America Isn't Working Right Now

It’s time we face the ugly truth: It will take years for the U.S. economy to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The evidence is piling up despite political blather from our elected leaders.

• Combined ranks of unemployed and underemployed remain steady.
• Employer hiring, especially for full-time jobs, continues to be anemic.
• Consumers, for the most part, are hesitant to spend except on essentials.
• Unrestrained federal spending is driving in U.S. debt to historic levels.
• Iraq and Afghanistan wars are draining our human and financial resources.

We’ll skip the immigration battle, health care fiasco, and Gulf of Mexico oil disaster because it gives all of us a collective migraine (and WMB previously dealt with those issues). Happy Birthday America!!!

Sarcasm aside, let’s examine the facts contained in the Associated Press story on the latest jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department:

Employers cut 125,000 jobs last month, the most since October, according to the Labor Department, which noted the loss was driven by the end of 225,000 temporary 2010 Census jobs. Businesses added a net total of 83,000 workers, an improvement from May but below March and April totals.

The unemployment rate dipped from 9.7 percent to 9.5 percent, the lowest level since July 2009. But it declined because 652,000 people gave up job searches and left the labor force. People no longer looking for work aren't counted as unemployed.

The report suggests businesses are still slow to hire amid a weak economic recovery. Many economists hoped for more job growth, which would fuel the economy by boosting consumers' ability to spend (without a job, or one that pays decent wages, who has money to spend?).

"It could have been worse, but it wasn't good," Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm, told AP Economics Writer Christopher S. Rugaber. "It's adding to the evidence that growth has slowed.’’ People left the work force "because they think there's nothing out there," Gault added.

It’s more than thinking on the part of job hunters.

Check out the online boards or newspaper classifieds, and the jobs range from high-paying, high-skilled technical work (multiple college degrees) to low-paying, low-skilled physical work (high school education).

But there is very little in the middle of the extremes and what’s there tends to be part-time or temporary work, with no benefits. It’s not surprising many have given up looking for work in such a climate.

As the AP notes, the nation still has 7.9 million fewer private payroll jobs than it did when the recession began in December 2007. It takes about 100,000 new jobs a month to keep up with population growth. The economy needs to create jobs at least twice that pace to quickly bring down the jobless rate.

All told, 14.6 million people looked for work in June. Counting those who gave up job searches and those working part time but would prefer full-time work, the underemployment rate dipped to 16.5 percent from 16.6 percent in May.

Progress? Not by any reasonable assessment. Yet most of our leaders seem totally clueless about what we – the middle class of America – need to survive.

Consider President Obama at the recent G-20 summit of world leaders in Toronto. He urged continued spending as a stimulus while just about every other head of state advocated cutting deficits to address problems affecting the global economy. What does Obama know that the rest of the leaders don’t?

And Congress just adjourned for the long holiday weekend without extending unemployment benefits. Excuse us, but there was plenty of money to bail out Wall Street, automakers and others with their hands wide open – but none remains for out-of-work folks?

Our elected leaders, Democrats and Republicans, have their priorities screwed up. It’s not about perpetuating their politics, paychecks, benefits and perks as career public officials; it’s about serving the public interest, the mainstream folks who put them into office in the first place.

America was and is a great place, but we’re showing our age because of our leaders’ inability to look beyond gimmicks (cash for clunkers?) and quick fixes (just go shop?) and develop sustainable plans that transcend partisan politics and individual agendas.

So far, few elected leaders have shown courage to distance themselves from the herd and risk their political careers
by making tough and unpopular decisions. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (budget) and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (immigration) appear to be rare exceptions by going where others fear to tread.

November is not that far off. Perhaps it’s time for Americans to stop complaining that nothing ever changes, especially since many don’t vote. We should clean house by using term limits via the ballot box. It’s our best chance at ending the gridlock that rots thinking in D.C.

Public service is a privilege, not a right of the wealthy, powerful and connected (although that’s what our bloated system now embraces). Nobody should expect re-election; individuals should go in with the idea of one term and done.

Our Founding Fathers did not install a king or dictator to lead us, but instead had delegates representing the voters of each state elect a president (George Washington) in 1789. It's likely they shared a belief that the emerging nation, which declared independence from Great Britain in 1776, was bigger than one person or a single group of people.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union ... the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution (1787) and the Bill of Rights (1791 amendments) laid the foundation for our country.

Sure, our Founding Fathers weren't perfect (slavery), but the structure and rights expressed in the Constitution are not just a collection of words unless "We the People" allow that to happen through indecision, indifference and division.

America always should be a work in progress, with fresh faces and ideas moving us forward.

As for me, I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com.