Improving employment is better than deteriorating, even if it is not improving enough.

Thanks for the Washington Post session. You should do more Q&A.

They aren't anywhere near where we would be if we had followed the course advocated by the Right Wing Nut Jobs: do nothing and the economy would fix itself. KudBLOW first among them.

Since April, 2009, in the depth of the Great Recession, Obama has been preaching about the virtue of cutting federal spending and balancing the federal budget. In the years since, he desperately tried to make "grand bargains" with Congressional Republicans to raise taxes and cut federal spending. Fortunately, he failed completely albeit the deficit is 30% lower now than projected.

Obama has been front and center in the Anti-Keynesian attack on economic growth. He is deliberately ignorant of the most basic economic principles and only now is focused on job growth out of political necessity.

No major politician has been candid about unemployment.

I don't think 1 in 100 people could tell you that the labor force is growing by about 1 million a year. How many know that the unemployment statistics quoted in the news only includes people who've looked for a job recently? How many realize that there's only about 3 million job openings for about 14 million unemployed, which means it's impossible for all the unemployed people to get a job? I could go on, but will stop here.

I am not sure the 535 people in Congress are all that much better informed. There is not a single one of them who is known as well known to the public and their peers as a constant and effective advocate for the unemployed.

No, instead both the Democrats and Republicans are busy playing ostrich, pointing fingers at each other and jumping up and down at every positive bit of news. If the public knew how long it's going to take to dig ourselves out of this hole, I believe there would be great support for direct hiring of the unemployed, reduction of legal immigration and other obvious and necessary things.

Just today Obama made a big deal about encouraging comanpanies to bring outsourced work back home.

He should have been doing that in 2009, and Clinton and Bush should have been pressing for that during their terms.

Foosian -- We still have a job crisis. Minimal job growth is better than nothing, but the current situation cannot continue, endlessly and for years.

Or are you willing to wait until 2028 for full employment?

What do you suggest the unemployed do in the meantime?

Are you willing to support them? Is the government? If not, then we had better get cracking.

Like a few others, I happened to read the BLS report, published in 2009, which essentially stated --- after crunching all the numbers --- that there has been ZERO net new job creation in the USA from July 1999 to July 2009 (and I believe that holds to the present).

Now, this was predicted by in 1978, that critical mass in the jobs offshoring arena would be reached by the 21st century.

And those "new jobs" forecast in 2000, those 22 million jobs? They were created during the '00s, only offshore.

We thank Mr. Baker for his intelligent and honest comments, studies and efforts, but he exists in a very minuscule minority today in America, an America which is hellbent to believe in an Obama, a Bush and the tooth fairy.

No wonder paranormal SF and romance are the big sellers today in the fiction marketplace.

And no wonder that private bankster and LBO jobs destroyer would not only dare show his face in public, but have the unmitigated gall to run for the US presidency (Mitt "the twitt" Romney).

Thanks, Mr. B.