It seems that our government, in the three years since our recession began, has forgotten about the one sixth of American workers who are jobless. Early on, the focus was on creating our jobs; stimulating our economy in order for jobs to be created either through public transportation projects or through lowered interest rates on loans to businesses. This made a small dent, but not one big enough to weather the recession through to its end. Numbers are stabalizing, but it doesn't mean that people are hiring again, it simply means that not many are getting laid off and consequently, very few are getting hired. Washington, seeing stability, has turned instead to budget deficits and cuts on spending. There is any excellent op-ed piece on this whole topic in the NYTimes.
The author of the op-ed piece, Paul Krugman, is in favor of seemingly forgetting our budget deficits and turning instead back towards job creation. In part I agree with him. I believe that we do need to focus on job creation. Without jobs, our economy will not recover, it will simply languish and stagnate, forcing deficits even higher as more and more people clamor for benefits from both their local and the federal government. That being said, there must also be cuts in spending to stabalize our increasing deficit. In the government, there must be a balance, or multi-tasking taking place to conquer both issues. There are wasteful government programs which are over-funded and arguably do not offer much in creation of jobs. I've mentioned it before, but if we took a quarter of the military budget for this coming year and diverted it to job creation and economic growth, we would undoubtably be able to create a good number of jobs. Unfortunately, wherever there are cuts made, it will affect someone's job at some level. So where is the balance?
It seems that it must come down to what the money supports and how many jobs it supports. If $100 million supports 2000 jobs in one area and by diverting it could create 4000, wouldn't it make sense to create an extra 2000 jobs? Yes it would affect 2000 workers, but there would be a net gain. If you look at our federal deficit, currently in the trillions of dollars, how can we justify spending more money to create jobs at the risk of everyone. This is one of those fabled Catch-22's. If we cut spending to control the deficit, we lose some jobs and lower the tax base on which our deficit is funded, yet if we continue to spend money at our current rate, possibly creating jobs, then our deficit increases. Which road do we travel down. There must be a middle road to be found. I for one am an advocate, being a younger person, of beginning to scale back Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. At this point, it would be grossly unfair to take money away from those who have been paying into it, have retired, and are now collecting. However, most of the money that these retired and disabled receive is from tax dollars provided by the current working class. The money that the retired and disabled paid in has been spent by our government and not paid back. Scaling back on Social Security would free up money for job creation.
Beyond simply deciding to spend or cut in the government (if you look at simply cutting, Europe has shown that cutting alone does not solve problems), there is another issue concerning the unemployed. With the unemployed, on average for 37 weeks, where is the motivation now to go find work? They have seen the economy stagnate in essence, not really growing or shrinking, and many have lost hope of finding a job, period. Without taking measures soon to create jobs, we risk a permanent unemployed class of people, many of those new graduates entering a near impossible job market. There must be balance. As with anything, polarizing efforts to one extreme or the other inevitably alienates one segment of the population or another. Lets wax asianic for a minute. There is a yin and a yang to everything. A good side and a bad. There is, in nature and everything we do, a balance between the forces. Leaning to either side too much creates discord and thus imbalance.
Too many people these days, especially politicians it seems, have only one point of view and are not willing to entertain others. Through persistence in these one-sided views, stagnation is created because no compromise can be reached. It all boils down to being able to listen to others, entertain their thoughts and ideas, and incorporate the best aspects of them into your own. Being bull-headed and unchanging, we can resolve nothing. Balance must be sought after in our government. We are in dire need of balance, yet politicians seem oblivious. They would much rather berate each other's ideas than enter into discussion as to how to effectively solve our nation's problems. If we can figure out how to solve our economic woes, we could be the example again for the rest of the world as to how to resolve issues.
Our country is based on the frontier phenomenon, namely, we excel when confronted with unexplored waters or issues. We our currently embroiled in one of the greatest frontiers our country has ever been witness to. Is it a positive frontier? No, but it is a frontier that needs tackling, taming, and conquering. Our dire economy needs the frontier mentality embodied by our ancestors. Our politicians need to forget everything they have learned and approach this issue with fresh eyes, a willingness to conquer the issues, but most of all, they need to do it in cooperation with each other. No one person can do this alone, we need to band together in order to overcome our situation. More now than ever, we need a renewed sense of the American spirit, brotherhood, and patriotism. Lets all move to solve our economic woes together.
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