The Biggest Economic Challenge of Obama's Second Term

The Biggest Economic Challenge of Obama’s Second Term

Corporations won’t hire more workers just because their tax bill is lower and they spend less on regulations. In case you hadn’t noticed, corporate profits are up. Most companies don’t even know what to do with the profits they’re already making. Not incidentally, much of those profits have come from replacing jobs with computer software or outsourcing them abroad.

Meanwhile, the wealthy don’t create jobs, and giving them additional tax cuts won’t bring unemployment down. America’s rich are already garnering a bigger share of American income than they have in eighty years. They’re using much of it to speculate in the stock market. All this has done is drive stock prices higher.

The way to get jobs back is to get American consumers to spend again. Consumer spending is 70 percent of the nation’s economic activity. Most of it comes from the middle class and those aspiring to join the middle class. They’re the real job creators.

But here’s the problem. Middle-class consumers won’t and can’t spend because their savings are depleted, their homes are worth a fraction of what they were five years ago, their wages are dropping, and they’re worried about keeping their jobs.

And they’re no longer able borrow against the rising values of their homes because the housing bubble burst — which means they can no longer pretend they’re in better financial shape than they really are.

This is the heart of our economic dilemma.