As US jobless toll tops 15 million: Unemployment crisis shows the failure of capitalism

[Hannah Bell]

The staggering figures released Friday on the US labor market demonstrate that what has developed since the Wall Street crash one year ago is not a conjunctural downturn or recession, but an historic assault on working class living standards...

September marked the 21st consecutive monthly decline in jobs — the longest continuous drop in US employment since the Labor Department began collecting such figures in 1939. Some 15 million American workers are unemployed, nearly double the number out of work when the recession began at the end of 2007. The average duration of unemployment is 26.2 weeks, more than half a year, the highest figure since the Labor Department began such statistics in 1948. One third of the unemployed, more than five million, have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. This is another Labor Department record...

Virtually every sector of the economy showed job losses in September... There are now six unemployed workers for every job opening in America...

In his weekly Internet address Saturday, President Obama said he was considering “additional options to promote job creation.” ...extended unemployment benefits and tax credits for laid-off workers to buy health coverage...The White House has rejected calls for a second stimulus package, and the same position was voiced by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan...

Maintaining unemployment at the highest levels since the Great Depression is a deliberate policy of both big business parties and the ruling class as a whole.

While Democratic politicians and union bureaucrats invariably blame the economic collapse, particularly in manufacturing, on foreign competition and imports, the jobs crisis is of global dimensions. According to the OECD, which groups the 30 largest industrialized nations, the jobless rate for all 30 countries will approach 10 percent in 2010 — just about the projected average for the United States...

The jobs crisis demonstrates the failure of the capitalist system — not only in the United States, but internationally. Not a single capitalist government, in any of the OECD countries, has lifted a finger to create jobs or put the unemployed to work. In each country, the ruling elite is using mass unemployment as a club against the working class, to enforce demands for the destruction of wages, benefits and working conditions...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pers-o05.shtml

[BlooInBloo]

1. Capitalism is dead. Long live capitalism.... (yawn)

[earth mom]

19. You are part of the problem.

:puke:

[BlooInBloo]

22. I thought it was Obama's fault?

[earth mom]

23. You should know since you call all the rest of us "you people" like we're beneath you. nt

[dkf]

2. I'm not sure it shows a lack in capitalism as much as it shows

how hard it is to justify the pay required to survive in this country. Too many people don't have the skills someone pays good money for and can't produce enough of a good thing that others will buy. I find it scary to think of how little the average person could produce on their own if left to their own devices.

[Skittles]

5. wtf?

I know many super-qualified people who cannot get jobs because the jobs were pimmped off to India, Brazil, China etc.

[HamdenRice]

3. Unemployment is a deliberate policy!!!

Yeah because those big capitalist party politicians just hate getting reelected to their cushy jobs!!!

Dumbest WSWS shit ever.

[Hannah Bell]

7. sure is. if banksters can get bailed out with borrowed money, so can working people.

[blindpig]

13. Come on, you're not that dumb.

Unemployment is the whip which drives down wages and thus improves profitability. Capitalism demands 'the reserve army of the unemployed'. Too be sure, situations like the current one show this in harsher than usual relief, yet the principle is the same, people are laid off for purposes of maintaining profitability.

As for votes, that doesn't seem to matter, else we would have seen a massive jobs program ala New Deal. Apparently they feel they can get by with bullshit, laced with vacuous rhetoric and fear.

[HamdenRice]

14. No, I'm not. But sadly you are

to believe that the major parties conspire to increase unemployment.

That's just perhaps the dumbest thing WSWS has ever published. It's sad and astonishing that you buy it.

[blindpig]

16. Not what I said.

There ain't no conspiracy, it is the logic of the system. The politicians do not control the corporations, the major employers, do they? Quite the opposite. If one starts with the supposition that capital is superior to labor then it all makes sense, hard and irrefutable. It is that assumption that is the source of our woes, and it upon that assumption that these policies are based.

Billions for the bankers and a fig leaf for the workers, what could be clearer?

[JTFrog]

4. Why the fuck are people still linking to that site?

Every link posted lowers the average IQ of anyone who is naive enough to click on it.

Seriously.... just stop it already.

:crazy:

[HamdenRice]

6. Another question

Why are they allowed to? If links to Rense and crap like that are summarily deleted, so should links to WSWS be.

[Hannah Bell]

8. do you take issue with the data in the article?

[HamdenRice]

9. Of course. See post 3. It's one of the dumbest articles WSWS has ever published

and one of the dumbest you've ever spammed DU with.

Politicians compete over claims to deliver "jobs" not over creating unemployment. I don't remember even Ronnie Reagan campaigning on the promise that if you elect him he'll put you out of work.

That's just stupid and even someone whose mind is as cult controlled as yours should know this.

If politicians wanted to create unemployment they could easily give us 40, 50 or 60 percent unemployment. It's not difficult to completely fuck up an economy even worse than ours is right now.

They compete to deliver jobs, but they have different theories on how to do that -- Keynesian theory (Democrats) and Friedman/free market/Thatcherite (Republicans).

On theory, one party is largely right and one is largely wrong.

[Hannah Bell]

10. not talking to you hampton. i've told you repeatedly i am neither a trot nor a sep member.

but you prefer to ignore it.

so i'll keep posting the articles for you, you deaf little redbaiter.

enough job loss to slow the world economy & call for "shared sacrifice" (except for your bankster friends - thank god it passed) but not enough for riots & rebellion.

[HamdenRice]

12. But you continue to spam with board with their lies

Maybe you're not a Trot. But there's a term they used to use for non party members who buy their propaganda and spread it, believing it to be true: "useful idiot." You can even look it up on google.

[Hannah Bell]

17. point out the lies in the facts. i'm not talking about their opinions; we're all adults who

can sift through opinions & come to our own conclusions.

point out the errors in the facts & quit yer red-baiting.

[Orsino]

11. Incorrect.. It shows our failure to regulate capitalism...

...and to provide the necessary safety net to support all the things capitalism can't do.

[Odin2005]

15. It's an overly simplistic analysis.

This is, fundamentally, a DEBT crisis. It's going to take out a lot of business with it.

[NightWatcher]

18. we are seeing the end stage of the cancer that is predatory capitalism

the rich are getting richer and the rest of us are having to take less while we struggle to feed ourselves.

[branders seine]

21. capitalism is cancer

the cancer has metastisized

[datasuspect]

20. unemployment is good if you're on it

and you can't eat fucking tax credits.

i don't think you can pay rent with tax credits either.

[DAMANgoldberg]

24. Useless if you're 1099...

The last 2 driving jobs I have had were 1099s. One was an Owner-Operator where u really didn't own (Independent Contractor) and one was 1099 used as an excuse to not pay benefits when you had forced dispatch and a mileage rate. Neither of those times was I eligible for unemployment and didn't make enough, especially in the 1st instance, to fund my own UI.

When a driver has an accident (not at fault) and released, your job options in trucking are quite limited. Especialy with the service called DAC (Equifax for trucking) that documents every action taken in the business, whether true or not, and virtually from the trucking company point of view. A clear case of BLACKBALL from the company that released me 19 months ago that has been corrected, and even worse from a Chesnee SC trucking outfit with factual errors and vindictiveness. As an unemployed trucker, I cannot afford legal counsel and Legal Services in SC do not want any part of it, they are worthless.