Now that it’s 2016, it’s time to fact-check some of the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it predictions that President Obama’s critics made before his 2012 re-election. In an article published today, Think Progress highlights four big things that were supposed to happen by 2016, if Obama were re-elected. [Spoiler alert: They didn’t.]

1. Gas was supposed to cost $6.05 per gallon.

In March 2012, on the floor of the United States Senate, Mike Lee (R-UT) predicted that if Obama was reelected gas would cost $6.05 per gallon by the start 2015. Lee said that gas prices would rise 5 cents for every month Obama was in office, ultimately reaching $6.60 per gallon.

Lee was not alone. Newt Gingrich, running for the GOP nomination, predicted that if Obama was reelected he would push gas to “$10 a gallon.” Gingrich said he would reduce gas prices dramatically by reversing Obama’s energy policies. Gingrich flanked himself with campaign signs promising $2.50 gas if he was elected.

Today, the nationwide average for a gallon of gas is $2.00.

Some of the reasons for the decline in gas prices were beyond Obama’s control — including weak international demand and OPEC’s failure to reduce supply. Also driving prices lower was increased gas production in the U.S., which has doubled over the last 6 years. The policies that Lee, Gingrich and others criticized — the rejection of Keystone XL pipeline, more EPA regulation and limiting drilling on public land — have not gotten in the way of historically low prices.

2. Unemployment was supposed to be stuck at over 8%

In September 2012, Mitt Romney predicted that if Obama is reelected “you’re going to see chronic high unemployment continue four years or longer.” At the time, the unemployment rate was 8.1% and had been between 8.1% and 8.3% for the entire year.

What would breaking out of “chronic high unemployment” look like in a Romney presidency? Romney pledged that, if elected, he could bring the unemployment rate down to 6% by January 2017.

The unemployment rate currently stands at 5.0% and has been under 6% since September 2014. Since January 2013, the economy has created over 7.8 million new jobs.

3. The stock market was supposed to crash

Immediately after Obama won reelection in November 2012, many commenters predicted that the stock market was toast.

Charles Bilderman, the author of the “Intelligent Investing” column at Forbes, wrote that the “market selloff after Obama’s re-election [was] no accident,” predicting “stocks are dropping with no bottom in sight.” Bilderman said that the policies the Obama administration would pursue in his second term would “crash stocks.”

On Bloomberg TV, investor Marc Faber predicted that, because of Obama’s reelection, the stock market would drop at least 20%. According to Faber, “Republicans understand the problem of excessive debt better than Mr. Obama who basically doesn’t care about piling up debt.” Faber joked that investors seeking to protect their assets should “buy themselves a machine gun.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average currently stands at 17,425.03 and, despite a downturn in 2015, is up over 27% since Obama was reelected.

4. The entire U.S. economy was supposed to collapse

Rush Limbaugh predicted that “the country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected.” Limbaugh was confident in his prediction: “There’s no if about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut wrenching, but it will happen.”

The economic free fall would begin, according to Limbaugh, because “California is going to declare bankruptcy” and Obama would force states like Texas to “bail them out.” California currently has a $4 billion budget surplus.

Limbaugh added, “I know mathematics, and I know economics. I know history. I know socialism, statism, Marxism, I know where it goes. I know what happens at the end of it.”

Limbaugh said the economic apocalypse could take “a year and a half, two years, three years.” It’s been three years and two months since Limbaugh’s prediction.

The U.S. economy grew at a respectable 2% in the 3rd quarter of 2014, following 3.9% growth in the second quarter.

Happily, for Americans of all political persuasions, predictions for Obama-geddon didn’t pan out. In fact, we’ve actually had a pretty decent run. I shudder to think how things might have been–especially for people without membership cards for the top 1 percent club–had we elected Mitt Romney in 2012. And with today’s Republican field of presidential candidates, we could be in even deeper doo-doo if one of them makes it all the way. Any Democrat would be better than any of these clowns. As a very smart person [my sister] said here on Occasional Planet yesterday, make it your most important New Year’s resolution to vote in 2016.  And for gawd sake, vote for the Democrat.

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On May 12, Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute published a new report titled “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.” You can download the report and watch a two-hour presentation and panel discussion on it here.

