The Depth of Suffering

The Great Recession is spreading unnecessary suffering around the globe. All because some Wall Street suits weren't happy with their hundred million dollar bonuses and wanted something closer to a billion dollars.

Here's some bits from a Paul Krugman posting on his blog at the NY Times that quantifies the suffering:

It was truly amazing the way last week’s employment report was hailed by many people as a sign that our troubles are over. ...

I start from the fact that we’ve lost about 8 million jobs since the recession began — that’s the official number plus the preliminary estimate of the coming benchmark revision. I then take EPI’s estimate that we need to add 127,000 jobs a month. EPI points out that when you put these numbers together, they say that to return to pre-crisis unemployment within two years we’d have to add 580,000 jobs a month. That’s not going to happen.

... But let’s set a more modest goal: return to more or less full employment in 5 years –which means seven lean years of depressed employment. To keep up with population growth over those 7 years, the United States would have had to add 84 times 127,000 or 10.668 million jobs. (If that sounds high, bear in mind that we added more than 20 million jobs over the 8 Clinton years). Add in the need to make up lost ground, and we’re at around 18 million jobs over the next five years — or 300,000 a month.

So that’s a useful benchmark. Even if we add 300,000 jobs a month, we’re looking at a prolonged period of suffering — a huge cost from the Great Recession. So that’s kind of a minimal definition of success. Anything less than that, and it’s bad news. It sort of puts that wonderful report that we only lost 11,000 jobs in perspective, doesn’t it?

Having people unemployed means they suffer. It means the nation suffers because you fail to realize what they could produce if they were gainfully employed. The longer they stay unemployed the bigger the hole is that needs to be filled to "catch up". (But the reality is that the economy will never fully catch up.) It means people lose useful skills as they sit at home and do nothing. It means that depression and suicide spread throughout the population. All so that some overpaid bankers could run some insane risks to goose up their bonus money. Sad. Add to that the hard nosed right wingers who rub their hand in glee at the setback to the economy because this "proves" that their screwball economic ideas are right (as if the eight year disaster under George Bush didn't prove that these fanatics' economic ideas were bankrupt!).

The world is healing, but it is slow. There is an awful lot of unnecessary pain out there. Instead of rushing to put the economy back on its feet, too many fanatics are saying "oh, but inflation is going to kill us!" or that "this is socialism!" or "our grandchildren will be buried under mountains of debt" as if the millions of unemployed count for nothing. These right wing fanatics are hard hearted. They grew up with the same creed as Andrew Mellon, Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury:

"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” He insisted that, when the people get an inflation brainstorm, the only way to get it out of their blood is to let it collapse. He held that even a panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people."

I find it odd that the US media never points out that they spread this suffering around the world because of the deregulation policies of George Bush and the greed it unleashed on Wall Street via the housing bubble. The US loves to beat its breast about the suffering inflicted on it by the ruthlessness of Al Qaeda, but there is not a word about the evil and suffering the US has imposed on the rest of the world because of its unconscionable economic policies. Ah... but that is human nature. It is always easier to spot the mote in the other fellow's eye while missing the beam in your own eye.