U.S. voters grieving for a world that won’t return
Stephen Pearlstein, business columnist for The Washington Post, makes an argument familiar to regular readers of this blog:
“Somewhere between the rantings of the Republican right, which is peddling the nonsense that excessive government spending is to blame for high unemployment, and the Democratic left, which clings to the false hope that another helping of fiscal stimulus is all that is needed to get millions of Americans permanently back to work, is this stubborn reality:
The loss of 8 million jobs reflects problems that are largely structural, not cyclical, which means they won’t be brought back by fiddling with a magic dial in Washington that controls how much the government spends.”
As Pearlstein notes, millions of construction and manufacturing jobs have disappeared and aren’t coming back soon. In addition, large numbers of displaced workers find themselves chained in place, unable to move to seek jobs because they are stuck with a mortgage for more than the house is worth.
And how did all this happen?
The structural problems, however, go well beyond these mismatches. The reason there were 8 million additional jobs back in 2007 is that demand for goods and services was artificially – and unsustainably – inflated by cheap, plentiful credit. Between 2002 and 2007, household debt was increasing at the torrid pace of more than 10 percent annually, while business debt and the debt of state and local governments was growing at an average of 9 percent. Much of that money was used to finance present consumption.
Now all that has reversed. Household debt is shrinking at a rate of 2.4 percent per year as the savings rate has risen from nearly zero to more than 5 percent. Meanwhile, business debt declined 2.5 percent last year and is now flat, as is the case for state and local governments.
All that deleveraging and living within our means is obviously a good thing in the long run. But what it means for the economy in the short run is that neither the excess consumption nor the jobs it supported are coming back.”
Our political leaders haven’t come to grips with that reality yet, and neither have the American people. What we’re seeing in the body politic right now is a primal scream of denial, an insistence that easy answers be found — right now! — so that we can all go back to those good ol’ days of not so long ago.
That’s why, less than two years after handing overwhelming victory to the Democrats, voters appear set to toss them aside and cast their lot with the Republicans next. Well, you can believe me now or you can believe me later, but John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Sarah Palin certainly don’t have the answers either.
Just ask them.
It may be that the American people just aren’t prepared yet to hear the truth. This is part of a process of denial, anger and bargaining, followed only later by acceptance, that we just have to work our way through to get to the other side. It isn’t pretty, but it’s probably necessary.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
347 comments Add your comment
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
11:35 am
Deep throat,
“Lets see if you can do, admit one of Oblamers blunders, come you can do it , prove me wrong, I dare you, I double dog dare you.”
Taking the Republicans at their word they were willing to work with Democrats on health care reform?
thomas
September 8th, 2010
11:37 am
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
11:28 am
They are differences in principle… they should not nor should the democrats ever comprimise their prinicples.
On many of the legislation matters you speak of the GOP had and presented an alternative bill or plan. Each and everyone were rejected.
How does that not meet your requirement of trying to get the best legislation?
BTW, they won the election in 2006, but did not take office until Jan. of 2007.
So we are both right, I’m just a lil more right!
Doggone/GA
September 8th, 2010
11:37 am
“Honest debate like claiming the Dems require a 2/3 majority, even in the face of only 51% of the vote for Health Care reform and only 56% for the stimulus plan.”
You gave the votes for the House of Representatives, not the Senate. The House does not have the same requirements as the Senate. Why not find the Senate vote numbers and try again.
Doggone/GA
September 8th, 2010
11:38 am
Jewcowboy – I like that statement!
thomas
September 8th, 2010
11:38 am
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:31 am
So they had 60 you just didn’t like the time frame for the 60 votes?
If all the GOP does is say no as you claim, then how has anything passed?
Scout
September 8th, 2010
11:38 am
Deep throat :
She probably won’t do that. Liberals are one way you know. They never admit their mistakes.