Guest speakers at the report launch were Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor of New York city, Bill DeBlasio, along with a slew of really interesting panelists. I started watching the event over breakfast, thinking I would turn it off after I finished off my smoothie, but I kept watching—all two hours of it! Stiglitz offered one of the best explanations of what went wrong with the economy I have heard to date. And he offers a clear path for making it work for the majority of Americans.

Bernie Sanders entering the race for president and Joe Stiglitz launching this report on how to fix the economy are truly hopeful events. I’m talking real hope here, something I have not felt in a long time. There’s been no shortage of ideas on how to fix the economy—break up the big banks, raise the minimum wage, raise the cap on Social Security taxes, raise taxes on companies that offshore jobs. But this slingshot approach is inadequate to what is really a systemic and structural problem. Stiglitz offers a fresh look at the causes of our economic downturn, and puts forward a comprehensive list of solutions, all of which have to be addressed, if the economy is to work for everyone.

Stiglitz’s list of the causes of growing income inequality:

• More market power, less competition
• The growth of the financial sector
• The ‘shareholder revolution,’ the rise of CEO pay, and the squeezing of workers
• Lower taxes for the wealthy
• The end of full-employment monetary policy
• The stifling of worker voice
• The sinking floor of labor standards
• Racial discrimination

Stiglitz’s solutions for rebalancing the economy:

• Make markets competitive
• Fix the financial sector
• Incentivize long-term business growth
• Rebalance the tax and transfer system
• Make full employment the goal
• Empower workers
• Expand access to labor markets and opportunities for advancement
• Expand economic security and opportunity

The report, clearly written and easy to read, goes in-depth on each topic. It refutes the idea that there is a mysterious market force, or “invisible hand” or “natural” business cycle, or changes in the global economy that is causing unemployment and stagnant wages. The economy is in shambles, Stiglitz says, because, for the last thirty years, the rich and powerful have written the rules that govern the economy. Both Republicans and Democrats have participated in this orgy of “rule making for the rich,” which has resulted in the systematic destruction of the middle class, and the increasing impoverishment of the working poor.

Inequality has been a choice, he says, made by the few and foisted on the majority who were sold a bill of goods. It is within our power to reverse those rules. Here’s an excerpt from the report, my emphasis:

Rules are the regulatory and legal frameworks that make up the economy, like those affecting property ownership, corporate formation, labor law, copyright, antitrust, monetary, tax, and expenditure policy, and other economic structures. They also include the institutions that perpetuate discrimination, including structural discrimination—an entire system of rules, regulations, expenditure policies, and normative practices that exclude populations from the economy and economic opportunity. Unequal socio-economic outcomes for women and people of color are rooted in this kind of structural discrimination, in addition to other forms of bias. . . .

Our challenge, then, is to rewrite the rules to work for everyone. To do so, we must re-learn what we thought we knew about how modern economies work. We must also devise new policies to eliminate the distortions that pervade our financial sector, our corporate rules, our macroeconomic, monetary, tax, expenditure, and competition policies, our labor relations, and our political structures. It is important to engage all of these challenges simultaneously, since our economy is a system and these elements interact. This will not be easy; we must push to achieve these fundamental changes at a time when the American people have lost faith in their government’s ability to act in service of the common good.

The problems we face today are in large part the result of economic decisions we made—or failed to make—beginning in the late 1970s.

The changes occurring in our economy, politics, and society have been dramatic, and there is a corresponding sense of urgency in this report. We cannot afford to go forward with minor tweaks and hope that they do the trick. We know the answer: they will not, and the suffering that will occur in the meantime is unconscionable. And, as we explain, this is not just about the present, but the future. The policies of today are “baking in” the America of 2050: unless we change course, we will be a country with slower growth, ever more inequality, and ever less equality of opportunity. Inequality has been a choice, and it is within our power to reverse it.

The good news is that Stiglitz’s report is not just an intellectual exercise. Along with the Roosevelt Institute, he will be releasing a series of specific proposals to help rewrite the rules of the economy in favor of ordinary Americans. As the presidential campaign heats up, I have no doubt that Bernie will be onboard, but will Hillary or Jeb Bush? Joe Stiglitz is one of many official advisors to the Clinton campaign, but I’m not holding my breath that she will embrace the kind of changes he envisions.

We are entering an interesting time in history, when the majority of voters are aware that, despite cheery statements from the Obama administration to the contrary, there has been no economic recovery for ordinary Americans. Also, the majority of voters know that banks and corporations will be spending obscene amounts of money to elect Hilary Clinton, or the GOP candidate, who will continue to write rules that favor the elite.

