The book of Jobs
Not sure if you’ve noticed lately, but everybody who’s ever been elected to office, from the lowly dogcatcher to the lowlier governor, is talking about job creation. The latest package of proposals — “Agenda 2010” — comes from the Senate Democrats. Not to be outdone, Senate Republicans released their own ideas, such as they are.
Lest we become too giddy about all these politicians who want to combat the state’s 12+ percent unemployment, we should all take a break and read this outstanding piece in the March issue of The Atlantic: “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America.” In it, Don Peck makes a thorough case that for the last decade, our nation has been mired in a kind of “jobless era,” a time when national unemployment rates of eight to 10 percent are the norm, not the exception. And the effects of such jobless rates are eroding our society as we know it.
“We are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe,” Peck writes, “one that could stain our culture and weaken our nation for many, many years to come.”
Unlike the recent jobs proposals from Senate Democrats and Republicans, Peck’s story is thoughtful, intelligent and compelling.
-Anthony Pignataro
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I don’t believe either party has a good clue as to how to create jobs because, in the long run, government can only create government jobs and we need private industry jobs.
What the politicians CAN do is make the business climate in California as attractive as the physical environment by lowering taxes and regulations. It’s time for Californians and all US citizens to re-evaluate the importance of human prosperity versus the well being of useless insects, plants and animals we protect to our own detriment.
California will not recover from it’s budget problems until spending is curtailed, taxes are lowered and the size of government is reduced.
Larry, Larry, Larry…Isn’t it true that public employees pay taxes? Isn’t it true that they contribute to the state and local economies? Isn’t it true that they have families to feed and mortgages to pay?
So tell me how it makes economic sense to throw these people out of work? How will that help create private sector jobs? Besides the fact that public employees ARE human beings…and you ought to have at least a little sympathy for them…firing them won’t help the economy and will only make services the public relies on harder to get.
Our governor preaches jobs, jobs, jobs; yet he wants to throw nearly 400,000 low-wage homecare workers out in the street. This is like something out of “Alice in Wonderland.”