It has come this: God save me, I am actually reading and quoting and linking a blog by Arianna Huffington on the Huffington Post website. But she has made some important observations that I think are necessary for every American to realize. I have included some of the highlights IMHO.
Arianna Huffington: If "America Can Do Whatever We Set Our Mind To," How Come Our Leaders Won't Set Their Minds on Jobs?
"We do big things," President Obama said during his State of the Union speech in January. And, in fact, we do. Sometimes. Finding and dispatching Osama bin Laden certainly qualifies. "We are once again reminded," the president said after announcing the terrorist's death, "that America can do whatever we set our mind to."
But if that's true, why are our leaders so accepting of a stagnant economy? If they really focused on the havoc it is wreaking on the lives of tens of millions of Americans, they would, in the memorable words of Richard Clarke, be running around with their hair on fire.
But they're not. Instead, they express concern but resign themselves to the fact that, as White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee put it in an interview with HuffPost, the economy has "a long way to go." Meanwhile, we're being asked to accept years of underemployment, low growth and draconian cuts to America's social safety nets as the "new normal." Or, as Bill Clinton put it in a different context, the "tyranny of low expectations."
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Yet our leaders, who are supposed to be doing big things, seem instead to have made their peace with "the new normal." Take the Fed: it could be doing a lot more to create jobs, but instead it's guarding against the phantom bogeyman of inflation. "Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?" asked David Leonhardt. "After all, does the economy feel as if it's on the verge of overheating?" Hardly.
At the New America Foundation's conference about the Federal Reserve, the Peterson Institute's Joe Gagnon said that the Fed's timidity is responsible for the loss of 1 million jobs. "Apparently," writes Mark Thoma, "the millions and millions of people who are unemployed, some of whom won't be reemployed until years from now if we do nothing to help, are supposed to be patient because people with power over policy are worried about inflation and higher interest rates."
Our elected leaders aren't any better -- less focused on the job crisis than on arguing about how to best divvy up harsh cuts to the social safety net and programs that benefit the middle class. Meanwhile, profits for the Fortune 500 jumped by 81 percent in 2010, to $318 billion. Clearly big things aren't out of reach for everybody.
It's not that we can't do something big about the economy -- it's that our leaders choose not to. Or, as Mark Thoma puts it: "We can't help to stimulate job growth if we don't try, and so far we aren't trying anywhere near hard enough."
President Obama himself connected the economy to his can-do speech about Osama. Immediately after declaring that "America can do whatever we set our mind to," he said, "That is the story of our history, whether it's the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggles for equality for all our citizens."
But, at the moment, that doesn't seem to be the story of our country. We are dangerously close to accepting a bifurcated economy as the new status quo. Yes, there are political realities. Yes, the parties are hugely divided.
But if it's true we can do "whatever we set our mind to," then how about we set our mind to reigniting the American Dream for everybody, and not just those few for whom the recession is an out-of-sight-out-of-mind reality? There is no bigger Big Thing we can do as a country right now.
And for the idiots on the left, raising taxes on the rich ain't going to help create any jobs. Good, now I feel better, equilibrium has been restored.
Arianna Huffington: If "America Can Do Whatever We Set Our Mind To," How Come Our Leaders Won't Set Their Minds on Jobs?
"We do big things," President Obama said during his State of the Union speech in January. And, in fact, we do. Sometimes. Finding and dispatching Osama bin Laden certainly qualifies. "We are once again reminded," the president said after announcing the terrorist's death, "that America can do whatever we set our mind to."
But if that's true, why are our leaders so accepting of a stagnant economy? If they really focused on the havoc it is wreaking on the lives of tens of millions of Americans, they would, in the memorable words of Richard Clarke, be running around with their hair on fire.
But they're not. Instead, they express concern but resign themselves to the fact that, as White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee put it in an interview with HuffPost, the economy has "a long way to go." Meanwhile, we're being asked to accept years of underemployment, low growth and draconian cuts to America's social safety nets as the "new normal." Or, as Bill Clinton put it in a different context, the "tyranny of low expectations."
.
.
.
Yet our leaders, who are supposed to be doing big things, seem instead to have made their peace with "the new normal." Take the Fed: it could be doing a lot more to create jobs, but instead it's guarding against the phantom bogeyman of inflation. "Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?" asked David Leonhardt. "After all, does the economy feel as if it's on the verge of overheating?" Hardly.
At the New America Foundation's conference about the Federal Reserve, the Peterson Institute's Joe Gagnon said that the Fed's timidity is responsible for the loss of 1 million jobs. "Apparently," writes Mark Thoma, "the millions and millions of people who are unemployed, some of whom won't be reemployed until years from now if we do nothing to help, are supposed to be patient because people with power over policy are worried about inflation and higher interest rates."
Our elected leaders aren't any better -- less focused on the job crisis than on arguing about how to best divvy up harsh cuts to the social safety net and programs that benefit the middle class. Meanwhile, profits for the Fortune 500 jumped by 81 percent in 2010, to $318 billion. Clearly big things aren't out of reach for everybody.
It's not that we can't do something big about the economy -- it's that our leaders choose not to. Or, as Mark Thoma puts it: "We can't help to stimulate job growth if we don't try, and so far we aren't trying anywhere near hard enough."
President Obama himself connected the economy to his can-do speech about Osama. Immediately after declaring that "America can do whatever we set our mind to," he said, "That is the story of our history, whether it's the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggles for equality for all our citizens."
But, at the moment, that doesn't seem to be the story of our country. We are dangerously close to accepting a bifurcated economy as the new status quo. Yes, there are political realities. Yes, the parties are hugely divided.
But if it's true we can do "whatever we set our mind to," then how about we set our mind to reigniting the American Dream for everybody, and not just those few for whom the recession is an out-of-sight-out-of-mind reality? There is no bigger Big Thing we can do as a country right now.
And for the idiots on the left, raising taxes on the rich ain't going to help create any jobs. Good, now I feel better, equilibrium has been restored.