The time is ripe for genuine progressive ideas to take hold because, for once, they have a chance to resonate with people across the political spectrum. Bernie Sanders and Joe Stiglitz, together, offer real solutions to an economy, and a country, gone off the rails.

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The financial meltdown of 2008 prompted many of us to look back to the decades after WWII for guidance—when Glass-Steagall kept banks in check, when labor unions had bargaining power, when a family could buy a house and live comfortably on a factory worker or a postal worker’s salary. Things seemed to be going well back then.

It was a time when the wealthy paid their fair share—the upper income tax bracket under Eisenhower was 90%. And there were jobs, and good paying ones—at least for some. In hindsight, it seemed like the “Golden Age” of American capitalism, when it seemed the economy worked for most people. The TV series “Leave it to Beaver,” which featured a generic, white, middle class family living in comfort in a generic, white suburb, furthered the myth that everyone in America could live a comfortable life if they showed up at work and paid their bills. For a large chunk of the population, of course, this wasn’t the case.

Banks and corporations constrained themselves after the Great Depression and WWII. Then, chomping at the bit to increase profits, they began to find ways to game the system. By the 70s, things started falling apart. Corporate globalization caused massive deindustrialization and the outsourcing of once good paying jobs, and the financial sector began its highjacking of the economy. The problem, the Golden Age myth would have us believe, was that bad capitalists and bad bankers took over what was really a good system.  If greed and bad behavior are held in check, the thinking goes, then capitalism really is the best economic system, synonymous with freedom, democracy and the American Way.

The myth vs. the reality of the post war era

In his recent article in ZCommunications, Paul Street debunks the “Golden Age” myth and sheds light on the failures of capitalism during this period.  He writes that, during the entire post war era, 10% of the population—20 million Americans—experienced no progress at all and deep poverty remained entrenched. Drawing on Judith Stein’s 2010 book, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance during the 1970s, Street provides the following statistics:

As the nation spent billions to put astronauts on the moon, millions of Americans remained ill-clad, ill-fed, and ill-housed. The median U.S. family income in 1968 was $8,362, less than what the Bureau of Labor Statistics defined as a “modest but adequate” income for an urban family of four. The Bureau found that 30 percent of the nation’s working class families were living in poverty and another 30 percent were living under highly “austere” conditions.

U.S. industrial capitalism at its “golden” best was no land of milk and honey for millions of Americans on the wrong end of capital’s constant drive to extract value from working people, the broader community, and the Earth. Thanks to its rapacious and wasteful extraction of wealth from the natural environment, moreover, the profit system had already generated what numerous left and other U.S. environmentalists were already describing as an ecological crisis (see Barry Commoner’s haunting 1971 book The Closing Circle).

In support of the idea that the problems with capitalism are systemic, Street quotes Yale trained economist Richard Wolff:

As Wolff explained two years ago: “Historical and contemporary records overflow with blame variously heaped on the illegal acts of financiers, corporate executives, corrupt state officials, union leaders, and ‘organized crime’ for causing capitalism’s cycles and crises. . . Pinpointing ‘the bad guys’ perpetuates the ancient art of scape-goating, deflecting blame on convenient targets when in fact the system is the problem. Capitalist societies can continue to monitor, identify, regulate, and prosecute economic misdeeds, but doing so never will prevent cycles and crises. Overcoming the systemic roots and nature of capitalist crises requires a change in the economic system.” (Wolff, Democracy at Work).

Can we change the American economic system?

Banks and corporations have no interest in doing so. Republican and Democratic politicians and government officials, most of whom serve their interests—and are rewarded handsomely for their efforts—have no interest in doing so. The American people, however, who continue to suffer the economic, social and ecological consequences of this rigged system, eventually, may want to try something different.

For starters, Wolff feels we can cure capitalism by bringing democracy to the workplace. “We would have stores, factories and offices, in which all the people who have to live with the results of what happens to that enterprise, participate in deciding how it works.” He recommends moving from the traditional top down, corporation—that squeezes workers in order to funnel money to CEOs, shareholders, and Wall Street banks—to cooperatives, where income is more equitably shared, and where decisions about what to produce are made democratically. Good news: there is already a strong cooperative presence in this country to build on.

