American Workers: Hanging on by the Skin of Their Teeth

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-whitney/51841/american-workers-hanging-on-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth

American Workers: Hanging on by the Skin of Their Teeth
by Mike Whitney | September 28, 2013 - 7:52am

After five years of Obama’s economic recovery, the American people are as gloomy as ever. According to a Bloomberg National Poll that was released this week, fewer people “are optimistic about the job market” or “the housing market” or “anticipate improvement in the economy’s strength over the next year.” Also, only 38 percent think that President Obama is doing enough “to make people feel more economically secure.” Worst of all, Bloomberg pollsters found that 68 percent of interviewees thought the country was “headed in the wrong direction”.

So why is everyone so miserable? Are things really that bad or have we turned into a nation of crybabies?

The reason people are so pessimistic is because the economy is still in the doldrums and no one’s doing anything about it. That’s it in a nutshell. Survey after survey have shown that what people really care about is jobs, but no one in Washington is listening. In fact, jobs aren’t even on Obama’s radar. Just look at his record. He’s worse than any president in modern times. Take a look at this graph.

More than 600,000 good-paying public sector jobs have been slashed during Obama’s tenure as president. That’s worse than Bush, worse than Clinton, worse than Reagan, worse than anyone, except maybe Hoover. Is that Obama’s goal, to one-up Herbert Hoover?

[truedelphi]

1. When the nation is run by politicans who have

Their own concerns about future jobs (revolving door between industry and government) and are also controlled by campaign coffer offers, the democratic process becomes a plutocratic one, and life starts to suck.

Frank Capra showed us the distinction between the sucky and non-sucky way of life in "It's a Wonderful Life" with the "Potterville" that Jimmy Stewart experienced in a harsh world that existed after he committed suicide contrasting so sharply with the more pleasant reality that Stewart enjoyed by the end of the film. .

But our Potterville is brought to us not because we have committed suicide, but because our "leaders" in both parties are perfectly willing to hand the economy over to the Big FInancial Firms and their total creation of bubbles, the MIC, the Surveillance people, the Fracking people, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big "Medicine" and Big Agricultural interests etc.

[jsr]

2. Recommend

[grilled onions]

3. We Lost Representation

Between the spineless and those who only have spine to fight for Wall Street and every corporation on our planet we have little chance for survival. Half of them allow every job to be shipped to other countries and the other half play dumb,pretending they either don't know it's going on or that they are helpless to stop it. If that isn't bad enough we have the two headed H1BV monster entering the scene and giving jobs to even more foreign workers. They say it's all about skills but they spell that w-a-g-e-s. That is the attraction--that is the major attraction. You can tell that by the lack of quality of almost everything that arrives here that once was made here. Materials are cheap,stitches are crooked and often materials are flawed. They pucker and have little strength. Other items use cheap paints,varnishes and it gives you little confidence when you buy it. Few alternatives exist except for resale shops and auctions. If their stuff is up to par why is it they fall apart/die long before what we used to have when it was made here?
We need to bring the jobs back and we need to get quite a few of those who do not represent us to become unemployed.

[quadrature]

4. the private sector is doing fine...nt