Economy

We have a jobs emergency that is hollowing out the middle class. Some say automation is the cause of our high unemployment and that it will get worse. Others say there are other structural problems and that our high unemployment is a "new normal." Perhaps these are contributing to the problems.

Another lackluster jobs report with 80K new jobs and an unchanged 8.2% unemployment, Keep in mind that we lost 815,000 jobs in Bush's last month, but this still is not good enough.

Mitt Romney received a double blast from the conservative circular firing squad, as the Wall Street Journal editorial board and The Weekly Standard's BIll Kristol both publicly complained that the candidate is failing to campaign on a vision to boost the economy.

The WSJ writes:

Updated 8:47 a.m. — Today's unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics will be closely watched for its political impact on the presidential race. But it is not the numbers that will be most consequential.

Today’s jobs numbers reinforce what we already know about this economy: The growth is too slow; the jobs created too few.

It looks as if Congress got our message on the need to pass, without right-wing poison pills, a two-year transportation jobs bill.

A Senate-House conference committee is scheduled to meet today to hammer out differences between the two chambers on what is likely to be the most substantive jobs bill the Congress could pass this year: a surface transportation reauthorization bill.

There are reports that Congress is at last about to reach a deal on a transportation bill, exactly 1,001 days after the expiration of the last transportation reauthorization bill that Congress passed. What's still unclear is what kind of deal this will be.

When we had democracy, We, the People made the rules and we ran our country and our economy for our benefit. Now that we are a plutocracy things are different. The reason our elites are not doing anything to fix the economy is because from their viewpoint, things are just fine.

Merriam-Webster:

Will Mitt Romney create jobs and help our economy, or will he just take us back to the Bush-era, send-jobs-to-China destruction that made him rich? With Romney there is no way to connect what he says with what he means or might do. So we are forced to read tea leaves and look for signs. Should be reading Chinese tea leaves?

The Fire Sale Of Our Economy