As an answer to the current unemployment problem, if the private sector won’t provide jobs, Wolff says, then the government needs to do it—and he is talking 15 to 20 million jobs. The lion’s share of those jobs would address climate change through green infrastructure projects—building clean mass transportation, building green energy systems, retrofitting buildings, etc. This is a no-brainer, but vehemently opposed by a monied class that refuses to pay taxes to be used for the public good.

Wolff offers another solution for the unemployed.  He would do what Italy does. If you can get ten unemployed people together and start your own cooperative business, the Italian government gives all of you your unemployment benefits in a lump sum payment to fund your venture.

To see more of Richard Wolff, and hear more of his ideas, check out his appearances on Bill Moyers & Company here and here.

“Free market” capitalism (which relies heavily on a corporate nanny state) has brought us American imperialism, endless war, Orwellian government surveillance of our private communications, and life threatening climate change. It’s time liberals and progressives realize capitalism isn’t the only game in town. There are ways to organize an economy so that it serves the interest of all, not just the most aggressive and avaricious among us. We can start by learning more about the Nordic democratic socialist model, which provides a good standard of living for everyone in those countries, and expanding the democratic, cooperative workplace here at home. We need to shift our consciousness from believing a competitive economy—in which everyone is supposed to have (but in reality doesn’t have) a shot at success— is the best economy, to knowing that a more humane, peaceful economy—in which everyone has his or her basic needs met, and economic activity is channelled for the public good—is a recipe for saving ourselves and the planet.

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American workers are afraid of losing their jobs.  That’s obvious.  I have a step-granddaughter who worked part time at a gas station/convenience store in west St. Louis County while she was working on a two-year degree in early childhood education.  Fortunately, she was able to leave the gas station and the owner’s blatantly illegal demands on his employees when she nabbed a job working with 3 and 4 year old kids.

She and the other workers at the gas station were allowed NO breaks except to go to the bathroom.  In fact, that was the only time she got to sit down because there wasn’t even a stool behind the counter.  They had to eat behind the counter when there were no customers in the store.  Sometimes a shift would go past the 8 hour day, and, of course there was no overtime pay.  There was supposed to be a policy that no one had to stay alone in the store after 10 p.m., but somehow there never were enough employees to fill that time slot.

This goes on all over the country every day and every night.  Democrats have been asking for years why people vote against their own economic interests and keep electing the politicians who vote to screw them over.  Robert Reich says it’s because they are afraid of losing their jobs.  Fear works.  That’s disgustingly and sadly obvious in West Virginia.  Even the Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is in the pocket of the coal industry.  He said recently that we shouldn’t criticize Big Coal because we wouldn’t have the country we have without it.  He was right in more ways than one.  We wouldn’t have the pollution, global warming and disastrous changes in our weather patterns caused by climate change.

For decades, Republicans used their holier-than-thou righteous megaphone to convince voters that to be “pro-life” was the way they could save themselves from eternal damnation.  Abortion, contraception, pushing back all the advances women have made since the 1960’s – this worked for a long time.  Now the anti-abortion bills in state legislatures are getting so ridiculous that the Republicans can’t rely on that anymore.

But they don’t have to because over the past few decades – yes, since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers – there has been a steady erosion of workers’ rights and the power of unions to protect their members.

The level of unemployment in our country is still a national disgrace despite some new jobs being created and a few companies calling back workers who were laid off during the Great Recession.  The Republicans are doing everything they can to hurt the poor, according to Sen. Bernie Sanders.  Sound too harsh?   Maybe.  But it’s true.  And why do the Republicans want to hurt the poor?  So they won’t have the courage to object to terrible, unsafe working conditions and wages that force even someone working 40 hours a week to live on the streets.

As long as megacorporations can keep us scared to death of an even worse fate, they have us by the short hairs.  They can abuse workers who speak up like Wal-Mart did to some who protested on Black Friday.  Supposedly Wal-Mart is being taken to court because those protests were perfectly legal, but what do you think the chances are that their employees will have the courage to do that again?

Desperate people do desperate things.  Fear is a powerful motivator. I’m sure there is a connection between this fear of losing what little we own in the rush to buy more and more guns and ammo.  This seige mentality works to keep us in our selfish little enclaves and closing our eyes to the violence and destruction in our communities.

