Jefferson Morley — It's Official: How the Koch Brothers Killed Trump’s Job Plan

That was quick.

This is the big problem with electing outsiders to clean up government and put the people first, as Jesse Ventura found out, for example. Outsiders have no political base once they begin governing unless there is a wave election that results in a a wholesale replacement of insiders with outsiders. And even with a wave election, there is still the administrative bureaucracy and the deep state, which both provide continuity across administrations.

AlterNet
It's Official: How the Koch Brothers Killed Trump’s Job Plan
Jefferson Morley, AlterNet

Xinhua — China rolls out plan to revitalize traditional crafts

Speaking of creating employment opportunities.

The Chinese government has rolled out a revitalization plan for traditional craftsmanship amid efforts to protect intangible cultural heritage and meet needs such as employment and poverty alleviation.

By 2020, China will have seen a "significant enhancement" of the ability to carry on traditional crafts with better industry management and market compatibility, according to the plan issued by the ministries of culture, industry and information technology and finance.

The incomes of those involved will be increased and employment promoted significantly, according to the plan posted on the website of China's cabinet, the State Council.

Among 1,372 items on the national list of intangible cultural heritage, more than 300 are traditional crafts, mainly concerning fine arts, traditional Chinese medicine and ethnic clothing.

The government will formulate a revitalization list to support key projects which have great development potential and will help employment.
Young people will be encouraged to participate. Universities, enterprises and other organizations will step up training and research.

International exchange and cooperation will also be promoted, according to the plan.
Some enterprises have set up workshops in areas with rich resources of traditional crafts to help local craftsmen improve product quality. As sales are expanding, more people have found jobs and shaken off poverty, said an official with the Ministry of Culture.

China.org.cn
China rolls out plan to revitalize traditional crafts

Xinhua

Jason Easley — Bernie Sanders Flexes His Muscles By Introducing Bill To Create 13 Million New Jobs

Sen. Bernie Sanders is using his new position as the top Democratic caucus member on the Senate Budget Committee to push a new bill that he will introduce to the new Congress that will create 13 million jobs by rebuilding the nation’s bridges and roads.
Here are the details via Sen. Sanders…

And Bernie has Stephanie Kelton there as the chief economist for the minority Senate budget committee to say that affordability is no problem.

Politics USA
Bernie Sanders Flexes His Muscles By Introducing Bill To Create 13 Million New Jobs
Jason Easley

Marshall Auerback — Hillary Clinton Is Right – And Will Be Crucified For It

The experience of the Second World War showed governments that full employment could be maintained with appropriate use of budget deficits. The employment growth following the Great Depression really only accelerated with the onset of the War. 

All the orthodox neoclassical remedies that had been tried during the 1930s largely failed. These are the same policies that are being proposed by neo-liberal economists now. We have short memories. But Hillary Clinton is right. This can’t be done by the private sector in the absence of sufficient demand for its products/services. 

The post WWII period was marked by governments maintaining levels of demand sufficient to ensure enough jobs were created to meet the demands of the labour force, given labour productivity growth. 

Governments used a range of fiscal and monetary measures to stabilise the economy in the face of fluctuations in private sector spending. We need to be honest enough to remember our history to eliminate the scourge of unemployment. It’s doubtful that Hillary would go this far, but she is being more truthful than she might realise.

Macrobits by Marshall Auerback
Hillary Clinton Is Right – And Will Be Crucified For It
Marshall Auerback

Mike Whitney — Obama’s Corporate Plantations — Deregulation, Privatization, and Cheap Labor

The man who promised to restore hope and bring change to America, has announced a plan to open five corporate plantations in the United States. On Thursday, President Barack Obama, whose policies have resulted in the greatest number of public sector job losses in US History (Public sector jobs have declined by 718,000 jobs since Obama took office.) announced the opening of five “Promise Zones” located in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. According to an article in USA Today:

“Under the proposed Promise Zones, the federal government plans to partner with local governments and businesses to provide tax incentives and grants to help combat poverty.” (“Obama to name 5 ‘Promise Zones’ for assistance“, USA Today)

Combatting poverty’ has nothing to do with it. Obama plans to shower the nation’s biggest corporations–which recorded record profits in the last year and are presently sitting on more than $1.3 trillion in cash–with more lavish subsidies and tax breaks while providing an endless source of cheap slave labor to boost future earnings. The president believes that the wealth generated in these profit zones, er, promise zones will trickle down to the area’s residents, even though–as the Christian Science Monitor notes–”it can be hard to tell whether a program’s benefits reach the poorest people, rather than flowing largely into the hands of the business owners who get the tax credits.”

Wait, it gets worse!

According to the New York Times: “White House officials said the Promise Zones initiative would not provide new money, rather it would be aimed at providing the local governments and agencies “aid in cutting through red tape to get access to existing resources.”

 No new money??

Read on. It gets even worse.

Counterpunch
Obama’s Corporate Plantations — Deregulation, Privatization, and Cheap Labor
Mike Whitney

You Wonder When the Administration & Treasury & Congress Will Fall in Line

commentary by Roger Erickson

Or, at least get in paradigm.

