Fixing Jobs: Normal Isn’t An Option

[marmar]

from ourfuture.org:



Fixing Jobs: Normal Isn’t An Option
By Dave Johnson

December 2, 2009 - 6:32am ET


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The “Jobs Summit” is Thursday. Are they going to try to get things back to normal? I hope not!

“Normal” isn’t an option anymore, because it is what led to where we are.

The financial sector bailout is based on the idea that things will get back to “normal” if the credit machine is restarted and consumers and businesses are able to borrow more. The stimulus is based on the idea that the economy is an engine that runs smoothly and just needs to be restarted and things will get back to “normal.” While we wait for “normal” to return the government is stepping in to make up the slack in demand, and to help those hit hardest by the downturn. (Never mind that COBRA subsidies start expiring as you read this and unemployment has been extended and extended.)

The idea that you can get the financial sector and the economy back to “normal” desperately assumes that a sustainable “normal” existed in the structure of the 20th-century western economy. It assumes that there really is an “invisible hand” that takes care of things without human intervention. It assumes that perpetual growth of consumers and their incomes and of consumables could just go on and on.

This all assumes that “normal” was OK. This is such a nice, comforting idea. It is wrong.

What if that “normal” system really was unsustainable and that is what led to its collapse? What if there was a limit to how many jobs can be outsourced, wages cut, factories closed, people born, trees cut down, fish taken from the sea, nutrients taken from the soil, water taken from the aquifers? And, of course, the big one: what if there is a limit to how much carbon can be put into the atmosphere? ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009124902/fixing-jobs-normal-isn-t-option

[TheKentuckian]

1. Yeah, "normal" was already pretty horrid.

Just a bunch of bogus booms and busts every few years that lowered the standard of living and earning power each time coupled with a semi-eternal functional recession.

[dmallind]

2. I'm curious when that started

When exactly was the time when you think the decline started? What was the standard of living then compared to, say, the 1990's.