Who knows where all this fear mongering will lead?  It might make millions of Americans so angry that they finally rise up and throw off the yoke of desperation.   Or we may continue losing strength in numbers and look more and more like workers in those countries where the factory owner has to put netting around a building to keep trapped workers from committing suicide.

A social movement needs charismatic leaders and courageous followers.
I hope I live long enough to be part of the next Progressive Era.

This post was written in response to an article by Bill Moyers.

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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released statistics on eleven cities where workers are disappearing.  Note that workers disappearing is different from jobs disappearing.  The latter means that employment is not to be found; the former is that employees are not to be found.  Generally jobs and workers are magnets to one another and a balance develops, even in particular local areas.  But both of these variables, jobs and workers, are dynamic and disparities will exist within a country as large as the United States.

As might be expected, the eleven cities where workers are disappearing include Rust Belt communities such as Cincinnati, Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio. Since November, 2007, Cleveland has lost 52,000 workers, or 5% of its labor force. Over the past four years, Cincinnati has lost 4 percent of its workers.

However, somewhat surprisingly, Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona are among these eleven cities with the greatest contraction of the labor force. Since 2007, Phoenix has lost 3 percent, and Tucson has lost 6 percent. In the Rust Belt cities, the primary reason is the decrease in manufacturing. In the Sun Belt cities of Arizona, the reason is that a huge housing bubble was created prior to 2007, and the recovery in the construction industry is still lagging.

If a worker cannot find employment in the community where he or she lives, three choices exist: (a) stay where one is living with the hope and expectation that employment opportunities will develop, (b) move elsewhere where jobs are  available, and (c) drop out of the labor force. The third option is one that more and more workers have been doing lately.  Some can afford to do this; others are just too discouraged to continue looking.

Communities such as Cincinnati, Cleveland and Dayton have had thousands of workers leave their boundaries and move elsewhere to find jobs. The impact on these communities can be good and bad: good in that it is no longer their responsibility to try to find jobs for as many unemployed, but bad in that the person who leaves is no longer a consumer in the community who provides helpful demand for goods and services.

Our federal government has the primary responsibility for setting policies that provide jobs and minimize unemployment. Because the government is so large, it inevitably will have a significant impact on the geographic distribution of the jobs. A question that could be ethical, but in reality is political, arises. Should the government try to provide job opportunities in those communities that have a large number of workers without jobs, or should it just provide the stimulus for new jobs with the expectation that the unemployed will gravitate to the locations where the jobs are.

Additionally, does the government have a responsibility to ensure jobs for all who want to work, even if some of the work that employees would do could better be done by robots or by workers living and plying their trades in another country? These dual forces of growing technology and an expanding amount of cheap labor overseas will not go away. They will remain as the twin reasons why employment opportunities in the U.S. will remain challenging.

It is not enough to say that the private sector will create the necessary jobs if given the opportunity to do so. Private companies are not in business to provide job opportunities, their raison d’etre is to make profit. If that can be done better by relying on technology and outsourcing jobs, they will do so. Society at large, and the federal government in particular, is left with dealing with the residue of American citizens who are looking for work but can’t find it.
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The real answer is one that Franklin Roosevelt tried to implement during the New Deal – make the federal government the employer of last resort.  Yes, this is a form of socialism, but more importantly it is policy that is responsive to the needs of the American citizenry. It is not currently politically possible for President Obama to convince Congress to take the necessary steps to make this happen. But it would be extremely helpful to the American labor force if President Obama advocated such a policy at a time of his choosing. The current political climate may not be the best, but as he gets to the end of his presidency, he will have less political capital to preserve. If he is still reluctant to do so at any time over the next three and a half years, then it would be essential for him to do so as a former president who can feel far freer to advocate policies in which he truly believes than he can do now. Like many progressives, my support of President Obama is not only based on what he has done and what he is doing, but also what he is capable of doing in the future. I trust his political acumen; I just hope that he believes that the ultimate solution to our jobs program is for the federal government to be the employer of last resort.

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The ever-insightful and knowledgeable Yves Smith, writing at Naked Capitalism, points to a potential trigger for the next economic crisis—the bursting of the massive student loan debt bubble. According to Smith, student loan debt is so large “it’s trumping credit cards as a spending driver.” While other forms of debt have decreased during the Great Recession, spending on student loans has been steadily increasing.

