As a career counselor during the Great Recession, I hear a lot of sad stories, see deep frustration among otherwise productive people, and sense the fear resonating among many displaced workers and those who are afraid to leave less than satisfying jobs.
We are all realizing that the descriptions given in 2008 of “economic meltdown”, “economy falling off a cliff”, and other hyperbolic clichés were indeed accurate. This has been a terrible recession for many and the climb out of it, especially for those looking for stable and decent employment, has been arduously slow and painful.
Like many Americans these days I am ready to push aside my social and political wish list in favor of only one overriding priority — the creation of jobs. Too much unemployment diminishes us as a people. Personal depression, anti-social behavior, anxiety, stress, and apprehension for the future are among the negatives affecting too many of us. This results in widespread social despair. If ever there was a time when Americans needed to come together and work cooperatively on lifting the employment picture, it is now.
But this does not seem to be the case. Instead, we see the following:
- A President who is calling for bipartisan solutions and instead is running into opposition from a Right and Left who both think they each have all the answers.
- A Tea Party opposition, which has taken over the Republican Party and that is obsessed with only three things, the Federal debt, making government inconsequential, and limiting President Obama to only one term.
- Corporations that are reportedly flush with cash, but which do not want to hire because of the uncertain economy.
- Lenders who do not want to lend, because they are afraid they will not get their money back.
- Investors who by and large do not want to invest, because they see too much risk.
Yikes! So, who is going to step forward and break this logjam? I wish I knew. But given my lay economist perspective here is what I see. Money, whether in the form of direct cash subsidies or tax incentives, needs to be injected into the economy to encourage companies to hire.
Money comes in two forms, private capital and government expenditures. Now private capital seems to be in a self-imposed escrow or lock box and God knows, spending any more government money is akin to treason these days.
So, we have a choice. Do nothing and blame each other for incompetence and lack of vision or reach some sort of public/private sector compromise. As I see it, government and the private sector need to each contribute in a collaborative fashion to a stimulus that results in job creation.
Solutions must be practical, they need to save everyone face, and as they say in politico-linguistics, speak to their base. I am sure that people smarter than me can come up multiple options, but here are two examples of what seem attractive:
One, give tax breaks to corporations that hire. Instead of incentivizing corporations to send dollars to foreign governments to escape our high corporate tax, let us change the schematic and encourage them to hire Americans instead. And what about small business start-ups, one of the greatest sources of hiring historically? Let us give steroids to the sluggish time-wasting U. S. Patent Office to spur innovation and examine ways to reform the Sarbanes Oxley Act, so that it does not discourage highly skilled start-ups while continuing to provide regulation and oversight designed to discourage crooked and narrow-minded boards of directors.
Employment relief will not come from just the public or private sectors alone, but from joint participation. Of course, collaboration requires a spirit of working together. What we have right now are too many radicals for whom compromise is a dirty word.
The best decisions come from consensus. As an electorate we need to demand that our elected leaders work together to find solutions that result in increased job creation. If that is not their top priority, then it is time to get rid of them.