Liberal Chicks are UGLY
September 8th, 2010
11:39 am
Or it could be everything thing that this administration and congress has done has failed??? Yeah, I think that’s what it is.
Keneysian economics has never worked and never will. You cannot spend your way out of a recession. You need a favorable environment for commerce, plain and simple.
I said a long time ago that infastructure spending won’t do diddly for the economy. Sadly, I was very correct.
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
11:40 am
thomas,
“They are differences in principle… they should not nor should the democrats ever comprimise their prinicples.”
When it is for the benefit of the American people all parties should compromise their principles…
“So we are both right, I’m just a lil more right!”
I’m willing to compromise on that
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:40 am
DT – 11:33 – happy to – I wasn’t particularly happy with his appointment of Summers to his economic team.
there. you happy?
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:42 am
kayaker – see my 9:40 … (after yesterday morning’s discussion, I thought you’d appreciate it)
Deep throat
September 8th, 2010
11:42 am
jewcowboy Nancy Pelose and Oblamer never had any intention of working with the GOP on health care as was evident on the only day of transparency.
Jefferson
September 8th, 2010
11:42 am
Some of these neocon sympathisers are full of dung.
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:43 am
thomas – “So they had 60 you just didn’t like the time frame for the 60 votes?”
they had 60 for less than a year. I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s been a lot of crap going on other than between July 2009 and March 2010.
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
11:44 am
thomas,
“On many of the legislation matters you speak of the GOP had and presented an alternative bill or plan. Each and everyone were rejected.
How does that not meet your requirement of trying to get the best legislation?”
B/c the time for them to submit their own legislation on this, was from 1995 – 2006…why didn’t they pass their health reform plans then?
Deep throat
September 8th, 2010
11:45 am
Usik , I’M WAITING, come on you can do it , I sure would have thought you would love to prove me wrong
thomas
September 8th, 2010
11:46 am
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
11:40 am
The problem comes into account when what is being presented is seen as not being good for the American people….
Maybe a good thing in the present, could turn out to be horrible later on or even fatal.
I saw many of the debates being about instant gratification against long term success, and I usually see the immediate success being more about trying to purchase votes through legislation.
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:46 am
DT – scroll up – 11:40
thomas
September 8th, 2010
11:48 am
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:43 am
what is the saying excuses are like …. everyone has one and they all stink……
keep making excuses, but people respect results.
Deep throat
September 8th, 2010
11:49 am
Usik 11:40 is that the best you can do ? you disappoint me.
thomas
September 8th, 2010
11:49 am
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
11:44 am
So if they didn’t take that option they should just be quite and agree?
Remember the dems did not adress immigration reform during the last 2 years for fear of lost votes…… so if the GOP regains power they should agree and Obama should sign whatever immigration reform the GOP brings up, as the time for them to present legislation is now?
TaxPayer
September 8th, 2010
11:51 am
Those Republicans sure seemed to want to work with the Democrats, didn’t they.
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:51 am
DT – 11:49 – boy. I can’t tell you how much that distresses me.
really, I can’t.
you asked, I answered.
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
11:51 am
Deep throat,
“Nancy Pelose and Oblamer never had any intention of working with the GOP on health care as was evident on the only day of transparency.”
People who use names such as Pelose and Oblamer come off as juvenile. If you want your arguments to be taken seriously, you would be better off not engaging in this type of boorish behavior.
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:52 am
thomas – 11:48 – yes, they do. from both parties, not just the guy in on Penn Ave.
A blast from the past
September 8th, 2010
11:53 am
First, civility begins at the beginning. In the next month, Obama will set a tone for Washington that will likely endure as long as he does. If he fails to live up to his rhetoric now, he will fail just as Bush did.
Second, civility begins at home. It is one thing to demand civility of one’s opponents, another thing altogether to demand it of one’s own party.
Obama faced an early test last week, when, in the midst of the debate over economic stimulus, Democrats worked to shut Republicans out of the policy process, then behaved boorishly when Republicans complained.
