Comment Re:Why is the solution to every problem (Score 1) 716
Factoid: reduction in government jobs due to cutbacks in the past few years (mostly spearheaded by republican backed austerity measures) are responsible for a percentage point or more in the unemployment rate. Also, too, a lot of those jobs lost were held by women, contrary to the current republican talking point about the how Obama's policies are bad for women.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/gov-jobs-ue.png (Courtesy of the Washington Post)
"If those state and local workers had kept their jobs, they would’ve been making and spending money the whole time, which would have further boosted the economy and provided jobs for other people in the private sector. Economists call this the multiplier effect, and it would’ve pulled the unemployment rate down further. On the flip side, if that demand had never been subtracted from the economy, fewer people would’ve grown discouraged by the economic outlook and would’ve remained in the workforce — instead of dropping out entirely as they did in reality, in large numbers. That would have pushed the unemployment rate back up.
But broadly, the unemployment rate would be significantly lower than it is in the absence of the past three years’ public-sector job losses, which in turn were the direct consequence of the austerity Republicans at the state and federal level demanded. "
