16 Weeks – Old Enough to Drive, not Working

The sad part about this entire articles is, its true.
The weekly jobless claims isn’t getting better, its either the same or increasing.
The Jobs issue, should be the main issue we address

http://www.dailyjobcuts.com

Krugman: Jump Start Possibilities  – Suppose that Obama announces that we face a clear and present danger from Ruritania, and that to meet that threat we need immediate investment in roads and rail (to move troops, of course). The economy surges on the emergency spending — and newly employed men and women at last get to move out of their relatives’ basements. Home construction surges. Then Obama apologizes, says that his advisers have learned that there is no such country as Ruritania, and cancels the program. But we still have the new roads and rail links; plus, the surge in housing demand is now self-sustaining, and the economy remains strong. Of course, we could do all this without the Ruritanian threat; but we won’t.

if only because those soldiers would come home and raise the unemployment rate.

Bringing troops back from a foreign country is not the same as demobilizing them.  Right now, nobody who matters is talking about changing the size of the armed forces.  But there are less than 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, so even if every one of them were to be demobilized, it won’t make much difference to a labor pool of over 150 million and an unemployment pool of about 14 million (very rough numbers from memory).  The U-3 would tick up by about 0.13%.

The negative impact from bringing the troops would/will come from halting the spending that keeps troops in the field supplied with food, water, fuel, etc. That could be as much as $150B per year once they are all home and resettled.  Much of that money is actually spent in the States rather than in the “host” countries.

Aside from all that, many of troops in Iraq are already gone, and it looks like political considerations in Iraq will force almost all of the rest out.  I think political considerations here will keep most of the troops in Afghanistan.

PeakVT – True, just bringing them back wouldn’t do anything.  But there would also be the end of the Stop-Losses, and the steady expiry of re-enlistments for the re-patriated.

One of the main reasons we got the G. I. Bill (first one) was because the flood of labor coming back from World War II would have made unemployment soar. (See Brad DeLong’s recent series about the half-arsed activities after World War I, which were wholly inadequate if you believe in supporting the troops.)

jazzbumpa – No; I think there is a lot of labor taking lumps.  I also suspect that downsizing 640,000+ people, seasonally adjusted, makes it much more difficult to follow the policies that would prove there isn’t a lump of labor (and, collaterally, raise worker productivity, because my 11th hour of work is probably not so productive as your fifth or sixth on second shift would be).

because he’s really a stealth conservative; here are a few examples of Obama’s effective conservatism:

His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary; He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary; He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals; He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever; And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.