend to be unstable, temporary, and low-paying. Although the BLS is supposed to adjust for seasonal employment (i.e. Christmas), it doesn't take account of the fact that more and more Americans have been pushing up their Christmas buying to before Thanksgiving. So some of these jobs may not be around very long.

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The Morality of the Wall Street Mindset

In a sneak peek of my upcoming project investigating the plight of poor people in modern America, Jordan Belfort discusses how the elite Wall Street 1% conspires to exploit the other 99%.

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"Jim Hightower" - Something Big Is Happening: #OccupyTogether

To paraphrase one of Bob Dylan's songs of youthful protest, "Something's happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Ms. Bellafante?" A New York Times writer, Ginia Bellafante, is but one of many establishment reporters and pundits who've been covering the fledgling "Occupy Wall Street " movement — but completely missing the story. Instead of really digging into what's "happening here," they've resorted to fuddy-duddy mockery of an important populist protest that has sprouted right in Wall Street's own neighborhood. In a September article, Bellafante dismissed the young people's effort as "fractured and airy," calling it a "carnival" in an "intellectual vacuum." Their cause is so "diffuse and leaderless," she wrote, that its purpose is "virtually impossible to decipher." No wonder, she concluded, that participation in the movement is "dwindling."

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"Paul Joseph Watson" - Occupy Wall Street Protesters suckered into a trap

Despite their honest intentions, many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being suckered into a trap and calling for the very “solutions” that are part of the financial elite’s agenda to torpedo the American middle class – higher taxes and more big government.

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