Barack Obama, Austerity President

[mountain_hiker]

I hope all of those Republicans who claim that this administration spends too much sees this article. Of course, I suppose it can be claimed that the Republican-controlled House was partly responsible, too. There are charts in the linked article.

Barack Obama, Austerity PresidentImagine an alternate reality where the first term of President

Comments

[polietics]

In the UK we're fighting the opposite battle - austerity that's choking recovery. I guess it's because the USA had a way smaller state employment to begin with that there hasn't been a massive outcry as over here.

[baked_goldfish]

I guess it's because the USA had a way smaller state employment to begin with that there hasn't been a massive outcry as over here.

The austerity measures are a problem over here as well - government job losses are a huge factor in the meager net gains from month to month over the last three years, and many gains are in spite of and not because of austerity - but the complicating factor is less the overall size of government being small, and more that it's happening on a state and local level. If Minnesota loses 5,000 state/local government jobs in a given month, Massachusetts won't notice or be affected in any direct way. Federal job losses have been relatively minor compared to state and local (and federal employment affects Virginia, DC and Maryland more than any other states, and VA and MD have been doing pretty well comparatively).

So it's like, the job losses in government are big, but they're so decentralized and generally not federal, so the national media doesn't really connect the dots that well.

[windy_lea]

Thanks for detailing this. The article gave me a general idea, but this sort of... put things in focus?

[baked_goldfish]

No problem. It's one of those things that's under-reported in the US, but when you go back and look at the BLS numbers on job losses by sector, the state/local government numbers are wildly scary.

[polietics]

Ah, thanks for that.

I guess it's also helped by the lack of (or tenancy to ignore) unions? When the NHS is attacked, the medical unions are well funded and placed to kick up shit - and they have a voice in our Opposition Government. It must be absolutely impossible to connect, say, job losses in Minnesota to Massachusetts - but if there was a (scaled up) unionisation of government workers then it's more likely national media would report it.

[baked_goldfish]

Demonization of unions plays a big role, yep - there are national unions for state and local workers, but unions have been treated like Liberal Commie Recruitment Tools by the right for thirty or forty years here, and government worker unions triply so. And it's maddening, because due to some incredibly nasty work by our conservatives in the last few decades, union membership has dropped precipitously and an entire generation has grown up with very little understanding of what good a union can do, so a lot of people buy into the right wing myth that unions are terrible for everybody all the time.

And our national media is less than shit. They really shy away from covering things that might tick off the right wing, in part because a lot of our media is owned by the right wing.