Democratic leaders responded with the political equivalent of a sack dance in football. “If it’s passed with 63 votes or 73 votes, history won’t remember it,” said Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.
Yes We Did
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added to the mood by saying, “Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.”
There is still time for Obama to object to such behavior. If he wants to fulfill the promise of his rhetoric, he should take Pelosi to the woodshed and insist that she include Republicans, collegially, in the process. He should stand up to his party and threaten to veto a bill if it fails to make reasonable concessions to his friends across the aisle. He should advise his own staff to begin returning the phone calls of senior Republican aides.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aaX0MEqeCGjA
stands for decibels
September 8th, 2010
11:54 am
Taking the Republicans at their word they were willing to work with Democrats on health care reform?
…and cap and trade. Remember when that was the market-based solution that sensible Republicans could get behind?
thomas
September 8th, 2010
11:54 am
Doggone/GA
September 8th, 2010
11:37 am
Why not pay attention to what you are posting about….. maybe i don’t know read the comments before you assume you know something.
In the discussion with USinUK, there was never a quantifier to the 2/3 comment. The other poster never gave the 2/3 as being for house or senate or both…..
But why would you let anything except a half inform emotional reaction come from you?
Doggone/GA
September 8th, 2010
11:56 am
“The other poster never gave the 2/3 as being for house or senate or both…..”
but it isn’t for both. The House has no such requirement, only the Senate. so any reference to a 60 vote margin MUST be about the Senate only. People educated in how our Congress works already know that.
Deep throat
September 8th, 2010
11:57 am
jewcowboy 11:51 I”ll remember that next time you call some one a wingnut.
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:58 am
a blast … “(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election)
and he’s criticizing hte Dems???
color me shocked.
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:59 am
Doggone – “People educated in how our Congress works already know that”
ding! ding! ding! ding!
I think we’ve identified the problem
Deep throat
September 8th, 2010
12:00 pm
Usik 11:40 I guess thats one of the people Oblunder has to work with.
Privatizing Social Security unworkable politically, economically | Jay Bookman
September 8th, 2010
12:01 pm
[...] this morning’s post, I talked about today’s political environment as “a primal scream of denial, an [...]
stands for decibels
September 8th, 2010
12:03 pm
SS Piratization SQUIRREL.
A blast from the past
September 8th, 2010
12:03 pm
McCain complained of “unsavory” dealmaking to get the bill passed in the Senate, including promises to give special deals to residents of Louisiana, Nebraska and Florida. (Some of those provisions were removed in Mr. Obama’s plan released Monday.)
Only because they were caught in the act.
He pointed to a number of issues, including the PhRMA deal and a provision mandating $100 million for a Connecticut hospital, asking “why should that happen?”
At one point, Mr. Obama tried to interject. “Can I just finish, please,” McCain said, cutting off the president.
“People are angry,” McCain said. “We promised them change in Washington, and what we got was a process that you and I both said we would change.”
He called on Democrats to “go back to the beginning” and “remove all the special deals for the special interests and the favored few,” adding that he favors a system in which “geography does not dictate what kind of health care.”
A visibly annoyed Mr. Obama immediately responded, saying “we can spend the remainder of the time with our respective talking points going back and forth. We were supposed to be talking about insurance.”
“We’re not campaigning anymore,” he told McCain. “The election’s over.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-6242715-503544.html
A blast from the past
September 8th, 2010
12:10 pm
USinUK:
Did Durbin say: “If it’s passed with 63 votes or 73 votes, history won’t remember it,”
Did Pelosi say: “Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.”
Bi-partisan? Methinks not, but you go on believing your party is in favor of doing what is right for the country. Shape shifters.
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
12:15 pm
thomas,
“So if they didn’t take that option they should just be quite and agree?”
No…but they also shouldn’t act like petulant children when their plan is not the basis for the legislation. They had their chance before 2006 to present their plan…and they did nothing.
