Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The source of Republican joy
Bob Herbert looks at the economic disaster that is spreading over the American workforce like a BP oil spill.
The pain coursing through American families is all too real and no one seems to know what to do about it. A rigorous new analysis for the Rockefeller Foundation shows that Americans are more economically insecure now than they have been in a quarter of a century, and the trend lines suggest that things will only get worse.Though he does not say so, we are seeing the fruits of 30 years of Reaganomics working together with a propaganda network capable of convincing us that shit smells like roses. But the worst part of it is those we chose to do sometning about it, they haven't a clue.
Rampant joblessness and skyrocketing medical costs are among the biggest factors tearing at the very fabric of American economic life so painstakingly put together in the early post-World War II decades...
Simply stated, more and more families are facing utter economic devastation: completely out of money, with their jobs, savings and retirement funds gone, and nowhere to turn for the next dollar.
More than 14 million people are out of work and many more are either underemployed or so discouraged they’ve just stopped looking. Big corporations, sitting on fat profits even as the economy continues to struggle, have made it clear that they are not interested in putting a lot more people back to work any time soon.
Policy makers have dropped the ball completely in terms of dealing with this devastating long-term trend of ever-increasing economic insecurity for American families. Long-term solutions that have to do with extensive job creation and a strengthening of the safety net are required. But that doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s agenda.
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