Fox Nation vs. Reality: Who’s To Blame For Bad Economy?

Posted by Mark NC on July 23, 2012 at 10:36 am. 1 Comments :

There have been numerous polls asking respondents to say who they hold responsible for the state of the American economy. In every one of them George W. Bush ranks at or near the top, with Congress and Wall Street following close behind. Usually President Obama is not the target of most of the blame.

Leave it to Fox News to come up with a poll that contradicts the others. And it should come as no surprise that the poll they’ve latched onto is the work of Rasmussen’s Pulse Opinion Research. However, even with a fixed pollster, and a rabidly partisan news outlet, Fox still finds it necessary to outright lie about the poll’s results:

The headline of this article is blatantly false. In Rasmussen’s poll 34% said that Obama is the most to blame for the slow economic recovery. Most elementary school graduates know that that is not a majority. What’s more, if you add the responses of those who said that it was either Congress, Wall Street, or George W. Bush, it comes to a clear majority of 61% saying that Obama is not to blame. Some other significant results from the poll that Fox Nation declined to report are…

The poll found almost 6-in-10 are unhappy with the actions of Republicans in Congress who have challenged the president on an array of policy initiatives.
Fifty-seven percent of voters said congressional Republicans have impeded the recovery with their policies, and only 30 percent overall believe the GOP has done the right things to boost the economy.
Centrist voters, who may well decide the 2012 outcome, tend to blame Republicans in Congress more than the president for hindering a more robust recovery.
53 percent of centrists said Obama has taken the right actions as president to boost the economy, compared with 38 percent who said he had taken the wrong steps.
Seventy-nine percent of centrist voters said Republicans had slowed the economy by taking wrong actions. Only 13 percent of centrists credited GOP lawmakers with policies that have helped the economy.

And that’s the poll that Fox Nation managed to feature on their website with a headline blaring that a “Majority Blame Obama For Bad Economy.” The Fox Nationalists must take great comfort in the knowledge that their audience is too stupid to actually look into anything themselves – or understand it if they did.

Fox News Can’t Stop Lying About Tax Cuts For The Middle Class

Posted by Mark NC on July 9, 2012 at 10:33 am. 12 Comments :

The announcement today that President Obama is committed to preserving the current tax rates for middle class Americans has been met by Fox News choosing to frame the issue in a more negative and dishonest manner.

On the Fox News web site the story was featured with a headline reading, “Obama ‘100% Committed’ To Tax Hike.” Later, on Fox News as the President was speaking, the network displayed a caption reading, “Pres Urges Congress To Pass Tax Increase On Households Earning More Than $250,000.”

Both of those statements are false. The President is neither committed to, nor urging, a tax increase. The tax increasing was passed and signed into law by Republican president George W. Bush. The legislation implementing the Bush-era tax cuts included a sunset provision for when the cuts would expire. That was Bush’s doing, not Obama’s. What Obama is trying to do is to preserve the tax cuts for the vast majority of Americans who actually need them and will spend them to help the economy grow. It is flat out dishonest to say that, because Obama supports allowing the cuts to expire for a few people at the top of the economic scale, that he is proposing a tax increase as characterized by Fox News.

Deficit Factors Most independent economists agree that lower taxes for the middle class is more likely to fuel economic growth because the middle class spends more of their money on cars, clothes, food, appliances, electronics, travel, etc. The rich, on the other hand, disperses more of their income to savings or retirement accounts that do nothing to stimulate the economy. And studies have proven that the Bush-era tax cuts are one of the biggest contributors to the deficit.

The President is making a rational proposal that Congress come together and agree to pass the middle class relief that both sides insist is necessary to spur growth. There is simply no reason not to do so. The question of whether to cut taxes further for the rich can be debated separately and need not put everyone else at risk. If Republicans refuse to do this because the wealthy are being left out, then they are effectively holding the majority of Americans hostage on behalf of helping millionaires become even richer. But then, that’s the mission of the GOP (Greedy One Percent).

These facts are available for everyone to see and factor into their appraisal of the current economic debate. Everyone except for Fox News viewers, that is. They will continue to be misinformed and subject to opinions that are contrary to reality and harmful to their own interests.

Fox Nation Panic: Run For The Hills, The World Is Ending

Posted by Mark NC on May 5, 2012 at 10:39 am. 2 Comments :

Sell! Sell! Sell! It’s all over. The stock market is collapsing. Wall Street is bankrupt. The economy is toast. Head for your bunker with your gold bullion, guns, and bibles. The End Times are here.

