It's the jobs, stupid

Jobs. It's the jobs, stupid.

No, it's not the economy, as it was when James Carville coined the phrase, it's jobs.

Both parties are telling voters how they are the better party to put unemployed back to work. What I have not heard from either party is how exactly they intend to create the atmosphere necessary to create enough of the right kind of jobs.

The Republicans fall back on their assertion that if we guarantee that the wealthy individuals and the corporations sitting on huge cash reserves get to be even more wealthy and retain ever higher profits without the annoyance of paying reasonable taxes on those financial resources, then they will create jobs. What they do not answer is why, when they are presently vastly wealthy and flush with cash NOW, they are not creating these jobs NOW. Why is it that they are holding the jobs hostage until they get even more?

The Democrats have failed to get support for their incremental vision. They are promoters of reasonable increases in a depleted level of public sector employment, which has been devastated by tax cuts and budgetary polarization. And through the American Jobs Act they have put some proposals out there that look to the future. But through an inadequate effort to gain the support of the American people, and resistance from Republicans, the American Jobs Act was split up and has had mixed results in its implementation.

As someone who tries to look at the big picture in the long term, I would like to put the question not on the supply side, but on the demand side.

We have the opportunity during low employment to guide the market for re-employment. So, what is it that we need?

By that I mean, what goods and services do we as a country, and a planet, need?  I believe we need to take a long hard look at where we want to be as a society in the future and what our needs will be, and take that as a set of goals used to formulate a plan for what types of jobs we need to create to achieve those goals.

While the Democrats have put forth some goals relating to sustainable energy production and the jobs it creates, we need a greater breadth of visualization of the future and a more integrated plan for transitioning from the unemployment of the present to an employment of the future, not a plan to return to the employment of the past.

An example of this visualization of the future is the housing market. I believe that our culture has led to a an unsustainable view of what housing should be. In a country where family size has thankfully diminished, over the last half century, our housing production has concentrated on larger and larger homes. These homes are excessively wasteful and as our energy needs rise, unsustainable. So, to look to the housing market as an engine to boost the economy by building more and more large homes, is as counterproductive to the future we need as drill baby drill is to our energy future.

My proposal regarding this example is to re-train construction workers, especially local independent contractors, to become energy efficiency contractors to update the energy efficiency of our housing infrastructure. We need to come to grips with the fact that our existing housing stock, which it is unrealistic to replace, is inefficient and should be retrofitted for maximal energy efficiency. This effort, when enacted in a widespread national manner, would put many people back to work. The fact that these efficiency efforts pay for themselves over time, unarguably classifies them as investments. Policies should be promoted that allow homeowners to update their homes without having to come up with the initial cost, but rather shares the benefits of the energy savings over time with investors who finance the updates. That investor pool could be public, private, or both.

So my point, merely exemplified by the housing proposal above, is that the jobs issue which is so central to the upcoming elections, is one that should be an issue framed by a progressive demand side vision, as opposed to a regressive supply side trickle down formula.