Good jobs that pay a decent salary—i.e. one you could actually live on—are scarce. So people have been going into to debt to pay for training or degrees in hopes of landing one of those elusive jobs. Student loans are more available, s0 people of all ages have been going back to school—a dubious choice given that there is no sign that a robust economy with good paying jobs is in our future.

Other reasons for the massive growth in student loans? The growing for-profit higher education industry is one of the big drivers of the student loan debt bubble. Many people have been aggressively recruited and pressured by these institutions to take out loans and train for career opportunities that, in reality, do not exist. For more information on the corporate/Wall Street hand in the growth of student loan debt, watch the excellent Frontline movie, College, Inc.

Before we get to the bursting part, lets take a closer look at the size of the bubble. Here are some facts from a February 2013 report on student debt published by the New York Fed:

•  The total burden of student debt is approaching $1 trillion

•  Student loan debt has almost tripled between 2004 and 2012.

•  The number of student loan borrowers has almost tripled between 2004 and 2012

In her article, Smith quotes progressive economist Warren Mosler who compares the student loan bubble (otherwise known as a “credit expansion”) to the many bubbles before it that have propped up our perennially dysfunctional economy—the savings and loan bubble of the Reagan era, the dot com bubble of the Clinton years, and the sub prime mortgage bubble of the Bush administration. He points out the obvious: when the student loan bubble bursts, its support of the economy will end. And what leads Smith and Mosler to think it will burst? Have a look at these charts from the NY fed report (Click on each chart to see a larger version):

Smith ends with these thoughts:

. . . student loans are not only looking bubbly, but the level of borrower stress is saying something has got to give. One sign is that law school enrollment has fallen 15% since 2010. Students are correctly worried about borrowing heavily in a weak job market. But so far, enough people believe in the value of education as a workplace credential that the student loans outstanding are still rising. It’s hard to discern how this plays out, but the endgame might not be that far off.

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It’s not just the much-vaunted Bush tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2012. Federal emergency unemployment benefits are also facing their expiration date at the end of the year, and that prospect could hasten a “fiscal cliff” for in the personal finances of many Americans. In addition, on a broader scale, if this year’s lame-duck Congress fails to extend the program, the U.S. economy will lose about 400,000 jobs, says a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

The Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, signed into law at the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008, provides assistance to long-term unemployed workers who have exhausted their state-level unemployment assistance eligibility.

According to Think Progress:

More than five million Americans have been unemployed for longer than six months, and more than two million will lose access to federal unemployment insurance if the program lapses in December. Another million would lose benefits in April if no extension is passed.

Congress last passed an extension early this year, though it cut the number of weeks of eligibility. As a result, 500,000 unemployed workers lost access to the program between the beginning of 2012 and July. Republicans have often opposed EUC’s extension, arguing that it fosters laziness and dependency and prevents the unemployed from searching for jobs, even though EUC requires recipients to conduct job searches and studies have shown that people who receive unemployment insurance work harder and faster to find employment than those who don’t.

EPI found that the unemployment extension would provide a bigger boost to economic growth and create more jobs than an extension of the high-income Bush tax rates:

Spending $30 billion on unemployment insurance extensions in 2013 would increase consumer spending and expand GDP by an estimated $48 billion, raising our $15.8 trillion GDP by roughly 0.3 percent. This increase in economic activity would translate into roughly 400,000 jobs. In comparison, continuing the upper-income Bush-era tax cuts in 2013 would cost $52 billion—nearly 75 percent more than continuing the UI extensions—and generate just 102,000 jobs, nearly 75 percent fewer jobs than the number created by continuing the UI extensions.

Extending unemployment benefits should be an easy call for the 2012 lame duck Congress. Let’s watch to be sure that they act reasonably and responsibly on this one.

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TED is a nonprofit that began in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from the worlds of technology, entertainment, and design. Since then its scope has broadened to include anything it feels is an “idea worth spreading.” TED publishes video taped talks on its site by creative, cutting edge people who have something unique to say on practically any topic.

But recently, TED curator, Chris Anderson, declined to post a March talk by Seattle-based venture capitalist and Amazon.com investor Nick Hanauer, who dared to say that said the middle class, not wealthy financiers like himself, were the nation’s real “job creators.”

The organization invited Hanauer, the first non-family investor in Amazon.com, to speak about inequality at its university conference, and knew ahead of time the content of his talk. Hanauer told the audience that rising income inequality was harmful to society and that the rich should pay more in taxes.

