Job Search in Elkhart, Indiana where unemployment = 15.3%
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The U.S. public strongly approves of how President Barack Obama is handling efforts to pass a stimulus package but not so for Congress, poll results indicate.
Obama has a 67 percent approval rating for the way in which he is addressing government’s efforts to pass a bill, while Democrats and Republicans in Congress earned approval ratings of 48 percent and 31 percent, respectively, results from a Gallup poll released today indicated.
Recent polling also indicated a slight majority of Americans asked generally favor passing a stimulus plan of around $800 billion, a sentiment Gallup said remained constant over the last several weeks.
Obama’s overall job approval rating — 64 percent as of Sunday — is close to his approval rating on the stimulus, while Gallup’s last measure of favorable ratings for the Republicans in Congress in December was 25 percent, the Princeton, N.J., polling agency reported.
Our Congress-critters are doing a stellar job at broadening and building support aren’t they? [/sarcasm]
“The U.S. public strongly approves of how President Barack Obama is handling efforts to pass a stimulus package but not so for Congress, poll results indicate.”
Unfortunately the public doesn’t like the stimulus package itself…
“Support for the economic recovery plan working its way through Congress has fallen again this week. For the first time, a plurality of voters nationwide oppose the $800-billion-plus plan.” … “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% favor the legislation, 43% are opposed”
This would explain why Omama is on the road. He has all the votes needed in the House & Senate to pass. The only logical reason is he’s trying to drum up Repub support as he sees the political danger of the Dems getting all the blame for a bad package if Repubs don’t vote for it.
I don’t know about you, but I have a strong feeling that I will never have a ‘real job’ again.
WTF? I watched congress ‘debate’ and its business as usual… This goes way beyond politics this situation will approach survival of the experiment of this democracy if our economy fails and pulls down the rest of the world with it.
In the end it won’t matter who voted for it or not, everybody will be out of work.
Talk to the old folks what it was like in the 30s… I don’t think you realize how bad it can get.
Great for you if you still have a job. I hope you keep it.
so how do we go about purging congress? And if you want real change. put a salary cap / term limit to representatives and senators. In an ideal world age limits
Obama’s stimulus plan isn’t..
It’s just another entitlement program with a pretty name. But in essence, it will take from those who have and give to those who have not.
So call it what it is. Entitlement.
Think about it. Who’s going to eventually pay for the loans the government is going to have to take out to cover all these programs? The poor??
The biggest problem with the plan is it doesn’t create new wealth. It won’t expand the economy. It doesn’t make two dollars for every dollar invested. You put a lot of money into fixing a road, and that money’s gone. That road isn’t going to give you a return on your investment. It doesn’t generate new wealth. It may be needed, but it doesn’t create money and therefore doesn’t “stimulate” anything. Although a company will be hired to patch the road, one it’s patched, or the bridge is repaired, etc. the job is done and the people who worked on the job go right back on unemployment. No net gain. So where do we get new wealth? Who generates new, lasting jobs?
Only businesses do that.
And guess who is going to be pushed into paying the bill? Businesses.
They will have to pay, which will make them increasingly uncompetitive, which will strangle the economy.
This should be called the “Temporary Entitlement – Long Term Strangulation Program”.
#4 – “The biggest problem with the plan is it doesn’t create new wealth. It won’t expand the economy. It doesn’t make two dollars for every dollar invested. You put a lot of money into fixing a road, and that money’s gone. That road isn’t going to give you a return on your investment. It doesn’t generate new wealth. It may be needed, but it doesn’t create money and therefore doesn’t “stimulate” anything. Although a company will be hired to patch the road, one it’s patched, or the bridge is repaired, etc. the job is done and the people who worked on the job go right back on unemployment. No net gain. So where do we get new wealth? Who generates new, lasting jobs?
Only businesses do that.”
That’s actually a fairly simple minded and ignorant way of looking at infrastructure building. During the original infrastructure boom in the 30s/40s, the arrival of massive interstates irrevocably altered the economic landscape of the region they passed, beyond simply the individuals hired to build the roads themselves. With roads you have people traveling (this of course assumes you have some kind of thought on where you’re placing the road, let’s hope), and where people travel you need the three basic necessities: gas, food, and shelter. Back in the day, gas stations provided all three. Now we’ve got rest stops and roadside restaurants and… etc. Someone has to build those, and then staff those, and run those. Etc.
The argument that improving infrastructure doesn’t lead to new permanent jobs is specious. The question is the how and the what, and that we won’t see until the rubber (or I suppose, asphalt) hits the road, so to speak.
#5,
Problem is the law of diminishing returns. When there is no national highway system and you spend money on it, you get a huge return on your investment.
