3 – Time Travelling for Jobs

I must confess, this notion of time travel for unemployment crisis research seems ill-conceived. I miss my wife and family, and Einstein was not always delightful company. I mean, how many puns can a cat make about relativity? So much for my tale of woe; I was on a mission and I was making some serious progress!

Looking at the data, and even more importantly, reading books by writers who hired people to look at the data, I realized that the economic expansion flattened out right around the time Richard Nixon was in office. A time of high inflation, certainly caused by his reckless move to take the US off the gold standard! So let me look at my notes and…. oops! Nixon untethered the dollar from the Gold Standard to slow down inflation. Damn! But certainly it caused the inflationary spiral that came during the fiasco of the Carter years! Let’s examine, and… Carter, by the time he left office, got inflation under control and did not return us to the Gold Standard. And all during that wild and crazy inflationary era, the job market remained fairly stable and incomes kept in line with inflation.

Then, we have what I now call the Reagan devolution. Einstein! If you can have your stupid relativity puns, certainly I can have this one! Einstein! Here, fresh kibble awaits; cease your speech.

Sorry about that. I was just saying that during the Reagan administration; we see the start of income inequality where the wealthy got proportionately more of labor’s production.  The old saying that ‘it takes money to make money’ morphed into ‘to make money, have money’. The former requires you to spend money; the latter requires nothing more than having money. Instead of money trickling down, it floats up.

So, what got broken? I first examined our tax structure. I also looked at the breakdown in the power of unions coinciding with a White House that implemented a ‘business first’ agenda. The result, less union representation, muted workers’ power to force income equality and job security. The White House agenda ushered in an era of deregulation and less enforcement. A name developed for less government oversight of the economy; austerity. Smaller regulator staffs, compounded by fewer rules, meant there was nothing left to keep businesses in check. The rules that were enforced were the rules that businesses approve resulting in unfair labor practices without union or regulatory oversight. These practices, which began during the Reagan years, remained unaddressed by any Bush or Clinton administration. Observe individuals whom Obama empowered;

What is the path toward job recovery? We must rectify several aspects; Part 4 examines each element more closely. We have not completed Part 3 yet!

First, we need to reevaluate the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). President Obama’s enhanced overtime regulations were the starting point for this. But that only scratches the surface.

Next, our tax code needs a major overhaul. I could also suggest a radical change to how our monetary system works, but we can get lots of jobs without it. But an overhaul of the tax code is necessary because we have a severe spending problem. We are not spending anywhere near enough.

And of course, as part of the FLSA law and the tax law changes, the concept of minimum wage needs to be understood and implemented.

Ultimately, FLSA law reform yields significant improvements, yet increased government spending presents superior advantages.