I remember a 60 Minutes piece not long ago about observing countries where the people seem to be the happiest. The winning country was Denmark. The reason: very modest expectations. The people of Denmark are content with simple basics of life: health, education, food, and some nice leisure. What they don't seem to be concerned about is whether their government is out to take advantage of them or is not doing enough to help them. True, their tax system is perhaps quite a bit more excessive than we would be comfortable with in this country (50% of their income goes to taxes, but they are provided with free health insurance, for example, among other benefits), but their citizens don't go wanting for some basic securities of life. They also don't seem to have an unrealistic view of what their government should be doing for them.
I just watched a short video at the White House website showing the trend of the U.S. economy from 2007 to the present. Clearly before President Obama took office the economy was in a downward spiral. But, according to the video, due in part to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act the economy did not "bottom-out" but did indeed recover and has been recovering (albeit very slowly) ever since. The graph shows that we are now about where we were when the recession began, certainly not "out of the woods" yet, but no longer in the severe hole either.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/10/19/white-house-white-board-cea-chair-austan-goolsbee-explains-jobs-trends
Drawing on the reference to the Danes, what seems to me to be the largest problem is that we are expecting too much from our government too soon. And almost contrary to that, we are deciding that because the federal government is not creating the jobs fast enough for us that the answer is that the government should be involved much less. The obvious question that arises from that is, wasn't it less government involvement that got us into this mess in the first place? Wall Street running amok was because of not enough government involvement (deregulation), not more government involvement (regulation). It's funny that the Tea Party's answer to the continued woes of the economy is to allow the very unbridled market that created this mess to try to fix it as well; that's like going back to the same doctor for more surgery who nearly killed you during your last major surgery. It's already been tested recently and failed miserably, nearly to the point of the demise of the U.S. economy. Makes no sense at all.
Sure, we would like to see more swift evidence already from our new leader that all those who lost jobs during the recession are now working again, but that is not happening because it is simply unrealistic. President Obama seems to have been successful at the first important task, avoiding an economic meltdown. But that also seems to be have been the relatively easy part. The hard part is going to be getting a large enough percentage of all those who lost work back into new jobs, and that will likely not be possible for a while. It is not because of inaction, it is because huge damage takes much longer to repair and that many people being out of work is just not going to be rectified quickly. It will likely take an equivalent amount of time that the recession took to develop in the first place...years more.
So I would like to propose that we are being much to judgmental of the Obama administration in demanding that they be proving already that they can get even a substantial amount of the unemployed back to work after only a year and half. They have already proved that they can bring an overall economy back from the verge of collapse (akin to Captian Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landing the plane on the Hudson). Let's allow them to continue this good work with the other critical items still on their agenda. It will take more time and more patience on everyone's part.
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