A Plan for Success
It's been a while since I last posted. I want this to be a neutral blog, not full of the usual partisan acrimony, but usually anything besides yelling "tea party people are crazy!" has been hard. So, I've been waiting until something could go the other way at least a little bit, and as usual, I am not disappointed.
President Obama went on vacation (a non-issue) promising to come back after Labor Day with a new jobs plan. I have to admit that is a little troubling. First, if there is a jobs plan to be had, where has it been all this time? Second, we all know what it is going to be, nibbling around the edges hoping to float his political image through the election. He knows what we all know, there is not a lot that can be done at this point about the jobs issue.
In fact, there might never be a solution. It has been speculated by many talking heads that this could be the new "full employment", meaning that the currently unemployed are mostly going to stay unemployed going forward. The breakdown of the unemployment shows that the uneducated are disproportionately affected, as would be expected. The problem, however, is that the uneducated do not have much that is special to offer in a hyper-competitive job market.
The main problem facing The President is that government has limited ability to affect the overall jobs picture for the better. Big, government mistakes can cause big problems (see the debt ceiling fiasco) but good government action has less positive affect. The problem is that government action doesn't make people feel like the economy is getting better, for the most part it only treats the symptoms. The government should absolutely help to treat the symptoms and minimize the damage that this decade causes to our citizens, but I do not believe they are where the answer is at this point.
The really depressing part is that a real plan at the very beginning could probably have averted most of the crisis. Also, let me be clear, a real plan is not some extra money for some roads and an tax break incentive program for small business owners. A national plan looks like one of these. No government workers get laid off for budget reasons until the economy gets better at any level of government. That's a national plan. The federal government pays fifty percent of the salary of every job a company brings back from offshore for their first five years back in the US.
Obviously those have a myriad of logistical problems as I made them up here while I'm typing this post, but I think everyone gets the point. Something huge, where everybody new someone at their work that had a job because of the stimulus. That would have been a plan. The time, however, has past, and it is time to admit that.
I do not envy The President his position trying to herd a bunch of Congressman who feel more like cattle than intelligent people, but he needs to level with people. This face he puts on is not becoming. It's time that President Obama made it real that he is The President. We don't give out medals at this level for "tried hard" or "participated". What is coming out is not a plan, it's a dodge, and I think everyone knows it.
President Obama went on vacation (a non-issue) promising to come back after Labor Day with a new jobs plan. I have to admit that is a little troubling. First, if there is a jobs plan to be had, where has it been all this time? Second, we all know what it is going to be, nibbling around the edges hoping to float his political image through the election. He knows what we all know, there is not a lot that can be done at this point about the jobs issue.
In fact, there might never be a solution. It has been speculated by many talking heads that this could be the new "full employment", meaning that the currently unemployed are mostly going to stay unemployed going forward. The breakdown of the unemployment shows that the uneducated are disproportionately affected, as would be expected. The problem, however, is that the uneducated do not have much that is special to offer in a hyper-competitive job market.
The main problem facing The President is that government has limited ability to affect the overall jobs picture for the better. Big, government mistakes can cause big problems (see the debt ceiling fiasco) but good government action has less positive affect. The problem is that government action doesn't make people feel like the economy is getting better, for the most part it only treats the symptoms. The government should absolutely help to treat the symptoms and minimize the damage that this decade causes to our citizens, but I do not believe they are where the answer is at this point.
The really depressing part is that a real plan at the very beginning could probably have averted most of the crisis. Also, let me be clear, a real plan is not some extra money for some roads and an tax break incentive program for small business owners. A national plan looks like one of these. No government workers get laid off for budget reasons until the economy gets better at any level of government. That's a national plan. The federal government pays fifty percent of the salary of every job a company brings back from offshore for their first five years back in the US.
Obviously those have a myriad of logistical problems as I made them up here while I'm typing this post, but I think everyone gets the point. Something huge, where everybody new someone at their work that had a job because of the stimulus. That would have been a plan. The time, however, has past, and it is time to admit that.
I do not envy The President his position trying to herd a bunch of Congressman who feel more like cattle than intelligent people, but he needs to level with people. This face he puts on is not becoming. It's time that President Obama made it real that he is The President. We don't give out medals at this level for "tried hard" or "participated". What is coming out is not a plan, it's a dodge, and I think everyone knows it.
