Jobs trump deficit

On this Labor Day, Americans are feeling very insecure about jobs.  Furthermore, they don't understand why politicians are not as concerned about the unemployment rate as they are.  In poll after poll, they have expressed their feelings loudly and clearly.  They want their leaders to stop obsessing about the deficit and focus their energies on creating more jobs.

(Click on the graph to see a larger image.)

This is fairly typical of those polls.  Voters from all across the political spectrum and in every region of the country believe by a margin of more than two-to-one that politicians should be working to create more jobs, rather than talking about the deficit 24-7.

And it is not only average voters who think this way.  Knowledgeable economists, some of them with a Nobel Prize on their mantel, have warned for years that we are spending too much time dithering on the deficit.  The problem is jobs, lack thereof.  If we improve the economy and put people back to work, the deficit will begin to cure itself.

But the people in Washington don't have time for Nobel Prize-winning economists or for average citizens.  They only listen to each other and what they are hearing from each other is that the deficit must be fixed and that it can only be fixed by austerity, specifically, by cutting all the programs that poor people and middle-class people depend upon.  All the programs that benefit the rich must be kept intact at all costs!  (Some things are more important to these people than the deficit.)

In my world and the world of most Americans, jobs trump the deficit every time.  You would think that politicians would have received that message, especially on Labor Day.  I guess not.

Where are the jobs?

The big news in the business world today is that American business had profits of an annualized rate of $1.66 TRILLION between July and September of this year. That is a record. Those are the biggest profits ever recorded by American businesses. And yet these same American businesses are constantly whining that the Obama Administration doesn't love them and that they have created an environment that is hostile to business. Personally, I wouldn't mind a share of that hostility!

It was also announced today that the economy grew faster during that same period than was previously reported. The growth rate was 2.5% instead of 2%. That's nothing to shout about, but it is a clear indication that, thanks to government assistance that pulled it out of a deep, deep hole, the economy is moving in the right direction. We've now had five consecutive quarters when the GDP grew.

So why hasn't this good news for business translated into more job creation? While some jobs are being created, the unemployment rate stubbornly stands at around 9.6%. Businesses are just sitting on their profits, giving bonuses to upper management, and rewarding their shareholders, while at the same time doing little or nothing to put people back to work. Simultaneously, they are complaining, bitching, and griping about the "anti-business" president and giving money to his foes who are trying to bring him down. Talk about ingrates!

Since Obama came into office, American taxpayers have bailed out General Motors and Chrysler and have given hundreds of billions of dollars to mortgage and insurance companies that were on the ropes. Tax cuts have been given to businesses that were supposed to pass this money along by expanding their businesses and hiring new workers. An economy that was teetering on the edge of Armageddon has been brought back from the brink and stabilized. So where are the jobs, Mr. Businessmen?

Republicans never tire of telling us that all we need to do is make the Bush tax cuts for the very, very wealthy permanent and that will create jobs. Well, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy have been in effect for ten years, and, during most of those years - the years of the Bush presidency - there was negative job creation. Though that has turned around in the last two years, the hole was so deep that it is taking a while to climb out. But, according to Republican orthodoxy, there never should have been a hole, because those tax cuts for the rich should have magically created all kinds of jobs!

In this time of the highest profits in recorded history when the very rich have had the benefit of the lower "job creating" taxes for ten years, it is high time we asked those people and their Republican allies, "WHERE ARE THE JOBS???"