David Coates

Posts Tagged ‘unemployment’

March 13, 2013

The Problem with Charm Offensives: If They Are Needed, They Have Already Failed

  Faced by insurmountable odds as the Carthaginians swept down the Italian peninsula during the Second Punic War, the Roman general Fabius Maximus simply retreated and retreated, wearing the opposition down by declining to engage with them at all. Watching the Republicans play the President right now, the scorched earth policy that the Romans used […] read more »
February 25, 2013

Going beyond the President’s Manufacturing Strategy

Amid the urgency of the sequestration crisis, many things of substance are likely to fade into the background of public debate – at exactly the moment when they should not. read more »
February 13, 2013

Cataloging Weaknesses in the State of the Union Address

  So, the State of the Union is strong, is it? Well, maybe it is for the people the President chose to speak about last night. But what about the ones he only mentioned in passing, or the ones that he omitted to mention at all?  What about the state of the union for those […] read more »
May 11, 2012

The Unfinished Business of the Obama Administration: Poverty & Unemployment

The Obama Administration has unfinished business: lots of it, actually. The President will no doubt seek re-election in November by emphasizing policy successes. He would do well, however, to seek re-election by also recognizing policy failures: recognizing them and committing his Administration to do better. To win re-election, that recognition will need to be honest […] read more »
January 17, 2012

Republican Politics and the Unemployment Conundrum

  In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the world discovered by Alice was one in which every aspect of reality was inverted. Big things were small. Small things grew big. The Cheshire cat faded into a grin. read more »
August 29, 2011

Defending Trade Unions As Labor Day Approaches

  Labor Day looms, and with it the official end of summer.[1] Labor Day – the day we celebrate the strength and importance of American labor. But in truth, on this Labor Day what will there be to celebrate – certainly not the strength and importance of American labor. Things, after all, are not good […] read more »
July 1, 2011

Celebrating Independence by Seeking to Regain It

  The signers of The Declaration of Independence combined political courage with intellectual honesty. Indeed for them, the first was entirely rooted in the second. read more »
June 15, 2011

Not Working in America: People and Public Policy

  The job figures for May were truly ghastly. In a month in which the economy needed to add 150,000 jobs simply to keep pace with the growth in the labor force, the private sector created 83,000 jobs and the public sector actually lost 29,000. Nearly 14 million Americans remain involuntarily unemployed. read more »