{"id":3855,"date":"2011-11-15T10:49:23","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T17:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=3855"},"modified":"2011-11-15T10:49:23","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T17:49:23","slug":"obamas-bipartisan-jobs-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=3855","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s bipartisan jobs program"},"content":{"rendered":"

War: The Wrong Jobs Program<\/strong>
\nBy Mark Engler, November 15, 2011<\/p>\n

More than 40 years ago, long before anyone had ever heard of Barack Obama, before the collapse of Bear Stearns, and before contemporary debates about bailouts and debt ceilings, two authors, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, considered a tricky problem. In times of downturn, the government must spend to stimulate the economy. Yet getting the political establishment to agree on one particular program of spending seemed nearly impossible.<\/p>\n

Baran and Sweezy phrased the conundrum as a question: “On what could the government spend enough to keep the system from sinking into the mire of stagnation?”<\/p>\n

After assessing the political realities that steer America’s power elite, they could find only one response. It was not what typically comes to mind when we think of economic stimulus or government-led job creation. <\/p>\n

Their answer: “On arms, more arms, and ever more arms.”<\/p>\n

The authors did not approve of military spending as a strategy of economic development. But, even at the very outset of the Cold War, they saw the deep hold that it had on decision-makers in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

We can see the continuing hold it has today. This fall, responding to high and persistent unemployment, President Obama called for a federal jobs act. Among its measures, the act proposed investment in schools and infrastructure. Conservative opponents responded with cries of derision. The critics charged that the plan “doubles down on a failed government stimulus strategy.” It means “adding more money to the same broken system” they said. Finally, they insisted, \u201cIt comes to a point that you can\u2019t keep borrowing in a futile attempt to stimulate the economy when the increased debt itself is weakening the economy.\u201d …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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War: The Wrong Jobs Program By Mark Engler, November 15, 2011 More than 40 years ago, long before anyone had ever heard of Barack Obama, before the collapse of Bear Stearns, and before contemporary debates about bailouts and debt ceilings, two authors, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, considered a tricky problem. In times of downturn, more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2048],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}