Hard Times

Washington's bipartisan response to joblessness continues down the wrong and damaging road of austerity strategies and budget cuts.  

I can't help but be reminded of Stephen Foster's classic "Hard Times Come Again No More."  Written prior to the American Civil War, the song is frequently treated as a historical piece.   It shouldn't be--the theme of economic despair and extreme disparities between rich and poor is once again the soundtrack to our current American economic folly.   Here are two covers for this remarkable song.  First, Mavis Staples.

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears, 

While we all sup sorrow with the poor;

There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;

Oh Hard times come again no more.

Chorus:Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,

Hard Times, hard times, come again no more

Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;

Oh hard times come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,

There are frail forms fainting at the door;

Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,

With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:

Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,

Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore

Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

Another excellent version by the supergroup composed of James Taylor, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor.  

A Hopeless Left, As Obama Launches Re-election Run

I recently had the lucky opportunity to attend talks by two well known and influential liberals who work in different fields--one of the many benefits of living in a town with a big university.  The first of these was Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law Professor whose effort and concern focuses on US campaign finance reform, election reform, and the like.  The second was James Galbraith, a liberal economist.  Among other things, Galbraith is concerned with issues of economic equality (more specifically, the lack of it).

I'd heard or seen both speakers before, but this time I heard their talks about a month apart, in person.  Galbraith's was just a couple of days ago.  Both were excellent, and both were presentations that had been given before, to other audiences.  Lessig has since uploaded the particular version I heard and so it is placed below.  Warning: this version is just under 40 minutes long.  Those wanting a shorter but equally excellent version can see it here at an earlier post on this blog (hit link and go to bottom of that post).




In his concluding unscripted remarks, Lessig posed a rather hopeless view of the money-in-politics problem.  He likened our republic to a patient suffering from some horrible and fatal illness (no argument here), and admitted that in such circumstances a doctor might choose to go on treating that patient, even though there wasn't any reasonable hope for a cure.  Lessig was saying that he didn't see victory or anything like it on the horizon, but is choosing to struggle on because...it is the only thing he can do.  It struck me as a surprisingly pessimistic statement for a liberal leader to make in public.

Galbraith's talk focused on another problem altogether, that of economic policy and the great bank failure of '08.  The talk was essentially identical to this one which he first gave about four months ago--just after the disastrous midterm elections.  When first given, the piece was ambiguously-titled "Closing Remarks".  A few weeks later, it bore the much sharper heading "Whose Side is the White House On?", published at New Deal 2.0.    Finally, AlterNet made it personal and published the piece as "Galbraith: Whose Side is Obama On?"   It is the angriest talk I have heard or read from Galbraith.  Read the entire thing--it's short and absolutely non-boring.  Here are some representative bits [bolding added]:

Unemployment: Don't Uncork the Champagne Just Yet

Unemployment, we're told, just dropped below the 9 percent rate for the first time since...forever.  I think the drop nationwide was one tenth of one percent.  Good news, for sure:

From BusinessWeek:

Factories added 33,000 jobs. Education and health care added 40,000 positions. Professional and businesses services added 47,000. Leisure and hospitality added 21,000 jobs. Construction companies, 33,000 jobs -- although a good chunk of those reflected people coming back on payrolls after January's harsh winter weather; Transportation and warehousing added 22,000 jobs.

But don't put your party hats on quite yet.  The actual unemployment rate, including those out of work for over six months or more, those who have given up hope, those who may have taken part-time work while trying to get back in the workforce--when one includes these workers--the true unemployment rate has been in the vicinity of 17%.

It's unclear to me what the trend will be going forward.  The private sector appears to be showing some willingness to hire, but we're also facing a wave of public-sector job losses in coming months--with states like Wisconsin and Ohio simply being the poster children.  The losses are going to be nationwide, and they will be painful.  As state and local governments finalize budgets and shed workers, the fallout may well swamp this very weak private-sector growth we're beginning to see.

To get a better view of what US unemployment actually looks like, the graph below (click on graph for full interactive view) tracks both the commonly used short-term unemployment figure (the 'rose-tinted glasses' view) vs. true, total unemployment/underemployment, from 1995 through 2010, including two officially-recognized recessions.  To repeat--I don't see anything worth celebrating here, expecially given what we're already seeing on the public employment front.