"The Federal Reserve made it plain on Wednesday that job creation had become its primary focus" [ps: Jobs for whom, at what salaries?]

Fed Ties Rates to Joblessness, With Target of 6.5%

If job creation - i.e., national capabilities - isn't the job of the Administration & Treasury & Congress ... then what IS their job?  Who hired these bozos, anyway?

"We don't know anything ... we just work here." [Uh ,,, why?]

Am I right to suspect that it's either SNAFU, or is their target to have 99% of static assets hoarded by only 6.5% of the population, not 1%.  Bad form and etiquette, don't you know?

ps: ps:  If the Fed can claim to be in paradigm, what the heck is wrong with our electorate too?  Are the 99% suffering from Stockholm syndrome?

Catherine Rampell — Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds

While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project.

The disappearance of midwage, midskill jobs is part of a longer-term trend that some refer to as a hollowing out of the work force, though it has probably been accelerated by government layoffs. 

“The overarching message here is we don’t just have a jobs deficit; we have a ‘good jobs’ deficit,” said Annette Bernhardt, the report’s author and a policy co-director at the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and advocacy group.

The New York Time | Business Day
Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds
Catherine Rampell

Welcome to Third World America.

Mike Bloomberg gives another display of his ignorance of economics by vetoing the prevailing wage bill

By vetoing New York's prevailing wage bill, Mike Bloomberg shows once again that he has zero grasp of economics. How in the world does reducing or limiting the income of people create more jobs? Maybe under a slave system, but that's about it.

The fact is, low wages lead to less job creation, not more. Cutting or limiting the income of workers hits businesses where it hurts most--in demand for the very products they produce. When incomes fall or stay stagnant, so do sales. Marshall Auerbach eloquently explains this economic fact in a terrific post here.

I am baffled as to why this is so hard to understand. The total of all things produced in an economy is equal to the income paid (received). The two are identical. That means, when you talk about limiting or shrinking someone's income you're also talkng about limiting or shrinking the total output of goods and services (real wealth). Moreover, it's pretty hard if not impossible to create jobs when output is slowing or shrinking. Unless of course, you're freakin' Houdini.

Sadly, this is not Mike Bloomberg's first display of gross ignorance when it comes to the economy. He put on a terrific dumb show back in November when he gave a speech about the state of the U.S. and how we've gone off the track in terms of fiscal responsibility, blah, blah, blah; how the debt has zoomed to who knows how many thousand per every man, woman and child, blah, blah, blah and how we've run out of money (I'm puking now). Don't worry, he definitly used all those well-worn, yet massively stupid cliches in abundance, I can assure you.

Back then it was just a speech, nothing more. We could listen to it, get sick, and forget about it the next day. This time, however, it affects people's lives. Vetoing the prevailing wage bill ensures that the wages of city workers--who are already having a hard time making ends meet--will not be sufficient to allow them to live decent lives now or in the future. And why is he doing this? To "be competitive." Yes, it'll be a competitive race to the bottom ensuring that all workers earn less and less and less until there's no money to pay for anything that Mike's cherished businesses produce. Then Mayor Bloomberg, er...Houdini...will have to magically come up with a way to keep those businesses from going out of business.

The more I see of Mike Bloomberg the more I feel he has been a terrible Mayor and the more he convinces me that having a businessman in government is a horrible idea. Government should not be about profits, it should be about the public purpose.

Mike Bloomberg took over the city at a time when it was still flying high on all the positive momentum left over from the economic boom of the 1990s. It made him look good, but it had nothing to do with his leadership. Then came 9/11 followed by the financial crash and what did Bloomberg do? He doubled down on Wall Street, giving massive tax breaks to the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other, big, financial firms while closing schools, firehouses, senior centers, shelters and other important city departments and services. Now he vetos wage increases for workers saying it will "create jobs" even as his cuts have led to the layoffs of thousands of teachers, cops and firemen.

Great economics, Mike...great economics!

beowulf — (MMT – JG) + Medicare = MMT

The ever-resourceful beowulf (Carlos Mucha) strikes again.

Carlos observes that tactically James K. Galbraith is for an indirect approach to job creation, chiefly through the non-profit sector, that has a chance of being implemented politically in the US, rather than the MMT JG, which he sees as politically impractical at this time. Joe Firestone also gets a plug for suggesting how single-payer could result in job creation as well as more effective and efficient coverage for the population.

Carlos goes on to develop a specific approach that he suggests is more feasible politically than an MMT JG because it would be funded through the Fed rather than budgetary appropriation, a politically contentious process.

Thinking pragmatically, I don't think that any program that expands social welfare significantly is feasible politically at this time in either the US, UK, or EZ due to the political climate. The dominant trend is still Thatcherism aka neo-liberalism. The prevailing Zeitgeist is dominated by neo-liberalism, neo-imperialism, and neo-colonialism.

Until this spirit of the time runs its course, perhaps as a result of fallout from the next shock, welfare is going to take a back seat to unbridled acquisition and its push to make the world safe for laissez-faire capitalism.

So there will be plenty of time to hash this out in preparation for a change of eras.

Read it at Modern Monetary Realism
(MMT – JG) + Medicare = MMT
by beowulf