Now that we have a mammoth highway system, and its not really feasible to build anymore highways because everything is already coated in tarmac, the money you spend of roads doesn’t get the same bang for buck.
National light rail would have huge impact, but it is not shovel ready. The police have become a bunch of murderous thugs, and light rail can’t be trusted until we have safe passage in that type of system.
Broadband money would just be given to executives in bonuses packages. I would also argue, that this is the worst case of public risk private profit.
etc, etc, etc…
It is busted, and even trillion dollar band-aids are not gonna fix it. It will take a generation of people making choices based on their economic self interest before it gets better.
That type of change doesn’t happen at the national level.
I am inclined to be a republican on spending until I see a viable solution coming from DC. Let people keep their money, and stop assuming a few bureaucrats in DC know better how to spend it.
#4, Ah Yea,
You ash wholes make me sick. It won’t matter what Obama or the Democrats propose, you will find something to whine about.
But the stupidest thing, The STUPIDEST thing is you guys, whose policies got us here, don’t have a plan of your own. No, it is so much easier to whine that “the stimulus won’t work” then it is to actually use your head for something other than a laugh generator.
You right wing nuts kept telling us how if we would only allow business do their thing without the government getting the way, … . Now look where the economy is. Look where the country is. LOOK WHERE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS.
In November we said we wanted change. Those that said no got trounced in the polls. So either offer something constructive or get the hell out of the way.
# 5 Alex said, “During the original infrastructure boom in the 30s/40s, the arrival of massive interstates irrevocably altered the economic landscape of the region they passed,”
LOL! Wrong decades.
# 7 Mr. Fusion babbled. “So either offer something constructive or get the hell out of the way.”
Umm, there is no one in the way. Are you hallucinating again?
#6 – Agreed on most points, though disagree with your conclusion. Republican thinking slipped us into this economy, and I have seen nothing that promises to get us out from them so far.
Although I’m curious why you say light rail would lead to an increase in crime?
Mr Fusion – let me remind you, Obama did not win a landslide of the popular vote only the outdated electoral college. Yes, he won either way but the people did not give him a clear mandate.
Personally, I’m against giving away trillions of dollars we don’t have. We gave billions to the banks and they gave it to their execs, bought up other companies and withheld the money from the credit market where it might have helped.
I’m not against bailouts per se, I just think they need to be judicious and applied with surgical precision. Does Bank of America REALLY need a bailout? If so, the money should be earmarked for credit or housing or new cars and the CEOs held criminally liable if the funds are misused.
On the other hand, I am in favor of spending the money if we first take it away from the TSA and I advocate anesthesia-free castration for any politico who agrees to bail out an airline.
Excuse me. I need to go take a Xanax or a couple of ounces of Laphroig. Or both.
@ Ah_Yea
I don’t have much faith in any stimulus bill being able to fix anything.
A more important question: what are our problems?
1. We allow the largest corporations to buy each other non-stop. It enriches large shareholders and executives/the board, but destroys and relocates jobs and reduces competition.
In the 1980s and prior there weren’t interstate banks and were a lot of restrictions on interstate companies in general.
Companies were closer to the communities, jobs were more secure and stable.
2. We don’t favor our own companies, our own citizens or our own products. We used to.
This is very damaging to the job base and the economy. It makes relocating jobs overseas or to Mexico very profitable as labor costs and regulation go down with no downside.
3. Limitless wasteful red tape and regulation.
4. We allow employers to put limitless conditions on employment. Largely due to #1. Employers today don’t often provide long-term jobs, yet make employees sign away countless rights and freedoms. For a job that may be gone in 2 years. This is a sign of disproportionate power.
It cracks me up when Fusion goes off his meds…
Actually Mr Befuddled, there is a simple plan: let them fail! The ONLY thing the Federal government should be doing is to securing people’s savings via FDIC. Use the Federal government to help people get off the sinking ships and let the ships sink. Let those companies go into bankruptcy. We’re getting ready to blow 13x what we spent on Iran and Afghanistan on broker soirees and fancy offices. I heard that the bailout was big enough to pay off 90% of people’s mortgages. Even that would be better than on what it is about to be spent. Wasn’t there recently an article about GM using their bailout money for projects in Brazil?! The government simply cannot provide sufficient oversight to prevent these suckling pigs from using the money on hookers and blow.
The real stroy here is that O’s approval ratings are down 20% in less than a month.
So the Republicans ran up huge deficits and added trillions to the national debt, and so their best course now is to vote for more debt and deficits?
Any economic gain will be short-lived as you now have trillions in additional debt to be financed by a smaller workforce.
