Is America In A Jobless Recovery?

The latest awful U.S. jobs news is that unemployment jumped to 9.8%. But that doesn't even start to tell the story.

15 million people are officially unemployed. But add in millions more who are no longer counted because their unemployment benefits ran out, more millions who work part-time because they can't get full-time jobs and those who have jobs at a fraction of what they used to make and it paints a dismal picture.

This hits the economy in home foreclosures, credit card defaults, falling tax revenues forcing layoffs of teachers, police officers and firefighters, higher unemployment costs and fewer people spending on cars, restaurants and other purchases. This in turn compounds the hiring problems as it becomes a vicious circle.

Most hiring is temporary employees, who can be let go on no notice. No confidence builder for these people to run out and buy things.

Some giant U.S. companies exploit overseas poverty to shift jobs to the lowest cost base, the welfare of those employees be damned. This is called operations efficiency as their earnings grow and Wall Street rewards their stock price.

While the military industrial complex profits immensely from the wars, weapons and jet fighters. That's why we have continuous and endless wars and a rapidly growing war machine. The worst kind of jobs, but they pay well, at U.S. taxpayer expense.

Aside from taxpayer paid jobs, jobs are scarce, foreclosures are growing, the dollar's value is falling and people fear for their futures. So where is the recovery?

If we as Americans want a recovery, we need to confront our problems. Government spending must be slashed for we have staggering deficits and record level debt. Our interest costs alone are a huge budget item. The war machine is where these cuts must start beginning with an immediate end to all the wars the U.S. is fighting.

And we are going to have to tax ourselves more. That we can have "middle class tax cuts" is nonsense and an embarrassment in front of the rest of the world. All but the poorest people will have to pay more taxes, and the longer we avoid this ugly reality, the higher those taxes will be.

America is a great nation with enormous resources and a strong work ethic. We can make a powerful recovery and restore our nation's promising future but not until we resolve our overwhelming spending problems and end our military madness.

Dick