TED curator Chris Anderson later told him that it was it was too politically controversial to publish on its site. Really?

Never mind. Someone just posted Hanauer’s talk on YouTube for all to see. It’s short and well worth watching. If the YouTube video is taken down, you can find the text of his talk here.

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I am a progressive, and I identify with leftist politics. I want Medicare for all, free higher education for everyone, Social Security caps lifted and payments doubled. I want a peace economy rather than a war economy. I believe in high taxes, strong labor laws and I want money banned from the political process. But I don’t live in Europe. I live in the United States—the land of opportunity, Amazon and Walmart.

Intellectually I am against consumerism as a basis for our economuy, but, in real life, I’m an American, and the desire to consume is encoded in my DNA. I love ordering online because I get a good deal, and if I order enough, I get free shipping! I’m a socialist who loves not paying sales tax.

Like most Americans, I want my stuff cheap and I want it fast—and I haven’t wanted to think about the human cost of online buying. Sure, I know much of the stuff I buy is made in sweatshops in Asia, but I don’t have a choice because, you know, practically everything is made there. I tell myself that those countries will eventually catch up with us on human rights and worker rights. The human rights problems are “over there,“ not here.

Then, I read Mac MacClelland’s jaw-dropping story in Mother Jones, “I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine. “ In a brilliant piece of reporting, McClelland simultaneously rips the mask off online retail and the reality of the “economic recovery” in America. She writes about small towns in the Midwest where vast warehouses employ thousands of workers under horrendous working conditions so that you and I can get all that stuff we buy online cheap and fast. The large online retail outlets we all know and love, either own and operate these warehouses themselves, or they contract with other companies to provide storage and shipping services for them. McClelland has a gripping, compelling and important story to tell about work in these warehouses and human rights abuses in America today.

The standard shift in these warehouses is 8 hours, but “working more than eight hours is mandatory,” explains McClelland, who takes an undercover job in one of them where she ends up working mandatory 12-hour days during the peak pre-Christmas season. During that 12-hour day she gets two fifteen-minute breaks, and a 29 minute and 59 second lunch break. Like other workers, McClelland takes some of this precious time for anxiety filled pee breaks because she has to wait in long lines to use one of the smelly, dirty bathrooms.

McClelland reports that sometimes the backbreaking pace and unrealistic demands on warehouse workers cause them to break down and cry. “Well, what if I do start crying?” McClelland asked a seasoned worker. “Are they really going to fire me for that?” “Yes,” she says. “There are sixteen other people who want your job. Why would they keep a person who gets emotional, especially in this economy?” MeClelland further reports, if a worker manages to perform well enough to keep the job, there probably won’t be a promotion in his or her future. Workers stay temporary for years.

As a new hire, here’s what McClelland learned during training: “People lose fingers. Or parts of fingers. And about once a year, they tell us, someone in an Amalgamated warehouse gets caught by the hair, and when a conveyor belt catches you by the hair, it doesn’t just take your hair with it. It rips out a piece of scalp as well.”

McClelland on why people take these jobs: “The American job market isn’t great, people will take what they can get. ‘How’s the job market?’ a supervisor says, laughing, as several of us newbies run by. ‘Just kidding!’ Ha ha! ‘I know why you guys are here. That’s why I’m here, too!'”

After reading “I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave,” I took away the following:  First, I can’t put the genie back in the bottle. I will forever know the human cost of my wanting discounted items and fast delivery. I will know that the worker who fills my order is hounded and shamed with impossible demands to fill unrealistic quotas. In order to keep the job, he or she has to find, pick, pack, or ship items at breakneck speed, in massive, multi-football field sized warehouses for 10 to 12 hour days. Most warehouse workers take up to 600mg of Advil daily just to survive the painful toll the job takes on their bodies. Sometimes while retrieving items they get massive static electricity shocks from the huge multi story metal shelving—over and over again. All this for the handsome reward of eleven something an hour, with no benefits and forced overtime.

Second, after reading this, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the economic recovery is overrated. I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave is both an indictment of one of the fastest growing segments of the American economy, online retail, and a snapshot of what jobs are going to be like going forward in the United States. McClelland writes about the desperation of the unemployed and the kinds of jobs they are willing to take, many of which are low-paying, soul sucking, and/or backbreaking. These low paying jobs will actually increase, rather than reduce, the percentage of those in the U.S. living in near poverty—remembering, of course, that the official poverty level is absurdly low. The unemployment rate may be trending downward, but we may not have much to celebrate.

