Double-Dip Recession, Blame Game

"Double-Dip Recession, You Say? Blame Congress and Corporations, Not Obama" by v. johns

Before I begin with today’s topic, I must disclose that, as of June 20 of this year, I am now out of a job. Before unemployment, I endured 14 years of underemployment, working part-time at a well-known southern grocery-store chain in two cities and in three stores. I am confident that whether it be purely through my own volition or with help from Florida’s One Stop job centers, I believe that, at some point or another, I will find full-time work.

In the meantime, although I apparently make no light at all of the unemployment rate being so high, I question the term “double-dip” being thrown around so loosely, as of late. While I hold and maintain that we should listen carefully to economists, let me clarify that I say this with a strong emphasis on the “s” at the end of the word “economists.” It’s very important that we analyze the consensus among them against whatever dissident discourse may exist as well. And please note that while economists look at raw data, news agencies mostly report the sexy stuff. The two don’t always jibe. So, while most people don’t want to see “the fundamentals are strong” headlined in their local newspapers or blabbed about on TV, when they are without a job, it’s important that people understand exactly why there is a disconnect between the economy we feel (high unemployment) and the one on paper (“the fundamentals”). That’s right, people… politics.

This being summertime, when things slow down in some places, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect another bad jobs report before the summer is out. Florida, a state that harbors northerners escaping harsh winter months up north, is especially sensitive to this normal annual down-cycle. So far, though, our state is gaining jobs.  To Governor Scott’s credit, 78,000 jobs (according to one local news-channel in my viewing area), have been added to the state since Scott has been in office, with May’s unemployment rate coming in at 10.6-percent statewide, down from 11.3-percent a year ago (according to the Palm Beach Post). Florida’s report for June, says the Post, is still pending.

My problem in what is being reported on is that while all leading indicators are essentially up since 2009, the two things most responsible for this ongoing disconnect between recovery and job enumeration (political obstruction and corporate cash-hoarding), have gone largely unchallenged by the media at large. While our political situation has spawned all sorts of anti-job creation instruments (an ongoing foreclosure crisis, ongoing financial speculation, poor financial regulation, harmful anti-competitive corporate mergers, depressed consumer psychology, slowed consumer spending, a tax burden that overloads and depresses the resources of the middle class and the poor, etc.), corporate America’s refusal to reinvest in its own workforce is not only inexcusable, but utterly shameless. With capitalism being based on bold risk-taking action, some of our corporate business leaders are telling us that because they’re so afraid of “uncertainty,” they can’t risk investing their hoarded trillions in the very people that are going to spend and create multiplier effects once they’ve regained their footing. Had this been done in the past, after the Great Depression, there would be no such thing as “trillions of dollars.”

Getting back to the psychology of it all, long before the debt-ceiling crisis began popping up on most people’s radar, the Republican obstructionists up on Capital Hill were throwing out the phrase “double-dip” as a way to refute Obama’s allegedly bad economic policies. So, now that another bad jobs report has come along, this time for the month of June, the Grand Old Party (of greed, prejudice and fear) is at it again: using a bad situation to get what they want politically, despite what they know is right for America.

My plea to people is this: How long are we going to tolerate a small politically-extreme minority holding our country back from what we could have had two years ago? (a real economic recovery). When are we on the bottom going to hold those at the top accountable for what they’ve brought upon the rest of us? When are we going to stop waiting for economic prosperity and start fighting for it? “Job creation” is something we’ve all got to fight for. When lawmakers and business leaders don’t hear from us, they simply ignore us. Call them, write them, sleep on their doorsteps or outside their offices, write annoying blogs, like this one -- whatever it takes to say: “I see you. And I … am going … to get you!” (“get you” as in: recall, vote-out, primary challenge, impeachment and removal, etc.).

Later on, I’m going to list some things we can do to get Washington’s attention. In following through on some of these things -- things that are already in motion to some degree -- not only can we let the rich not pay their fair share of taxes, we can look corporations dead in their grill and tell them to keep their damn trillions. It’s what the old self-help gurus call “the power of alternative thinking.” In the meantime, should a double-dip recession, or something of its nature, occur, let it be because of the poor judgment and apparent lack of morality of a few and not because the rest of us have given up on ourselves and talked ourselves into it.

 

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