Another Great Idea and Proposal From the Star

First it was Steve Kraske's idea about renaming the J.C. Nichols fountain, in last Saturday's paper, and now this.

Editorial: End the aggravation of out-of-sync traffic lights

And really, to whom has this not occurred? To whom of us, as we drive around the Kansas City metropolitan area, has this not struck as a good, even important idea? How many times have we been caught at a read light, sitting there, when no other cars are at the other cross street lights?

It can be maddening.

We read all the time how our computers and computer technology is making incredible breakthroughs and doing untold new, wonderful things for us. Shouldn't synchronizing traffic lights be one of them? And doesn't it seem like it wouldn't be that difficult or complicated, too, for us and the computers?

It would achieve actually a few really great benefits for us, as a city and people and even the nation.

• We'd waste less time so we'd be more productive. That could easily be shown as good fro business
• We'd waste less gasoline
• We'd pollute less since we wouldn't be sitting at these traffic lights, waiting, doing nothing other than running our car's engines
• We'd have far less frustration and even anger. The likelihood it could cut down on some road rage seems very likely
• We could and would likely improve the air quality we're annually being reminded of in the Summer months

Those benefits alone are enough to make this a very worthwhile endeavor.

The Federal Government is funding research on driverless cars, for pity's sake.

Columbus snags $40M grant for driverless car hub

Before we go off giving federal tax dollars for driverless cars, how about we improve existing traffic technologies so its as effective and efficient as it can be, first? Doesn't that seem like a good and smart idea?

Let's get this party started---and on both sides of the state line.

Why we need a jobs/infrastructure bill from this Congress

The last Congressional session was recently considered to be one of the least productive in the history of our nation.  This year?  This year they scheduled a whopping 97 days, total, for them to work.

Out of a total 365 day calendar year, they're only going to put in 97 days work.

It's shameful.  It's obscene.  It's immoral. It's even lazy and certainly against the best interests of the entire nation and people.

The nation needs them to first, work, and second, be productive and third, do good things for the nation--the entire nation, not just for the wealthy and corporation or against women's productive rights.  And a jobs/infrastructure bill is one hugely important, glaring, even, piece of legislation the nation needs so badly they could easily--and should, of course--give us.

From Robert Reich, today, on his Facebook page:

Our public schools are inadequate, especially for kids whose families are in the bottom two-thirds – squeezing more than 30 of them into classrooms designed for 20, with threadbare textbooks, no science labs, no after-school programs. And our roads and public transportation systems are outmoded, suffering from decades of deferred maintenance and neglect, which also burdens the bottom two-thirds in particular since they rely on housing that's usually far away from where they work. So why aren’t we investing more in schools and infrastructure? We'd also be creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs at the same time -- jobs desperately needed by a record number of Americans who have given up looking for work.

Conservatives say “we can’t afford it.” 

Baloney. 

(1) The deficit as percent of GDP falling, and will soon be close to the average over the last thirty years. 

(2) Both the deficit and debt as percent of GDP will fall even faster if we grow faster. 

(3) Growth depends in part on public investments in education and infrastructure, which enable all of our people to be more productive. 

(4) So it makes financial sense to borrow more to finance these investments. 

(5) We can also finance them by raising taxes on the wealthy, who are richer than they’ve ever been, and are now paying a smaller percent of their incomes and wealth in taxes than at any time in the last 85 years. 

The logic is clear. Why don’t they get it? Why aren’t our elected leaders making this case?

Links:  The War on the Poor and Middle-Class Families (Video)

The Limping Middle Class

Robert Reich - Huffington Post

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

Robert Reich - Blog

Why "wealth distribution" matters

The wealthy are pocketing the benefits of all of our working our tails off, folks.

More here:

A Decade of Flat Wages: The Key Barrier to Shared Prosperity 

Just a few of the findings:

• According to every major data source, the vast majority of U.S. workers—including white-collar and blue-collar workers and those with and without a college degree—have endured more than a decade of wage stagnation. Wage growth has significantly underperformed productivity growth regardless of occupation, gender, race/ethnicity, or education level.
• During the Great Recession and its aftermath (i.e., between 2007 and 2012), wages fell for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution, despite productivity growth of 7.7 percent.
• Weak wage growth predates the Great Recession. Between 2000 and 2007, the median worker saw wage growth of just 2.6 percent, despite productivity growth of 16.0 percent, while the 20th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 1.0 percent and the 80th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 4.6 percent.
• The weak wage growth over 2000–2007, combined with the wage losses for most workers from 2007 to 2012, mean that between 2000 and 2012, wages were flat or declined for the entire bottom 60 percent of the wage distribution (despite productivity growing by nearly 25 percent over this period).
• Wage growth in the very early part of the 2000–2012 period, between 2000 and 2002, was still being bolstered by momentum from the strong wage growth of the late 1990s. Between 2002 and 2012, wages were stagnant or declined for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution. In other words, the vast majority of wage earners have already experienced a lost decade, one where real wages were either flat or in decline.
• This lost decade for wages comes on the heels of decades of inadequate wage growth. For virtually the entire period since 1979 (with the one exception being the strong wage growth of the late 1990s), wage growth for most workers has been weak. The median worker saw an increase of just 5.0 percent between 1979 and 2012, despite productivity growth of 74.5 percent—while the 20th percentile worker saw wage erosion of 0.4 percent and the 80th percentile worker saw wage growth of just 17.5 percent.

Quote of the day--on the nation, the economy, the world economy the corporatization of the world and what it means for us

The economy, if you hadn't noticed, is slowing -- and not just in the U.S. China and India, two of the world's major economic engines in recent years, are slowing dramatically. Other emerging markets are in trouble. Some blame property bubbles and corruption in China and India; others blame the impending end of the Fed's easy money; others think the trouble started with austerity in Europe; others blame global finance, still prone to speculative excesses; others, point to the quagmire of the Middle East.

But I want to suggest a more basic problem: 

Inadequate global demand for all the goods and services the world economy is now capable of creating. 

A technological revolution has increased productivity while also displacing millions of workers in developed nations, whose jobs have disappeared or whose wages have stagnated and declined. 

Their incomes are dropping. (The median household income in the U.S. is now 4.4 percent below what it was at the start of the so-called recovery.) 

Meanwhile, inequality is widening all over the world, as global elites amass fortunes but poor populations continue to grow. (The much-vaunted global middle class hasn't turned out to be as large or as important a source of demand as was predicted.) And governments are unwilling or unable to pick up the slack. 

The result: growing unemployment, especially among the young, tipsy stock and bond markets, and economic fragility. The United States -- the world's largest economy -- exemplifies all of this. If the fall brings a government shutdown and a too-abrupt end to the Fed's bond-buying, we're all in deep trouble.

--Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator

Links:  Robert Reich

Robert Reich | Facebook

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

Quote of the day--on the poor

Some job sectors likely to continue to shrink

There is a report out just now, showing sectors of our economy that expect to lose still more jobs, even if/when there is an economic upswing or recovery.

It's interesting because some there are areas you wouldn't expect there to be job losses in.

Sure, I can see losing more jobs in retail department stores, motor vehicle parts manjufacturing and the postal service--absolutely on that last one, as we move to email, etc.

But semiconductor manufacturing? To lose jobs?

I assume this is a matter of increased productivity through machines and computers.

And the other one is "wired telecom".

They didn't give a firm definition of what they mean by the term but because it's "wired" and telecom, both, I would have assumed there would be, if anything, an increase or even just a stabilizing effect on these jobs, but no loss.

One thing they didn't mention was the loss of Blockbuster Video jobs.

I guess it was just too obvious.