The False Jobs Recovery: Low Unemployment Rate Misses Key Points

Note: As the corporate media talks about the need to begin to raise interest rates because unemployment is decreasing they fail to report the key point — the major reason unemployment is down is not because of sufficient new jobs but because more Americans have given up trying to work. ... Read more

Full Employment and the Path to Shared Prosperity

There are many policies that can reduce inequality, but there is none as straightforward conceptually and as difficult politically as full employment. The basic point is simple: at low rates of unemployment, the demand for labor allows workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution ... Read more

It’s Still Bad for the Long-Term Unemployed

At first blush, it’s great news. The number of long-term unemployed Americans – meaning those out of a job for more than six months – has dropped to 3.7 million in March from a high of 6.8 million in April 2010. The ranks of the long-term jobless have plummeted by 837,000 over the past year alone, helping to drive down the unemployment ... Read more

Diary of a young co-op startup: the importance of collaboration

I have had moments where I would give anything to have a "normal job", with someone to tell me what to do, when to do it and to praise me for it. I have found myself valuing what I did in my paid work higher than the time I spent on AltGen, because the rest of society valued that ... Read more

THE SUBPRIME EDUCATION CRISIS

Oh dear. We appear to have what might be termed sub-prime student loans on which there are rising defaults. In fact it is possibly worse than sub-prime mortgages, because unlike mortgages, delinquent student loans cannot be written off in return for asset seizure. The borrower is stuck with the debt – possibly for ... Read more

Short-term Thinking, Profits on Wall Street; Pain on Main Street

What’s bad for Main Street and good for Wall Street in the short term is bad for both in the long term. The American economy is at a crawl. Median household incomes are dropping. The American middle class doesn’t have the purchasing power to keep the economy going. And as companies focus ever more ... Read more

Who’s Really To Blame for Unemployment?

Guided by the mythology of the “American dream”—the idea that, given the opportunity, the deserving will excel and rise above their peers—politicians often attribute unemployment to a mystical “skills gap.” If people can’t find a job, the logic goes, they clearly weren’t fit to be hired. As a consequence, ... Read more

ICELAND LETS BANKS FAIL; 2% UNEMPLOYMENT IN SIGHT

Unlike other countries who haven’t seemed to learn the lessons that the financial crisis forced upon them, Iceland’s position was “never again.” Frankly, Icelanders knew they couldn’t afford to let banks play dice with their entire country’s economy. Repeated over and over in the streets and in ... Read more

Capitalism in Long Term Stagnation and Decay

Well, there's lots of reasons why the economy is in trouble. I mean, the most obvious one is that when you concentrate all the income at the top, people don't buy. They can't buy enough. They can invest it or they can put it under the mattress or they can put it in stock speculation, but they've got ... Read more

Obama’s Address Fails to Look at Roots of Income Inequality

It's important that we restore the minimum wage. We're not talking about raising it. We're talking about restoring it. Back in the mid '60s, it was almost $11 an hour. And education is certainly very important and too much neglected in this country. We put huge barriers to bright but ... Read more