Politically, the extreme partisanship of Congress caused by the two-party system; Republicans, as usual, fearful of a tiny extreme right, are willing to destroy the economy to ensure President Obama is a one-term president; the right is also determined to destroy the Middle Class, creating an under-class that will be content to have any kind of job; Democrats just willing to play the political game to score points with the Working Class, but making no serious effort to improve our situation.

The private sector is the primary culprit, however. Government has absolutely no business creating jobs. It is not nimble enough, nor does it have the capital. Government can only put out seed money in those areas it hopes business will follow suit. (It was the height of folly for the Obama Administration to gut the Space Program while advocating technology and moving to the future.) The Fortune 500 sits on over $1 trillion and cash, with access to even more cheap money. It is in its own self interests to invest in the future by creating more high paying jobs.

However, the problem is these companies are run by gutless managers whose sole concern is the size of their bonus. None of them have vision beyond quarterly earnings.(Which, by the way, is the heaviest anchor holding back all companies.)

By committing to job creation and changing practices to the reality of a global economy would cause a decrease in the increase of quarterly profits for an extended period of time. That, in turn, would hurt senior executive bonuses. Even though high un-underemployment is an even bigger drag, none are willing to risk their bonus to do the right thing for company and country.

Finally, unless the US political process is opened up to allow Independent voters full access, nothing will ever change. Until political power is returned to the grass roots via major political reform, the two-party system will only become more severe and less able to make change. It threatens to wreck the nation. A scenario the right has already said it will accept.)

Until the wealthy, corporations and government stop looking into the past for solutions — or to keep the country where it is — then disaster awaits.

Job creation, steady economic growth and general prosperity cannot happen in the US until the tax rates on speculative trading, private equity, hedge funds, derivatives and other financial engineering wonders of the 21 century are double to triple the middle class income tax rates. The whole US financial markets are caught up in a speculative fever reaching funded by unreasonable leverage which clearly are destroying the middle class.

But as long as Congress and the President can be bought by our financial wunderkinds, there is scant hope there will be any change in the plight of the middle class. Our elected officials simply don’t care.

In Eisenhower’s America income over $400,000–the equivalent of less than $3 million today–faced a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent. Our current top rate: 35 percent. In 2004, after exploiting loopholes, taxpayers who took home more than $5 million paid an average 21.9 percent of their incomes in federal tax. In 1954 the federal tax bite on taxpayers with comparable incomes averaged 54.5 percent.

How much revenue could be raised by a significant tax hike on America’s highest incomes? If the top rate was raised to 50 percent on all income between $5 million and $10 million and 70 percent on income above $10 million, federal revenues would jump $105 billion–and the nation’s richest 0.1 percent would still be paying less in taxes than they did under Ike.

For those who do not want to be part of America, get out while the getting is good. There are many uses for idle hands and you will not like any of them. We need to cleanse this country. The inactive will have plenty to do when the tyrannical no longer own anything.

Economics is all about meeting wants and needs. When the work of meeting those wants and needs is outsourced, the jobs are gone and no amount of gimmicking the economy – through fiscal stimulus or quantitative easing – will magically create new ones. The only solution is to bring those jobs back. The only way to bring them back is by abandoning the World Trade Organization and reclaiming the right to manage trade in our own best self-interest, including the smart use of tariffs to assure a balance of trade.

Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”

Also we need to look for ways to bring back the industries that have left the country. May be we need to encourage again the “Buy American” even if this mean a tempory increased in costs for the short term however at the end it will pay through stronger local businesses, and more job creation. The current scenario of being a serice country will not provide us the standard of living and the indepenency that we are looking for.