The articles we read explained different reasons of why we're in the recession and what needs to happen to get us out.
With the first article, the blame shouldn't all be placed on President Obama's shoulders. Without the congress and other nation figures backing him up, he doesn't have that much power. Recently, the house and senate have been divided, one of them siding with one political party, the other with the opposite or vice versa. There's a number of things that have caused the recession. Blaming it all on the current president is not right. President Obama came into a mess and he's trying with all the power he has to fix it.
I disagree with the second article from the New York Times. Decrease in demand is not the only reason why people haven't done anything to fix the recession. It is a big part of it but it isn't the only reason why we're in a recession. There's many technological advances that are happening that take jobs away, decreasing the number of jobs available. When there's less jobs, people have less money to go out and stimulate the economy by buying things. There's multiple reasons of why we're in a recession.
All the articles brings up a good point of why we're in the recession. Now what to do is the bigger question. And an even bigger question, who is going to step up and do what is necessary to take action?
Good points, although I think that Sumner actually wants Obama to succeed because he distrusts Republicans on monetary policy--that is why he is so angry that he is dropping the ball.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point about the other problems with the economy. We have other long term problems with low wages caused by an inadequate response to changing conditions in the economy. We need to retrain our workers better so that they can profit from productivity increases. We probably need to consider strategies like subsidizing wages--in effect having the government kick in extra money to raise people's wages. This would allow businesses to still pay the wages they could afford while paying workers the money they need to survive.