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If you can’t get to a job interview, you can’t get a job. If you’re homeless and don’t have a car, or if you have a residence, but live in an area where public transportation won’t get you where you need to go, you’re basically out of luck. And if you’ve got a job, but your car is unreliable, you may have trouble staying on the payroll.

It’s a story familiar to agencies who work with low-income, unemployed and homeless people. A commonly quoted statistic indicates that 30 percent of unemployed people cite lack of transportation as their biggest obstacle to getting or keeping a job. So, in recent years, some non-profit organizations and government agencies have begun banding together to try to break the cycle.

The approach is called “Wheels to Work.” The goal is to help people looking for work to get rides to job interviews and training programs, and to help people with jobs keep them. Here’s a look at some of programs around the country that focus on these issues.

Help for homeless people

One of the most recent Wheels to Work efforts started in October 2011 in Sacramento, California. It’s  a collaboration among several non-profit agencies, the county Department of Human Assistance and the state Department of Rehabilitation. The program got its start when a local casino donated two 14-passenger shuttle vans to an agency serving homeless people. The agency—Paratransit—got federal funding to register, insure, repair and retrofit the vans, and the area’s housing alliance connected with service providers to coordinate a transportation program for their homeless clients.

Sacramento’s “Wheels to Work” bus route is more than just a free ride, though. One job training on-the-go bus will have staff and computers available for creating resumes, finding jobs and preparing for interviews. The buses run Monday through Friday from roughly 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and are driven by women who were formerly homeless themselves.

What a difference a car makes

In Georgia, a similarly named program takes a slightly different approach. The Wheels to Work Program operating in the rural, northeasten Georgia provides reliable transportation by purchasing (or receiving donations of) dependable, previously owned vehicles. These vehicles are financed with a zero-interest loan to qualified applicants. Participants are educated about the responsibilities of being a car owner without it becoming a financial burden.

The participant is responsible for the car payment, insurance, maintenance and upkeep of the vehicle. As they become employed and establish a work history, the car payments are adjusted accordingly. Many of the vehicle recipients have paid off their car loans with income tax refunds, which they would not have had without this program. The repayment stream is used to purchase additional cars to assist more individuals. Another positive aspect of this program is that it allows participants to establish a good credit history, which could help them in the future.

Bridging the gap

Lewis County, NY offers a program with a slightly different name—“Wheels for Work”—that helps working people by providing repair work for a family’s existing vehicle, assisting with insurance payments, and assisting with other, alternative forms of transportation to get to and from work.In 2010, 21 families received loans to acquire a replacement vehicle to remove the barrier of unreliable transportation.  One hundred families got assistance with vehicle repairs.

Similarly, in Pennsylvania, Goodwill offers a Wheels for Workprogram in a number of counties. The program aims at promoting self-sufficiency by providing donated cars to  low-income working parents who have difficulty utilizing public transportation and cannot afford to buy a car.Those who need vehicles complete applications and take classes in financial management and car care. Also, potential recipients must provide documentation that they don’t already own a car and have safe driving records. Wheels for Work has been giving donated cars to those needing transportation to work for more than 10 years. In the 2009-2010 year, 30 families received vehicles. Goodwill has also started to provide other means of transportation such as bicycles and bus passes.

In  Florida, a program called Wheels of Success, established in 2003, helps families obtain or continue work by providing them with reliable transportation through a program of car repairs, vehicle replacement, related licensing services, car payments, down payments and car-care classes. The organization gets cars by purchasing them or via donations and  restores them to good running condition. During the past decade, the program has enabled dozens of individuals and families to commute to work, take their children to school, and take care of daily necessities, such as grocery shopping and doctors’ appointments.

These and other similar programs around the country seem like logical adjuncts to the job-creation agenda politicians say they favor. But, in today’s political atmosphere in which manic budget-cutting is the rule, these enlightened programs could be endangered, as witnessed by clicking on  a New-York-State Wheels to Work site.  After describing the program and offering contact information, the website displays this disappointing message:

Due to funding cuts, this program has been temporarily discontinued as of October 1, 2011.

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