Tuesday, June 9, 2009
What a "Jobless Recovery" Really Means: A Massive Redistribution of Wealth from the Little Guy to the Big Boys
Everyone from the Fed bank of San Francisco to Kiplinger's is saying that we may have a "jobless recovery".
The meaning of the phrase jobless recovery itself is simple:
A jobless recovery or jobless growth is a phrase used by economists to describe the recovery from a recession which does not produce strong growth in employment. The phrase originated in the early 1990s in the United States, to describe the economic recovery at the end of President George H.W. Bush's term; it came back into use during the early 2000s.
But what is the deeper meaning of a jobless recovery now?
The government has spent more than $12 trillion dollars responding to the financial crisis. But the overwhelming majority of that money has gone to big banks and big corporations.
Obama's stimulus plan calls for $787 billion dollars in spending. That amounts to less than 7% of the government's crisis spending.
The fact that much of the stimulus bill is really pork reduces that number still further. And while Obama might throw more stimulus money into the system, independent experts say that total government spending could rise to $20 trillion dollars, so the percentage might substantially decline.
What these figures show is that the government has given well over 90% of the taxpayers' money to the richest companies and well under 10% for job-creation programs.
Therefore, the "jobless recovery" is really a massive redistribution of wealth from the little guy to the big boys (see this and this).
And even if big companies fire a bunch of employees and so temporarily boost their bottom line in the process, there is no such thing as a "jobless recovery" - as will become apparent after a couple of quarters.
4 comments:
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this whole thing was always by design. they planned to ensure that massive numbers of mortgage defaults would occur, and that the banks would end up with these assets and all of the accrued equity the 'in default' homeowner's lost. across the nation, this is in the TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS, and they won't stop until they take everything.
ReplyDeletethis is HIGHWAY ROBBERY and it's being done systematically to destroy the middle class and enrich the oligarch 1 percent who own most of the wealth. This is a CRIME!
A JOBLESS RECOVERY! Meantime asshole corporations like Walmart are dishing out 500 million bucks to offshore backoffice work.
ReplyDeleteWhen the hell are you folks gonna wake up and stop supporting bastards like Walmart. If you quit buying there junk they will go away.
all the corporations are doing it. ever check the voice you hear when you call someone in customer service? it's from Mumbai or somewhere in the Philippine Islands, not here.
ReplyDeleteas for Wal Mart, I nearly had to go to work for them out of desperation a few years ago. It'll be very bad if I have to go in there 'hat in hand' and beg them for a 7 buck an hour job to subsist off of. fuck me runnin!
Jobless recovery can be quite a natural thing... It is not necessarily a policy choice. In fact, the policy choice would probably to mitigate this phenomenon rather than to have it. Then you'd need to have an impact assessment for any measures to that aim. I have no idea how that could be done in any credible way, though.
ReplyDeletehttp://globalstructures.blogspot.com/2009/06/jobless-recovery-scenario.html