Of course, the United States faces many growth challenges. Our population is aging, like those of many other advanced economies, and our society will have to adapt over time to an older workforce. Our K-12 educational system, despite considerable strengths, poorly serves a substantial portion of our population. The costs of health care in the United States are the highest in the world, without fully commensurate results in terms of health outcomes. But all of these long-term issues were well known before the crisis; efforts to address these problems have been ongoing, and these efforts will continue and, I hope, intensify.
The schools suck. They spend money like drunken sailors and produce illiterate graduates who are essentially unemployable.
The health care system sucks as badly as the schools. It spends money like a drunken sailor, and we're less, nor more, healthy at the end of the day.
'Tain't telling yew nothin' new, but dem politicians gotta git-er-dun' or weez doomed!
Normally, monetary or fiscal policies aimed primarily at promoting a faster pace
of economic recovery in the near term would not be expected to significantly affect the longer-term performance of the economy. However, current circumstances may be an
exception to that standard view--the exception to which I alluded earlier. Our economy is suffering today from an extraordinarily high level of long-term unemployment, with nearly half of the unemployed having been out of work for more than six months. Under these unusual circumstances, policies that promote a stronger recovery in the near term may serve longer-term objectives as well. In the short term, putting people back to work reduces the hardships inflicted by difficult economic times and helps ensure that our economy is producing at its full potential rather than leaving productive resources fallow. In the longer term, minimizing the duration of unemployment supports a healthy economy by avoiding some of the erosion of skills and loss of attachment to the labor force that is often associated with long-term unemployment.
If'n President Teleprompter and his homeboyz don't git off their asses and stop doing things that crush job creation, like shutting down the entire oil industry in the Gulf, and attempting to kill the coal industry, NLRB blackmail of Boeing (neeeed we continue?), then weze all screwed. People who don't work, and live off gubbermint cheese, fergit what it feels like to work, ya'll.
Notwithstanding this observation, which adds urgency to the need to achieve a
cyclical recovery in employment, most of the economic policies that support robust
economic growth in the long run are outside the province of the central bank.
We cain't fix this stuff. We're here to help, but you-all GOTS to git yer act together. Don't matter how many helicopters we send up with how much cash, it don't matter. We needs us some grown-ups in charge, and we ain't seen none in years!
Finally, and perhaps most challenging, the country would be well served by a
better process for making fiscal decisions. The negotiations that took place over thesummer disrupted financial markets and probably the economy as well, and similar
events in the future could, over time, seriously jeopardize the willingness of investors around the world to hold U.S. financial assets or to make direct investments in job-creating U.S. businesses. Although details would have to be negotiated, fiscal policymakers could consider developing a more effective process that sets clear and transparent budget goals, together with budget mechanisms to establish the credibility of those goals. Of course, formal budget goals and mechanisms do not replace the need for fiscal policymakers to make the difficult choices that are needed to put the country’sfiscal house in order, which means that public understanding of and support for the goals of fiscal policy are crucial.
Likes I said beferr--we gots to git us some sober grownups runnin' things, and not let meth-head Cousin Cody anywhere near anybody's money.
Now, git going. I'm tarehd of dealing wif you peepulz. Call me up when yew want to act responsible-like,
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