One Harvard academic, Robert Barro, is calling this the worst legislation since the 1930s.
That unemployment rate in Elkhart isn’t going to get any lower when Obama is raising gas prices and worrying about carbon footprints. This is the RV capital of the world.
#13, Thomas,
I guess you don’t understand the mess the economy is in.
In November, just as people were starting their Christmas shopping, a local company was suddenly told by their bank, which had just received TARP money, they were cut off from short term credit. Why? Because, this company which made shaped brass products for the auto industry and for export had a large supply of brass. That inventory was worth 1/3 of what it had been two weeks earlier. The company owed far more than the metal was worth. That meant they couldn’t meet their payroll the next Friday. They were forced into bankruptcy by their bank. Orders be damned
So sure, go ahead and let the banks fail. Our economy is so dependent upon the banks and financial institutions that if one of the large banks did fail, it would be catastrophic on everyone else.
That story about the Brass factory wasn’t unique. The same thing happened around the country. People suddenly out of work because the sky fell in on them.
Paying for people’s mortgages wouldn’t help. People can’t eat the door frames. They don’t heat them with grass clippings. And they can’t light them with their wit no matter how bright you think you are.
People need (and want) jobs. Not flipping burgers. Not doing data entry on a computer. Not greeting customers at some big store. They want the jobs back that went to China. They want the jobs that someone sitting on the 46th floor in some New York Office building decided could be done cheaper in some foreign factory where they don’t have to pay for health insurance.
You effen imbeciles want to draw lines on a map and doodle on paper and tell us some theory about this won’t work. Well eff you. The Democrats won. Obama is the President and has a bigger mandate than your hero did in either election he stole. We are tired of being kicked to the side as only so much collateral damage in your quest for more for your own pocket.
Today Obama said that not every part of the Stimulus Package will work as well as we might want. But whatever, it will be better than doing what got us in this mess or, what the right wing nuts want to do, nothing.
#13 Thomas. Mitt Romney was saying the EXACT same thing, before he was slammed by the liberal bias.
What he said was “IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.”
Makes a lot of sense now, doesn’t it?
#11 HMeyers. The answer is really very simple. Instead of pouring money into these idiotic entitlement schemes which is the great majority of the “stimulus plan”, do this:
1) Lower all Corporate taxes to 17.5% total.
2) Overhaul healthcare. Make it more affordable with reasonable rates and basic universal coverage.
3) Go Nuclear.
4) Repair and maintain the infrastructure, but don’t go hog wild.
Why?
To make America competitive. Job loss is because it’s less expensive to ship our jobs overseas.
I do a lot of work in China, and they are killing us because it simply cost less to operate over there. They charge 17.5% total tax, and that is only after 5 years! Here in the US it’s at least 35%, and that is starting at year one. This means that Chinese producers can undercut us dramatically and still have the same profit.
Not to mention that basic services such as water and power are subsidized to businesses at about 1/2 the US rate or less. (Hence we need Government subsidized nuclear).
It’s not the cost of labor that’s killing us. It’s that they are smarter at business than we have become.
The Chinese, in particular, are better capitalist than we are.
>Today Obama said that not every part of the Stimulus Package will work as well as we might want. But whatever, it will be better than doing what got us in this mess or, what the right wing nuts want to do, nothing.
Yeah just do something, no matter what the cost.
Isn’t that how we got the Iraq War?
I guess you support the new health care provisions too? Looks like they are finally implementing the health care federal ID card and having the Feds review health care decisions. Rationing for seniors, here we come.
http://tinyurl.com/c44ah5
#12, Ah yea,
And it galls me that you still don’t have any plan. You have the unmitigated audacity to suggest the plan crafted by both parties is bad. Because you don’t like the jobs or they aren’t “real jobs”.
Are those 3 million people who have lost their “real jobs” over the past few months going back to work tomorrow?
#16, Lyin’ Mike,
So the Republicans ran up huge deficits and added trillions to the national debt, and so their best course now is to vote for more debt and deficits?
The Republicans had eight years to get the economy strong. They gave us lower taxes, a couple of stimulus checks to the people, huge incentives to big business, loosened regulations and oversight, and look where we are. Why not try the Democrats version on how to do it.
#19, Ah Yea,
I do a lot of work in China, and they are killing us because it simply cost less to operate over there. They charge 17.5% total tax, and that is only after 5 years! Here in the US it’s at least 35%, and that is starting at year one. This means that Chinese producers can undercut us dramatically and still have the same profit.
Not to mention that basic services such as water and power are subsidized to businesses at about 1/2 the US rate or less. (Hence we need Government subsidized nuclear).