Fox Nation is feverishly reporting that “Stocks Tank, Nasdaq’s Worst Week Of 2012.” If this isn’t evidence of Armageddon, I don’t know what is.

After this horrific market crash the NASDAQ will only be up 13.5% year-to-date – a mere nine times more than what the average bank savings account is earning for the whole year. If you listened to Fox you would have missed out on one of the most precipitous stock rallies in decades.

And when was the last time that Fox reported that the market was significantly higher in any week this year? Good luck finding that report. Fox is on a mission to make President Obama and his administration look bad. That requires trumpeting bad news about the economy and ignoring the good news.

The problem is that by doing that, Fox also exacerbates negativity that can have the effect of producing a self-fulfilling prophecy and frighten people out of the market. But Fox doesn’t care about that. Hurting Obama is more important to Fox than accurately reporting on the economy.

Fox News Revives Lie To Advocate Raising Taxes On The Poor

Posted by Mark NC on February 23, 2012 at 10:54 pm. 11 Comments :

Every year around early April, Fox News unpacks a phony statistic about taxpayers in order to imply that many Americans don’t pay taxes at all. They are starting a little early this year.

Neil Cavuto, the VP of business news at Fox, must know better when he alleges that 49.5% of Americans do not pay taxes. The truth is that they pay about the same tax rate as other Americans, just no “federal” taxes. And there is a good reason for that. Most of the citizens in this category are either seniors living on Social Security, students with little or no income, and the working poor who earn less than the statutory minimums to be liable for federal levies. They do, however, pay state and local taxes, sales taxes, mortgage taxes, and payroll taxes. But that doesn’t stop Fox from repeatedly asserting the lie that they pay no taxes at all.

By complaining that these disadvantaged people are tantamount to freeloaders, Cavuto is in effect advocating an increase in taxes for the poor. While he and his right-wing cohorts fight tooth and nail to protect wealthy individuals and corporations from contributing even modest amounts to the nation’s recovery, they are enthusiastically in favor of soaking the poor in order to heal the malaise on Wall Street and the misery of long-suffering bankers. It’s nice to see that these conservative, anti-tax zealots have finally found a class of people whose taxes they want to raise.

The phrase that Cavuto used repeatedly is that “everyone has [to have] skin in the game.” The arrogance dripping from that commentary is that it assumes that those not paying federal income taxes do not already have skin in the game. Cavuto thinks that people who have spent a lifetime paying into the system, and are now struggling to survive in retirement, haven’t sacrificed enough. He thinks that the unemployed would prefer to remain that way rather than find jobs and resume payments to the IRS. That’s an astoundingly stupid point of view that demonstrates just how ignorant he is of economics and the plight of people less fortunate than he is. But surprisingly, it isn’t the stupidest thing he said. In his program’s sarcastic epilogue he issued this order to the folks who are already undergoing significant hardships:

“Stop demanding benefits from a system you give nothing.”

Really? Let me get this straight. If you are so broke that you can’t pay for taxes – or housing or food – then you should not be getting any benefits from the social safety nets set up to provide housing and food for the poor? Apparently Cavuto thinks that such benefits should only go to people who already have money.

To say that the poor should stop demanding benefits because they are poor is like chastising a child for wanting to be adopted just because she’s an orphan. What a selfish freeloader. And she’s just the sort of ne’er-do-well from whom Cavuto would like to steal candy.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Stimulating Unemployment

Posted by Mark NC on February 22, 2012 at 11:03 am. 40 Comments :

In yet another example of the intentionally deceptive news perverters at Fox News, the Fox Nation website has posted a headline article that deliberately misrepresents reality with this headline: WH Senior Advisor: Unemployment Stimulates the Economy.

That would be a remarkably stupid comment if anyone had actually said it. What Valerie Jarrett actually said was that…

“Even though we had a terrible economic crisis three years ago, throughout our country many people were suffering before the last three years, particularly in the black community. And so we need to make sure that we continue to support that important safety net. It not only is good for the family, but it’s good for the economy. People who receive that unemployment check go out and spend it and help stimulate the economy, so that’s healthy as well.“

So what Jarrett was talking about was the stimulative effect of unemployment insurance, not unemployment. And her views on continuing to support Americans struggling in this difficult economic environment are consistent with most economists who recognize that funds received in the form of unemployment checks are quickly spent in the communities of the beneficiary, creating an economic stimulus.

