Obama promises to replace every job lost since 2008. How can he make it happen? The statistics, and history, says it’s impossible.
Promises, Promises
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Keep it up, Ted, just keep pissing in my koolaid….see if I cut you a check when I win the lottery….
See, I think you fundamentally don’t understand the nature of Hope. Hope isn’t about what will happen, might happen, could happen, or even what’s possible. Hope is about what we can imagine happening. Hope is why casinos are profitable.
@Ted, we better hope he doesn’t try to fix the job situation completely in the next two years. The only theoretically and politically viable way to employ every (still living) American over the next 2 years would be to start World War III and invite everyone to join in.
The idea that “we need more jobs” is sacrosanct. And like most sacrosanct ideas, it is bullshit.
Actually, we don’t need more jobs–certainly not more work. We need the existing amount of work spread out among more people. Also, the income that said work generates needs to get to the workers so that they can survive on less work.
I read a great article titled “Work Less So that Others May Work,” but I cannot find it online. It detailed the German approach to this crisis, which was to forbid employers from laying off people, making them cut everyone’s hours instead. The effect was to spread the pain out more evenly and insure that no one was devastated. (Being Germany, the pain was also further mitigated by welfare to supplement some of the lost income. Germany can do things like this because, compared to the U.S., their financial house is neatly in order.)
Grouchy I completely agree, the entire framing of the conversation on economics is rooted in keeping the majority of the world’s population in de-facto slavery.
Aggie, there’s also the ecocide angle. Regardless of what people think they need, the biosphere doesn’t need people working more.
This cartoon is old news. That neither Clinton or Bush, Jr. cared, nor Obama cares about jobs is passé.
Today’s news is that Obama has ordered the villains at Guantánamo, all of whom confessed to their heinous crimes after excruciating ‘enhanced interrogation’ (NB by US law, nothing the US does to enemies of the current administration can be called torture) will be tried, convicted, and executed. Not necessarily in that order.
My guess: the executions will take place in 2012, shortly before the election, to prove Obama is America’s best hope against those terrorist fiends who confessed to unspeakable acts while underwater with electrodes attached to their genitals, a position which clearly militates toward absolute veracity as to the prisoners’ culpability.
Just ask the Spanish Inquisition.
Nnnnnnnnnnnoobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!!!!!