On May 1, 2012, Floyd Norris writes in the Economix section of The New York Times:
“The jobs report for May was worse than almost anyone expected. It cries out for action from Washington, but the political pressures point the other way. Just as Europe needs to do something to push growth, so does the United States. But there are powerful forces screaming to cut government spending on both continents.
“It may be worth noting that — in the private sector — this recovery is going a little faster than did the one following the early 1990s downturn, and is only a little slower than the most recent ones. The big difference is in government jobs.
“Total employment bottomed out in February 2010, well after the official end of the recession. The previous post-recession lows were in May 1991 and August 2003.”
Here are some comparable figures for the first 27 months from the bottom, in terms of percentage change in employment:
Private Sector Jobs
1993-95: +2.7%
2003-5: +4.2%
2010-12: +4.0%
Government Jobs
1993-95: +2.9%
2003-5: +1.4%
2010-12: -2.2%
The BIG CHANGE that we need is a policy and program direction that deters further concentration of ownership of the future productive capital assets represented by the wealth holdings of our business corporations and companies. We need to empower ordinary Americans to acquire ownership in the future productive capital simultaneously with the growth of the economy with financial mechanisms that facilitate their acquisition out of the future earnings (future savings) generated by the investments––the same mechanisms used by the top 1 percent to finance their continued accumulation of ownership.
Until we acknowledge the concepts of binary economics––two factors of production (human and non-human)––we will continue to be stuck in one-factor labor worker thinking, which is not the path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice for the 99 percent in the face of tectonic shifts in the technologies of production in which there is an ever-accelerating shift to productive capital as the means of producing products and services, and thus a corresponding destruction or degradation of job opportunities.
We need to create real economic growth in the production of products and services, whose underlying productive capital means is financed to simultaneously broaden private, individual ownership among ALL Americans. The result will be far greater affluence for everyone and the creation of “real” job growth as the economy revs up to produce more as a result of simultaneous growth of consumer demand.
This should be the national GOAL agenda!
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/a-lagging-recovery/?ref=business
