Paul Craig Roberts on the Economy

Snipped from Counterpunch.org. Not that I really have the stomach to contemplate the state of the union this week. But I'm fascinated by the language on both sides about jobs. My own income has dropped steadily every year since 2001, and though I have a graduate degree and dress up well and have a killer work ethic and can handle myself in an interview, I have only found contract work since 2001. No health insurance: I earn too much to qualify for state plans, and too little to be able to afford coverage myself. Not whining about it: I'm just saying, it's a real, horrible, soul-crushing trend--not a private disgrace. But it feels like private disgrace--I am not wired for this kind of failure--and I think that's part of the reason people haven't taken to the street with torches.

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... Least of all did President Bush tell any truth about the economy. He talked about economic growth rates without acknowledging that they result from eating the seed corn and do not produce jobs with a living wage for Americans. He touted a low rate of unemployment and did not admit that the figure is false because it does not count millions of discouraged workers who have dropped out of the work force.

Americans did not hear from Bush that a new Wal-Mart just opened on Chicago's city boundary and 25,000 people applied for 325 jobs (Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 26), or that 11,000 people applied for a few Wal-Mart jobs in Oakland, California. Obviously, employment is far from full.

Neither did Bush tell Americans any of the dire facts reported by economist Charles McMillion in the January 19 issue of Manufacturing & Technology News:

"During Bush's presidency the US has experienced the slowest job creation on record (going back to 1939). During the past five years private business has added only 958,000 net new jobs to the economy, while the government sector has added 1.1 million jobs. Moreover, as many of the jobs are not for a full work week, 'the country ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had in January 2001.'"

McMillion reports that the largest sources of private sector jobs have been health care and waitresses and bartenders. Other areas of the private sector lost so many jobs, including supervisory/managerial jobs, that had health care not added 1.4 million new jobs, the private sector would have experienced a net loss of 467,000 jobs between January 2001 and December 2005 despite an "economic recovery." Without the new jobs waiting tables and serving drinks, the US economy in the past five years would have eked out a measly 64,000 jobs. In other words, there is a job depression in the US.