BULL
The Chinese have artificially devalued their currency against the American dollar. They don’t support or have health and safety laws. They pay peanuts. And they don’t pay for medical care.
Back in 2003 a company I was affiliated with shipped 3/4 of its work to China. I too visited the new factory.
The employees were paid $0.80 per hour for 12 hr days. There were two 20 minute breaks a day for them to piss, shit, and eat. Their choice. If they lived in the company housing, on the top two floors in dorms, they paid for it.
American business does NOT start at 35% tax. Recently the Congressional Budget Office reported that 1/3 of American businesses pay no tax at all, including some very successful and profitable ones.
They aren’t smarter. They are just more ruthless.
#18
Confused you are. Businesses are built on capital. Banks are only one source of capital. However, if your capital dries up and you have no means of replacing it, then your business goes under. It sucks, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. That is why they call it RISK. It has been happening for hundreds of years. Starting a new business is a big risk. It is no different than if you started a business on Angel money and that money pulls out.
The best thing the government can do is to soften the landing of people with savings in banks and let the banks fall on their collective asses. Banks are a huge money making enterprises which means that someone is going to take up the mantle and loan money if they think they can make money off it. It would have been preferable to bring back the idea of the Bank of the US and to transfer loans to it than to simply write a blank check to finance industry.
Having the government write a check so that GM and AIG can throw another fancy shindig is the wrong solution. The government simply does not have the means to provide enough “well paying” (dealer’s choice as to what that means) jobs for everyone. The government is not a nanny. Its purpose is not to wipe your butt if you drop a load in your pants. The only way is to encourage *SMART* businesses to take risk is to ensure that dumb businesses fail.
You state that people need jobs, yet you want the government to provide them. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul. How is that a sustainable economic model?
>Because you don’t like the jobs or they aren’t “real jobs”.
>People need (and want) jobs. Not flipping burgers. Not doing data entry on a computer. Not greeting customers at some big store.
So it takes Fusion 34 minutes to write those two posts.
The Republicans largely lost their majority because of the Iraq War and the bailout, with Nancy Pelosi bashing them the day the bailout passed. I don’t see why Republicans should turn around and support another trillion plus in spending.
When I read these blog entries, I get the feeling that there is one group that has the cash and they don’t want to stop hoarding it and another group that want’s the cash to spend or to hoard it also…
I wonder if people will start taking risks again and invest in the future or will keep hunkering down and hiding out.
I agree that the business tax rate is to high. And capital gains rate should go away altogether.. That will provide incentive for people to take some (more) risk and also spend some extra cash.
How do you feel about taking a risk and starting a new business or investing in the market? I bet not good..
Maybe we do need a National Bank that seeds startups…
#24 Thomas. Well said.
#25 MikeN. Yes, it took Fusion a long time to come to a half-ass answer. “Real Jobs”. Of course, Fusion is a liberal troll who rants against helping business create “Real Jobs”. To Fusion, businesses are EVIL. Corporations are the DEVIL! (But I still want a REAL JOB!)
Don’t expect any critical analysis from Fusion. Like Thomas said “You state that people need jobs, yet you want the government to provide them. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul. How is that a sustainable economic model?”
Don’t expect Fusion to answer because although we understand the real world, I think Fusion is still in high school.
All the libertarians, Right Wing Nuts, and “Conservatives”,
None of you have yet come up with an alternative plan. I’ve read things like “well Obama’s plans won’t create jobs” or “only a business can create a job”, or “let the banks fail, that is the way we do it”. etc. A lot of mumbling but nothing concrete.
What you less than stellar brain pool applicants ignore is that many people have their life savings tied up in these banks. Their retirement funds. Communities are built around certain industries. Millions of people.
Won’t one of you idiots present a plan other than what has been in place for the past eight years and failed so dismally?
#28 Again reading comprehension problems. Many people have offered MANY different plans. Here & in D.C. Please go out and search. You are really showing what psych meds can do to a person when taken long term…
#28
> many people have their
> life savings tied up in these banks.
You are missing the point. I fully agree that the government should use FDIC to help those people with savings. That is exactly its purpose. I’m all for helping the individuals; however let the bank itself fail. If the plan was to give each person the balance of their retirement and savings as of 1 Jan 2008 up to a given amount and let the banks fall on their face, I’d support that plan more than the current plan of chasing bad money.
With respect to retirement funds, if you are referring to the idea of people losing their current holdings, then I’m all for finding a way to let people move those holdings to another entity without loss. However, if you are referring to losses due to investments in the finance industry, that was a conscious choice.
Notice that none of these ideas should cost 9 trillion dollars. The cost of the Iraq War and losses due to 9/11 combined are completely dwarfed by this ridiculous stimulus package.