We need jobs in Ohio and now. And neither Republican Rob Portman nor Democrat Lee Fisher has a program that will create jobs. Their jobs programs are essentially the same: cut taxes on small business. Yet there is no guarantee that small businesses would use a tax break to create jobs, and even if they did, they couldn’t begin to create enough jobs for all of Ohio’s unemployed.
Ohio’s unemployment rate remains at around 10 percent with slight variations from one region to another. The real unemployment rate is closer to 16 or 17 percent, including discouraged workers and the underemployed who have taken part-time jobs when they need full-time jobs. For African Americans and Latinos—often the last hired and the first fired—unemployment rates are almost double the average rate. For youth in our cities unemployment runs nearly 50 percent.
And unemployment benefits are running out. Some 98,000 Ohioans will lose unemployment by the end of June and double that by the end of July. In the U.S. 200,000 people will lose their benefits each week, and there are already 1.2 million who have lost benefits. (See the article “Ohio, Mich. Jobless Feeling Squeeze of Unextended Benefits” by Sarah Mervosh and Julie M. McKinnon at: http://toledoblade.com/article/20100627/NEWS16/6270323.)
Aren’t things getting better now? No, not really. While last month saw slight improvements in the figures, we are seeing no significant trend toward improvement. The country’s most famous economist, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, describes us as now in the midst of the Third Great Depression. The other Great Depressions in 1873 and 1929, saw ups and downs, but with no improvement in the situation for years. Krugman argues that such a crisis calls for massive deficit spending and jobs programs to meet workers needs to improve the economy. (See Krugman’s article “The Third Depression” at: www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html?ref=opinion.)
We need the U.S. government to create green jobs programs now. The government must move in to put idle plants to work. We should be rebuilding our infrastructure. Creating mass transit systems. Creating local health clinics. Improving our inner city schools. There is certainly work to be done. And there are people willing to work. We must get the government to put them to work now.
We should be organizing demonstrations for jobs at every City Hall in every city in Ohio. Will you join me in organizing jobs demonstrations in Ohio? Let’s build a movement for jobs in our hometowns. Then take it to Columbus. And take it to Washington. We all know that in this country, the working people only get something when they organize and fight for it. It’s time to fight now. Write to me if you live in Ohio and want to help. contact@DanLaBotz.com
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