“so if the GOP regains power they should agree and Obama should sign whatever immigration reform the GOP brings up, as the time for them to present legislation is now?”
No he shouldn’t sign “whatever immigration reform the GOP brings up”, but that wasn’t what the Democrats were asking with the health care reform bill.
It was based on the Republican reform plan of 1993, so were Republicans so opposed to it when Democrats brought it? Why didn’t they embrace it? Could it have been b/c the Democrats were proposing it?
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
12:15 pm
a blast – and you feel free to keep thinking that Hassett isn’t a partisan hack criticizing the Dems for doing exactly the same thing the GOP did.
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
12:16 pm
Deep throat,
“I”ll remember that next time you call some one a wingnut.”
I give you a challenge…find when I’ve ever called someone a wingnut.
Paul
September 8th, 2010
12:19 pm
Good afternoon, Jay
Nice tie-in from the headline about grieving to the Kubler-Ross model of the stages of grieving. I’ll offer that many people are overlapping the stages – they’re still holding onto some denial, are experiencing pain but are now into anger and have moved into bargaining. Hence the poll swings: “you won’t give me what I want to feel better, I’ll find someone who’ll make the pain go away. I hope.”
Lots of people operate under the illusion of control and as you pointed out, don’t want to hear that part of this is out of the hands of some easy program fix. But what they can control, what they have focused on, is debt. As the article points out, they’ve restructured their lives to bring debt down, yet they see an entity they hold responsible – government – doing exactly the opposite, in fact, exploding debt. And that fuels the anger. They can take steps to get their own house in order, but the people they gave a job to can’t. And they see that can’t as having potentially serious repercussions.
I picked up an undercurrent in some posts that politicians know better but won’t speak truth because of personal risk. That may be true for some. But for others, it makes no difference. As the article pointed out, ideologues are on the far left and on the far right. And ideologues never, ever, let new information change their ideology.
Funny thing is, they have a lot of constituents who continue to believe them. Maybe it’s because those politicians speak authoritatively and maintain the illusion of control?
thomas
September 8th, 2010
12:40 pm
USinUK
September 8th, 2010
11:52 am
Thats why I think many democrats are distancing themselves from the WH, and why many are now applauding and using their no vote on HC reform as a boost in the upcoming election
thomas
September 8th, 2010
12:43 pm
Doggone/GA
September 8th, 2010
11:56 am
Agan at the time teh claim was made there was no clarification it was used as a blanket statement…..
I assumed that USinUK was incorrect (as if there are not many incorrect statements made everyday)
Once the clarification was made by USinUK, I have not argued the point to that degree.
Yet people like you still chim in with their 2 cents even if they didn’t take teh time to read the exchange in its entire form……
But hey if the leader of the free world is allowed to make rash judgements without all of teh facts why should you not do it too?
thomas
September 8th, 2010
12:46 pm
jewcowboy
September 8th, 2010
12:15 pm
“It was based on the Republican reform plan of 1993, so were Republicans so opposed to it when Democrats brought it? Why didn’t they embrace it? Could it have been b/c the Democrats were proposing it?”
Lots of things and opinions have changed since 1993.
Strong assumption for you to guess as to the motivation of anyones actions.
deegee
September 8th, 2010
12:56 pm
Here’s something you won’t hear from a politician. “You can have whatever you want, but you are going to have to do what your grandparents and great-grandparents did and save up for it.”
Paulo977
September 8th, 2010
1:05 pm
Small Blue
Dot @8:31am… But of course they are the party of the Military Industrial Complex !! Same old same old… watch our kids proudly march to war saying…..
“Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori” !!!!!!!!
Paulo977
September 8th, 2010
1:10 pm
thomas
@12:40pm ..”using their no voteon HC reform” Do give us some names!
Scout
September 8th, 2010
1:36 pm
Hey Paulo977:
I know Latin ! Semper Fi !