A Very Simple Question, But No Republicans Can Answer It !

This woman's question was very simple and direct. As you saw, he is stumped as to what to say. He tries to change the subject to the stimulus bill and try to go negative, but the crowd would not have it. Then he tries to move on and avoid the question, again the crowd reacts, one man yells, "you don't have an answer."

This has been repeated over and over in town hall meetings across the country. Not one Republican, both in office and those running for office can state any evidence that the Bush tax cuts created jobs and by reducing the taxes on the wealthy and corporation would create more jobs.

If the evidence clearly shows a loss of jobs during the period of time that the Bush tax cuts were in effect, then lowering them further would not result in more jobs. It may however reduce employment even further, given the prior effect during the Bush Administration's loss of 8 million jobs, record profits by corporation, huge increases in net worth and incomes for the wealthiest Americans and stagnant wages for those who still have jobs.

All economists of any credibility all say that demand for goods and services is the only way to increase employment. The only difference between them is the ideology of whether government should use tax dollars to create demand or should the private sector? The problem with the private sector is that no company will increase output without someone able and willing to buy their products or services first.

However, there is one problem with this approach. Lets say demand can be increased by maybe increasing wages for those who are currently working, many of the goods they might purchase are made outside of the USA. So the net effect from the increase in demand for those goods is helping the country that makes those goods as well as the net profit of the corporations, but zero or very little grown in employment in America.

More Americans are working low wage part-time jobs, this artificially keeps the unemployment rate lower than it actually is. Many are having to work two part-time jobs to try to make ends meet. This then fills more job openings, reducing the available positions for those who are looking for work.

This lack of job openings is compounded by the fact that more seniors who would normally retire at age 55 or 60 are having to keep working. Why? Because of the loss of pensions from the company that just went broke and failed to adequately fund their portion of the pension plan or that their investments have declined to the point that they can't live on the earnings. With interest earned in low risk investments below even 1%, most seniors don't have the 10 million dollars in the bank to earn a reasonable income through interest payments. With Social Security not receiving any cost of living increases, they will have less to spend on anything other than the very basic needs of shelter, food, utilities and health care.

So you younger generation that think that it's not your job to fund Social Security and Medicare for the baby boomers, think about all the baby boomers that will continue to work and fill all the jobs you could have had, but don't. If all these baby boomers are willing to work at entry level wages and have a lot of experience, why would a company hire a new graduate with no experience?

What to do:

Raise the minimum wage to a level that is livable; that would be at least $25.00/hr. At the same time, pass a law that would penalize a company if they move any existing job out of country so that they can avoid the increased minimum wage.

Ask more companies to operate more hours, especially retail, so they can hire more workers. It may require reducing some full-time by 8 hours a week and then add the extra Saturday and Sunday hours, still not to exceed a 40 hour work week for any individual worker.

Get public employees back to work. School teachers, police, fire fighters, etc. They are a major part of our consumer economy. Their wages help create demand for goods and services. And hopefully they buy American made products so as to stimulate jobs here in America.

But with all that said, the reality is that we have now a world economy. We are interlinked with all other economies. Thus, there are more people around the world seeking employment than there is ability to employ them. Not everyone can work in some form of industrial production. There is a need for agriculture, but it is back breaking work for little pay.

In most of the industrialized world, even the agri-business has become mechanized to such a degree that it take far fewer laborers to produce the same amount of acreage and thus tonnage of output. Then you have the major droughts around the globe that is killing many agri jobs, thus increasing those who are looking to the major population centers for industrial work.

Compound this with newly emerging countries that are looking to increase or develop industrial output. One of the major causes of the Arab Spring revolts was lack of jobs and jobs that pay a living wage. As a result of these revolts, they are demanding and will work hard to create some form of industrial base. This can only be done by under cutting the wages of industrialized nations, thus further eroding the current wage scales down to equal the newly emerging labor markets. This is what happened with China and India infusing huge numbers of low wage workers to American and European companies. This caused loss of jobs in America and Europe and therefore the reduction or stagnant wages, even as profits have risen ten fold, all on the back of low wage workers.

Add to this that the world economies are built on little actual value. The world currencies are basically worthless and propped up in a house of card by the various "Central Banks" that issue money and regulate the banking industry. Since fractionated banking was introduced as the standard of practice for the past century throughout the world, it has created a false money supply. This was part of the real estate balloon problem, both here in USA and in some of the European countries like Spain and Ireland that also had inflated housing prices and easy credit markets.

When America began deregulating our financial systems starting in the 1980s, we pressured the European countries to follow suit. Unfortunately they did and this has set the stage for a world wide depression as the combination of all these employment factors, false economic currency management and declining natural resources needed for any sustainable economic growth by any country, we are in a very serious situation if not managed correctly.

My suggestion is that all noted and scholarly economist from around the world, of all ideologies, meet and establish working groups to come up with a global economic model that will bring the world out of this mess. They would meet every five years to adjust the model as events dictate.

Every country would adopt this economic model so that everyone is operating on the same playing field. Financial regulations be standardized throughout the world so to create stability in all economies. For the free market to operate efficiently and with fewer "business cycles" there has to be consistent and stable economic policies. When you have uncertainty in the investment market, finance market and consumer confidence, then you have huge volatility in all of them. You end up with what we have today, a roller coaster ride, that if not stabilized soon, could derail the world into a deep depression.

The net effect of this deep depression is the huge loss of life due to starvation and disease. Whenever you have high poverty, you have lack of sanitation and health care service which then results in easy transference of deadly diseases. Much like the plagues of centuries past. Additionally, the effects of global warming, whether human made or natural, will also cause crops to fail and less food available to the 3 billion living on the planet. Starvation will be the result. This will reduce the worlds population to a point that economic recovery will be possible because there will be fewer people looking for work and greater abundance of natural resources per person still living. I'm talking about the loss of over a billion, maybe 1.5 billion people in a short period of time.

The bottom line is choose your elected representative carefully. Anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, or political party loyalty and ideology are not important now. As one can see, it requires careful and considerate understanding of the problems and possible solutions to save the planet and the humans that inhabit it.