Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty-Guest Blogger
We have heard both sides of the aisle claim that they have the next big idea to bring jobs back to Main Street. Recently President Obama, according to an article from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, has claimed that he will be submitting a Jobs Bill to Congress when they return from their 5 week summer hiatus. “He even says he’ll be proposing a jobs bill in September – and if Republicans don’t go along he’ll fight for it through Election Day (or beyond). That’s a start. But read the small print and all he’s talked about so far is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits (good, but small potatoes), ratifying the Columbia and South Korea free trade agreements (not necessarily a job-creating move), and creating an infrastructure bank. An infrastructure bank might be helpful, depending on its size. Which is the real question hovering over the entire putative jobs bill – its size. Some of the President’s political advisors have been pushing for small-bore initiatives that they believe might have a chance of getting through the Republican just-say-no House. They also figure policy miniatures won’t give aspiring GOP candidates more ammunition to tar Obama as a big-government liberal.
But the President is sounding as if he’s rejected their advice. That’s good policy and good politics.Good policy because any jobs bill has to be big enough to give the economy the boost it needs to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.” Truthout According to Reich and other economists, the legislation needs to be big and bold. Secretary Reich goes even further and presents a list of ten ideas he would like to see in any job legislation.
“What would a bold jobs bill look like? Here are the ten components I’d recommend (apologies to those of you who have read some of these before): 1. Exempt first $20K of income from payroll taxes for two years. Make up shortfall by raising ceiling on income subject to payroll taxes.
2. Recreate the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps to put long-term unemployed directly to work.
3. Create an infrastructure bank authorized to borrow $300 billion a year to repair and upgrade the nation’s roads, bridges, ports, airports, school buildings, and water and sewer systems.
4. Amend bankruptcy laws to allow distressed homeowners to declare bankruptcy on their primary residence, so they can reorganize their mortgage loans.
5. Allow distressed homeowners to sell a portion of their mortgages to the FHA, which would take a proportionate share of any upside gains when the homes are sold.
6. Provide tax incentive to employers who create net new jobs ($2,500 deduction for every net new job created).
7. Make low-interest loans to cash-starved states and cities, so they don’t have to lay off teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and reduce other critical public services.
8. Provide partial unemployment benefits to people who have lost part-time jobs.
9. Enlarge and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit – a wage subsidy for low-wage work.
10. Impose a “severance fee” on any large business that lays off an American worker and outsources the job abroad.” Truthout
While I may agree with some of Sec. Reich’s suggestions, there are others that I don’t like. For example, I like number 10 on his list. I think the idea of the “severance fee” would act as an inducement to big companies to keep jobs here in the States. I don’t like the idea of an infrastructure “bank” because I would be afraid that some ex-Goldman Sachs big shot would be named to run it and I think we know who that would benefit!
However, since we have so many good minds here on Professor Turley’s blog, I am confident that together We can come up with ideas to jump-start the job creation process that will compliment the ideas already mentioned or actually replace those ideas. My big idea would be to challenge the corporations of America to create jobs through innovation and new technologies and provide the funds to develop the best of those innovations as quickly as possible through a national competition that would be open to corporations and individuals alike. The winning entry would have to be one that would produce significant, good paying jobs and would have to be designed and manufactured here in the United States with 85% of the materials also obtained or produced here in the United States.
So it is time to get to work and let us know what you think of these suggested ideas from Robert Reich, but more importantly, let us have your idea(s) and why it would work. Don’t be afraid to think big. We don’t have the political restraints here that Washington has so there is no excuse not to be bold in your ideas. Who knows, maybe President Obama and Speaker Boehner are secret readers of the Turley Blog and your ideas just might catch their eye!
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty-Guest Blogger
today on Wednesday will reasearch about cash loans for unemployed and The Top Paying 100 Jobs in Singapore (Salary.sg) | Support Site ….
great informative article, its important the in tho time of recession we as a nation look at restructuring the way our companies work to create jobs for the growing population of unemployed.
I went to a recent presentation on solar collectors that boost boilers. The boilers still use fossil fuels when necessary. It looked like solid here is now technology to me with a fairly fast payback. Installing lots of them would create jobs and the cost savings give a pretty fast payback.
Gyges, liked your comment:
Off the top of my head: A productive civil job is one which results in a net gain in the quality of life for other members of society, or leads to an increase in knowledge.
If I were making decisions in Washington, I’d launch a full scale multi disciplinary systems improvement study of U.S. Courts. I’d hire translators, survey designers, survey analysts, forms managers etc. and build off of PACER /ECF until U.S. Courts starts getting consistently high satisfaction ratings from all users. Even the criminally convicted should be able to say that they understood the process and anything they contend is unfair should be clearly documented. They should have comprehensive exit interviews for every participant in the courts — employees, litigants, juries, etc. plus there should be clear initial documentation of what to expect. Then every 60 days or so, they should get some sort of survey as to the matters’ progress.
Oops cut and paste error the quote ends with “…eliminated, falling to about 20% or a little less in Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark.”
My apologies.
Roco,
First off, I never said that the U.S. wasn’t mixed, in fact I wrote that sentence in such a way that it clearly stated that the U.S. was mixed economy as well.
To answer your question, the first study was linked to because of the handy dandy graph in figure three. The rest of the material in there is completely irrelevant to the argument.
The Corak, is ametastudy (that is an analysis of research from a variety of other sources) and the source for the numbers for that graph. After adjusting for differences in methodologies of those studies he concludes, “The United Kingdom, the United States, and to a slightly lesser extent France, are the least mobile countries with 40 to 50% of the earnings advantage high income young adults have over their lower income counterparts being associated with the fact that they were the children of higher earning parents. In none of the OECD countries under study is this relationship entirely”
In other words, the studies that have been done, show that U.S. and U.K have less upward mobility than several European countries.
Now, my point is that in order for your statement that “economic mobility… is limited in socialist countries” to be consistent with those findings, you would expect to find fewer “socialist” policies in the countries with the most upward mobility. Do you?
Oh, just a hunch. 🙂