Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Governor – Have the courage to hire and to house!

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Why jobs?  First, the courageous path is not firing 2000 workers but ensuring more workers are hired.  For every state or corporate worker fired, from 20-100 families hunker down and go into bunker mentality.  What do I mean by “hunker down and go into bunker mentality”?  Each family  reacts to the news of a friend or coworker’s firing by believing that THEY could be without a job next.  So they and their whole family cancel vacations, defer purchases, and avoid any discretionary spending.  As a result, restaurants close, companies fold, and the “recovery” is in fact an illusion where the robber barons batten at the trough – Goldman Sachs trumpeted “profits” are a great example.

On the other hand, every new hire is a new consumer, and a circle of family and friends who feel secure enough to plan for the future, go out for dinner occasionally, and dare to buy new sheets or other goods.

If both government, the elite nonprofits like Harvard, and business had the “courage to hire” we might well see a real recovery.  Hey – Where is Harry Hopkins, the WPA, and a vision of economic inclusion when we need them anyway?

And why housing?  Economic security breeds jobs, consumers who consume, and costs less.  The 3000+ families   now housed in motels and hotels at $89 – $125 a day are costing millions and many of these families are working folks who lost housing when the same banks we taxpayers bailed out with expensive borrowed money  foreclosed on rental properties and evicted families on the edge.

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said:  

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

The current consolidation of wealth in this country, and use of cuts to balance budgets means that economic security is vanishing for more and more citizens, many of whom will look for a quick fix at the expense of their own freedoms.

Where is the courage to hire and to house?

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Comments

  1. More jobs of any sort. (In my own mind, I excluded casino jobs.)

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    p>As a transitional strategy, more jobs of any sort is OK. But then what is the transitional strategy to better jobs?

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    p>

    • Nearly half expect the economy to stay down for three or more years and most of them, about 52% are spending less on everything now then they were last year.

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      p>That means fewer restaurant meals, etc.  45% are afriad of losing their jobs and spending accordingly.

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      p>One in five knows someone who lost their job and has been unable to find work for as long as six months.

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      p>To me, that explains why revenue is still in “free fall” and why the sales tax did not bring in the expected amount of money.

      • Maybe they should buy in MA—but that’s not the way it works. I had intended on buying my son in law a high end piece of equipment for his company (that he can’t afford)
        for Christmas. I got two price quotes here in MA. The company in NH is six hundred dollars cheaper——NO TAX!
        Would you care to guess where I’m going to purchase aforemntioned? It’s economics 101. What was the legislature thinking?  Let me guess—-they weren’t.

        • What is that high end piece of equipment?  $600 itself would buy a very very powerful computer these days!

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          p>I know!  It is a lobster boat, right MCRD???

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          p>You are outed as a member of the elite rolling in money!

  2. What do you propose paying people with—funny money?

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    p>I was an employee of the state during the first Dukakis debacle. We were ordered to take furlough days—unpaid—then the state had to pay us for the days we didn’t work per federal court order. It damn near bankrupted the state.
    We came close—and things then weren’t as bad as they are now—mainly because people that owned homes didn’t use them as ATM machines—-but as a state employee—I was on Federal food stamps. That speaks volumes. I made nine thousand dollars a year. But you know what—-we lived like paupers—but we had a roof over our head, we had a car and we had gas in the tank and the house was 68 degrees in the dead of winter, because I cut and split four cord of wood. We went out to dinner three times a year. You learn to make do—-something that people refuse to do now–mostly because I don’t think they know how—or they are under some delsuion that they will expire if they have less than 1800 calories a day.

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    p>  

    • Someone has to lead rather then hide in a bunker and clutch their wealth.  Harvard choose that route and I believe that choice to be short sighted and cowardly.

  3. . . . and to follow the law he must balance the budget.  Unfortunately, that’s what 9C cuts are all about.  He really does not have a choice, absent new revenue.  

    • The Governor does have choices  — and other states have found them — namely a balanced approach of maximizing federal funds, using the rainy day funds, careful cuts and finding additional revenues.  

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      p>To learn about some possible addtional revenues join us on Thursday night to learn about what can be found in the Tax Expenditure budget.  

  4.  Let’s stop talking and start building. I include disability accessible housing also.
    When I became wheelchair dependent last summer, I spent two months in a nursing home for lack of accessible housing. I’m not even saying affordable. There was no affordable/accessible housing between Worcester and Lowell.
    What to do? I stayed in a nursing home at $356 a day paid for by Medicare. Your tax dollars at work folks. It beat being homeless.

  5. Really? So if we hire “more” temp jobs, at the cost of permanent, that’s a net plus? Or if we push for jobs that destroy others (casinos and companies like Walmart being the worst offenders), that’s a plus? We must want more jobs for all kinds of people, but those jobs should be good jobs and those jobs shouldn’t be pushed by the government if they would cost local businesses (and their workers) hundreds of millions over a few, short years.

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    p>We should be encouraging local ownership and entrepreneurs, so money that’s spent in local communities recycles and grows throughout community, an essential recipe for prosperity. We should be encouraging a worker’s rights to unionize as well as an expansion of guaranteed benefits and living wages, so most of the jobs in the service sector which aren’t good jobs today would become good jobs tomorrow. We shouldn’t just be pushing for “any” jobs, without regards to good, sound policy, because it’s precisely that distaste for consideration of policy that’s led to many of America’s biggest problems today, almost regardless of the problem.  

      • Specifically, I said that there are companies that will lay off workers and hire more temp (or part timers) because it’s cheaper. Sometimes it’s as many, sometimes it’s even more, but either way, they’re not good jobs. But they are “any” jobs. And that’s to say nothing about any of the other examples I provided where “any” isn’t always good.

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        p>I just think you should admit that sometimes we don’t want just “any” jobs — we want good jobs for all people that make policy sense in society at large.  

        • I do not personally believe all jobs are equal.

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          p>and degrading jobs is so bad, so wrong, that even with an artificial hip and rheumatoid arthritis, remember, I marched myself with those Hyatt housekeepers

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          p>But for the desparate folk I represent, they will so sadly, take ANY job, all they want is to work and earn their own money at any cost

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          p>I have never represented an indigent person who preferred welfare to work

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          p>NEVER

          • not to have a “more good jobs” option, because I couldn’t vote for “ANY job” and I think it’s very dangerous when politicians and our progressive allies, especially unions, think we’ll accept “any” jobs, including those that are actually bad — be it for the person or for the greater good. I want jobs that grow more jobs, I don’t want jobs that take other jobs away — and there’s a huge difference between the two.

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