Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, May 28, 2011

The Jobless Economy

Christina Romer, former member of U.S. President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, accuses the administration of "shamefully ignoring" the unemployed. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman echoes her concerns, observing that Washington has lost interest in "the forgotten millions." The unemployed in the U.S. have been ignored and forgotten, but they are far from superfluous. Over the last two years, out-of-work Americans have played a critical role in helping the richest one per cent recover trillions in financial wealth.

Obama's advisers often congratulate themselves for avoiding another Great Depression – an assertion not amenable to serious analysis or debate. A better way to evaluate their claims is to compare the U.S. economy to that of other rich countries over the last few years.

In terms of sustaining economic growth, the United States is doing better than nearly all advanced economies. From the first quarter of 2008 to the end of 2010, U.S. gross domestic product growth outperformed that of every G7 country except Canada.

But, when it comes to jobs, U.S. policy-makers fall short of their rosy self-evaluations. Despite the fact that the U.S. is the country with the second-highest economic growth, Paul Wiseman of The Associated Press reports that "the U.S. job market remains the group's weakest. U.S. employment bottomed and started growing again a year ago, but there are still 5.4 per cent fewer American jobs than in December 2007. That's a much sharper drop than in any other G7 country." According to an important study by Andrew Sum and Joseph McLaughlin, the U.S. boasted one of the lowest unemployment rates in the rich world before the housing crash. Now, it has the highest.

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