On February 1, 2013, Jim Puzzanghera writes in the Los Angeles Times:
Fears of a recession seemed to evaporate as the nation added 157,000 net jobs last month and other key economic data improved, boosting major stocks to their highest level in more than five years.
Economists and investors were heartened by the Labor Department’s jobs report Friday, which suggested that growth accelerated at the end of last year.
The new economic readings — a mix of federal and private data — contrasted with Wednesday’s government report that the economy contracted at a 0.1% annual rate in the last three months of 2012.
The January jobs report, which also showed the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9%, came in slightly below analyst expectations. But revised job growth figures dating to early 2011 triggered a surge of optimism that the recovery had not veered off track.
There are not near enough jobs being created to stay in step with population growth and to sustain the economy. Every month there is the anticipation that the jobs report will disappoint, which it has for years now. Nor does the jobs report address the reality that jobs are being devalued due technological innovation and invention and global competition, with less high-paid wage and salary opportunities.
Most Americans are not earning enough income to properly support themselves and their families. The country is experiencing a widening divide between an elite income class with well-paid salaries and dividend and capital gain income from stock ownership and low-pay wage earners and those dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare funded by extracting taxes and incurring national debt.
While the wealthy ownership class further amasses the FUTURE ownership of productive capital assets, subsidized by debt, the majority of Americans who are non- or under-capitalized are not earning enough income to properly support themselves and their families––retirement is financially not an option. The country is experiencing a widening divide between an elite income class with well-paid salaries and dividend and capital gain income from stock ownership and low-pay wage earners and those dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare funded by extracting taxes and incurring national debt. This situation will continue to worsen. Americans need to WAKE UP and realize that the FUTURE is one of technological unemployment. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.
Plus, the “boomer generation” is having to stay at work much longer because they cannot afford to retire. Even if the “boomer generation” did not stay at work and block the pipeline for younger people seeking to advance their careers, due to technological unemployment and the reality that less people are needed to produce the products and services society needs and wants there will not be enough jobs. And as a result of dependency on wages and salaries, most American incomes will decline, which will result in a downturn in the economy as there will be fewer and fewer “customers with money” to purchase the products and services society needs and wants. The result: no or significantly reduced opportunity for income.
This situation will continue to worsen. Americans need to WAKE UP and realize that the FUTURE is one of technological unemployment and underemployment. As private sector job creation continues to deteriorate most American incomes will decline, which will result in a downturn in the economy as there will be fewer and fewer “customers with money” to purchase the products and services society needs and wants. The result: no or significantly reduced opportunity for income.
In the past decade and previous to that Americans were increasingly relying on CONSUMER DEBT to finance homes, cars, vacations, education, and their material affluence. This is the worst debt because it does not generate its own income stream to pay for its self unlike applying the logic of corporate finance, which is self-financing and asset-backed credit for productive uses to grow the economy. People invest in capital ownership on the basis that the investment will pay for itself. Ordinary Americans are shut out of this opportunity because our financial institutions require a form of loan security and relay on “past” savings and equity, which ordinary Americans, and by that I mean the majority, do not have. What is need our proposals to free economic growth from the slavery of “past” savings.
The new reality of technological unemployment is not going to go away. This reality is the result of technological innovation and invention, tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, and an obsolete union movement stuck in job creation and “more pay for less work” instead of bargaining for employee ownership and increased incomes resulting from dividends earned as stock owners in corporate America.
We need REAL solutions, which combine JOBS CREATION and OWNERSHIP CREATION. There is a solution, which will result in double-digit economic growth and enable ordinary Americans to become affluent. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future is published athttp://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jobs-20130202,0,4826391.story
Also see http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/01/1527391/boehner-jobs-market-misunderstand/?mobile=nc
