First of all we have to just forget for now reducing the defict and start spending more money at least $1,250,000,000.00 + we need a massif infrastructure program reparing our roads and bridges. Build a modern High Speed Rail (HSR) meg-lev trail system . I would propose a law that says that any American business sends any part of its operation to another country they must pay those workers the same as they pay workers here in the United States, must also give them the same benifits, if the workers in the US had a union then those in the other country must have one as well. Any worker that is "displaced" the company must give therm 100% of thier pay and benifits for the first year 75% the second 50% the third and 25% the fourth even if those workers shall find other employment in that time and finaly that company still has to abide and follow US Environmental, Health and Saftey laws and regulations

Robert,

You make some good points, but democrat or republican we face the same structural problem. And that problem is an excess of labor. The effects of automation combined with labor moving to "low cost" markets are going to be consistent high um-employment here in the United States.

U.S workers will never be competitive with foreign labor at $1.0/hour. Combine this with the effects of computer spreadsheets and robo-welders in auto plants there are more workers than jobs - and this will get worse over time. As the third world builds a stable infrastructure, more jobs will move off shore.

President Bush forestalled this with the help of the housing bubble. Six million jobs that could not be off shored - but that bubble burst. The rep plan to up defense spending by a third could forestall it for another 10 years - but we already spend too much of the GDP on weapons. But it did work to end the last depression under FDR.

Alternately the dems may have the beginning of a solution - public works. Each primary "public" job creates 5 or more secondary jobs at stores and factories, and gas stations etc. Each public job and secondary jobs is taxed at roughly 20%. All else being equal, the first public job in the chain is paid for by the taxes on the subsequent 5 jobs it creates - leaving a 20% surplus in the federal coffers. The velocity of money accelerates to pay for the investment in infrastructure.

And although the democrats are on the right track, congress will never let it happen. We are at a cross roads - either move together to build a better nation, or perish one job at a time.

Mark

Robert, please stop being diplomatic. Obama screwed up by hiring Geithner and adopting his pre-Hoover "please Wall Street at all costs" economic philosophy.

Obama has destroyed any sane economic discussion by adopting Geitherism which is the economic equivalent of Rumsfeldism or Cheneyism. When you look at economic policies, Obama is actually worse than Bush. Bush started the Detroit Bailout with a $24.9 Billion down payment and Obama almost killed the bailout. If Bush, for whom I have no praise, had not started the Detroit Bailout, it is clear that Obama would not have initiated it because he listened to Geithner.

You have to be bolder in your speaking. You have to support Keynes and explain why the government's duty is to protect the Price System (which is Adam Smith's Invisible Hand). But, Obama, the Fool, has allowed the GOP to make "regulation" into a dirty word. Without strong regulations, the Price System is at the mercy of Corrupt Fools.

There can be a sound economy if and only if the federal government is stronger than business so that the Feds can regulate the economic sphere in order to protect the Price System from distortions. It is the exact opposite of Grover Norquist, but Obama is too much an effete sissy to take on Norquist.

Obama does not deserve another term, but the country does not merit Mitty and Mr. Abs.

Robert,
You're one of my favorite thinkers, but I believe you are doing a disservice to your reader anytime you don't offer practical, actionable advice on the problems you criticize. If the Republicans are stonewalling and sandbagging Democrats' solutions, we must first establish that we had the solutions. ;-)

We know that raising revenue through taxes to fund the return of public service employees and teachers to work, and to finance infrastructure construction would be part of the solution. Cutting out unnecessary wars, wasted subsidies and major tax loop-holes, frees up dollars for job creation. What other ideas do you recommend to put the middle and lower classes back to work and increase cash flow in the economy in the immediate future? gw

I don't get how the failure of "job creators' failing to create jobs is any of Obama's fault--he approved the extension of their Dubya-era tax cuts. The "job creators" have failed--it's time to let them go. Job creators, YOU'RE FIRED! Nothing serves as better proof of tax cut failure than this does.

Reading liberal speak is one of my new favorite hobbies! Hysterical!
1) the jobless rate only fell because nearly 200,000 Americans have given up looking and obama deducts those no longer looking from his calculation of unemployed. 2) Obama spent billions bombing Libya in his own private war without asking Congress to give him that authority- as Bush did(recall please that democrats by the score voted yes on his request) nor the U.N. either, and he continues to kill people in a number of countries with Drones nearly daily without any permission from Congress or the courts or the u.n.- and I guess you think that is free as well? Low taxes, low regulation and the freedom that people enjoy to keep and benefit from their own labor is what built this great nation. Trickle down built this economy and pulled more people out of poverty and mind numbing government assistance or slavery than any system in history. This nonsense that trickle down - which is a disparaging term for capitalism works- russia ran your experiment and dissolved into poverty, and starvation and deary hopeless lives- but Reich wants to run the experiment again at huge cost to Americans.
Now the banks - the new evil money monsters for you people. The banks were forced by Dodd, Barney, Clinton, and originally Carter to execute their notion of socially responsible mortgage lending as they believed that only letting people with a down payment, job, solid credit rating and verifieable income buy houses was mean spirited and discriminatory. So they implemented this idea of egalitarian banking where every man- actually any man or women could get a loan to buy a house. In fact they made rules that would trigger huge fines for banks not handing out loans like free condoms and we predictably ended up with a massive inflation of home prices followed by even more massive home value collapse. Obama today is moving against his old friends Bank of America to fine them $500. Million for not meeting his socially acceptable level of ghetto home loans even still- today. They even had the government mortgage wholesalers lower their standards so that today they are bankrupt.

Here is the problem you liberals have- your plan of cradle to grave government largresse just never works and economies need to lift themselves up organically by business growth and the creation of new businesses not through government spending in adding supports to bridges.

Did you notice that once China became essentially brutally capitalistic their economy exploded? Millions of Chinese have jobs, good food, better housing and they have all the hope that Obama keeps talking about from the change he mentions which was more capitalism and more trickle down economics.

The economy isn't improving simply because Obama has done nothing to allow it to truly move back to a growth status- the capitalist system here was strong enough to create a recovery from the worst of the recession but is now stalled due to obama's refusal to allow production of oil, his refusal to allow businesses to operate with less endless red tape and rules and the confusion over tax rules which stalls investment.

Thatcher summed it up" eventually you will run out of other people's money"

Europe ran this experiment for you as well and there will be massive human suffering and emotional trauma and finally social upheavel when their economies implode from running Reich's childish economic beliefs- but my liberal friends live on i their delusional world. Promising people free stuff may win elections for goofs like Obama but in the real world massive government social engineering and redistribution of wealth will always eventually result in disaster.

Or more simply - there really is no free lunch.

Republicans, it appears, are really bad for the economy. That seems their weakest demon, which they really have no philosophical resources to oppose. By nature "conservatives" and Republicans want to keep wealth in the hands of the few but that is self-destructive as regards any kind of capitalistic economy. Republicans are in a collision course with an economic system -- free market, capitalism, free enterprise, private property or whatever it is called -- that they pretend to support but really do not agree with at all.