With all the bombast and lying that has been flowing out from both parties, it’s no wonder that the public is completely confused about what’s, what and who’s, who. Both side of the aisle have been very vocal about the problems with the economy. So I thought I’d go way far afield and inject some reality in the form of facts into the noise over the economy and who’s telling the truth about it.
If you listen to any of the GOP candidates they will have you believe that Obama has driven our economy into the toilet and unless we elect a Republican, the nation will falling apart without a chance of recovery. Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” ignores the fact, not the opinion but the fact, that America is already the greatest nation on the globe. We have a larger, faster climbing economy, a larger by far military, the greatest colleges and the most technically advanced industry in the world.
Contrary to the smoke screen by the GOP that jobs are disappearing, we have created over 14 million private sector jobs since 2010. The jobs disappeared because of the stupidity and cronyism of the Bush administration. As a result of this huge increase in jobs, unemployment has dropped to under 5%. People filing jobless claims has hit a 42 year low. Make no mistake, there are still people looking for work but most of the current unemployment comes from technical advances that have made human workers obsolete in certain industries.
The Dow Jones industrial average, which has doubled during Obama’s stay in the White House, is among the best performances under any president in history. The housing and construction markets are strong, auto sales are booming and even wages have begun to rise for the first time since the sixties.
This boom has spread across the entire spectrum of our society, while the job losses have been concentrated in a small segment of the population, mostly white, middle aged and blue collar. The reasons for this job disappearance are factory closures, due to product obsolescence, moving overseas or robot labor replacement. They have hit the blue-collar sector very hard.
The US recovery has been much faster than the Euro zones and almost three times faster than Japan. Despite this, the GOP pundits still claim that the economy has suffered under Obama. They claim that regulation, exemplified by Dodd-Frank is killing us. But this accusation does not jibe with the numbers. The Top five American banks racked $139 billion in profits out of the system last year as opposed to about $60 billion by he top five European banks.
So we are really in pretty good shape. The biggest problem with our economy right now is not enough demand, due to not enough investment. We tend to save too much, (a reaction to the 2007 crash), thereby not investing to create jobs and product, which is the way you bring about demand.
The best solution to this is a major boost in infrastructure spending. With money so cheap to borrow, this is the ideal time to build and repair infrastructure, creating both jobs and demand. Unfortunately every time this comes p all the Republicans run for the hills.
The beauty of this process is that it will create jobs for those that have been left behind by the tech revolution, those workers who are not equipped to compete in the high tech industries, which have been emerging as the principal job creators. This infrastructure work, mostly construction, will last until most of the affected workers age out of the job market and will have taken care of a huge problem without adding to the nonproductive costs of unemployment.
The Right’s accusation that regulation is killing small business, the primary employer in the nation is pure bullshit. Regulation is the only thing keeping small businesses alive and they really need much more of it if they are to survive the bullying tactics of the huge corporations. For small businesses, regulation can be a pain in the butt but it is absolutely necessary to protect them from the criminal tactics of the large corporations with whom they must do business.
The corporate backed Right is interested in stopping all regulation so that they will be free to trample on everyone’s rights and to pollute the atmosphere in search of higher profits. That’s the reality. The crap the GOP is trying to sell you is nothing but a pack of lies, formulated to increase the profits of the greedy lords of commerce who pay campaign costs and add to the coffers of Right wing congressmen.