“Many analysts, including the Congressional Budget Office as well as [Moody’s Mark] Zandi, have found that in a weak economy, UI and refundable tax credits — and other measures that put money into the hands of hard-pressed individuals and families who will spend it — have a significantly larger impact on economic activity and job creation than tax cuts primarily benefiting high-income individuals, who are likely to save a large amount of any increase in income they receive. In the Moody’s Analytics model, extending unemployment insurance benefits generates $1.60 of additional GDP for each dollar of budgetary cost, while a permanent extension of all of the Bush-era income tax cuts generates only 35 cents in economic activity per dollar of cost.”

The Fox Nationalists frequently lie about the economic benefits of aid to working class Americans, but this intentional misrepresentation of Jarrett’s remarks is even more dishonest than their routine dishonesty. I’m sure they are very proud of themselves.

The Top 5 Tax Myths Of The GOP Spin Machine

Posted by Mark NC on January 7, 2012 at 11:03 am. 10 Comments :

As this election year commences with the media focused on the Republican Clown Car Primary, the American people are are being barraged by ludicrous campaign stunts, dumbfounding debate performances, and the usual mix of dishonesty and hatred that the GOP has fine-tuned for decades.

For the most part, the caterwauling of Republicans has drowned out any rebuttal by Democrats and the press seem content to deliver just one side of the political argument. For instance, the GOP (Greedy One Percent) continue to peddle their Millionaire Relief Act proposals to reform the tax code so that the rich control even more of the nation’s wealth than they do currently.

Fortunately, the folks at the Center for Tax Justice have complied a list of the Top 5 Tax Myths to watch out for this election season. For convenience and shareability I created this handy InfoGraphic to separate fact from affliction:

For however long the GOP primaries are dragged out, progressives are going to have to try harder to get their voices heard above the clutter. Hopefully communicating in creative ways will help to achieve that goal.

The Decadence Index: How The Wealth Gap Is Hastening The Fall Of The American Empire

Posted by Mark NC on January 4, 2012 at 10:48 am. 13 Comments :

If there is anything that history teaches us about empires, it is that they are temporary and often fall of their own decaying weight. Ancient Rome is notorious for a descent that was widely speculated to have been driven by a massive class disparity. The aristocratic patricians devolved into a morass of immorality and obscene opulence. Meanwhile, the other 99% of the empire’s subjects were burdened by lives of oppressive labor or slavery.

The parallels to contemporary American class division are striking. We have our own aristocracy that arisen to a place of privilege and power, while working families are working harder for less, if they’re fortunate enough to be working at all. The 400 richest Americans control more wealth than the bottom 150 million of their fellow citizens – combined. And they exploit the power that comes with that wealth to further enrich themselves. Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1% rose by 281%, compared to a 16% rise for the bottom 20%. The Roman elites would have felt right at home.

There is one difference, however. An historical study published by the Cambridge University Press looked at the Roman economy and calculated the measurement used by the CIA to rank the wealth gap of the nations of the world. What it found was that the United States actually ranks lower on income inequality than Ancient Rome.

Let that sink in for a moment. History’s most conspicuously ostentatious society of Bacchanalian excess had a less severe chasm between its rich and poor subjects than contemporary America. That astonishing fact led me to wonder where the U.S. stands when compared to its modern counterparts. So I consulted the CIA World Factbook and ranked the twenty richest nations by the index that represents income inequality. What I found was that the U.S. ranks 18th out of twenty. I call it The Decadence Index, and countries like Iran, Russia, and India are all less decadent than the United States in terms of economic disparity.

Click to enlarge
Decadence Index

The CIA collects this sort of data because it can be useful in predicting where civil unrest might flare up in the world. So what does that say about the stability of our social structure going forward? It certainly explains the Occupy movement. The question now is what are we going to do about it?

The solutions are not all that difficult to comprehend. Those who have benefited so lavishly by exploiting the system for their own enrichment should now be required to share a fair portion of the sacrifice necessary to restore economic health and balance. It’s not rocket science. Malcolm Gladwell offers a compelling explanation as he demolishes the rightist fable that taxes on the wealthy impede economic growth:

If we want to raise our position on the Decadence Index above that of the Ancient Romans (or the Russians or the French, for that matter), we need to reject the reckless and insensitive agenda of the right-wing patricians whose sole purpose is the accumulation of wealth and power. These patrons of plutocracy unabashedly advocate cutting, even eliminating, taxes on themselves, the rich, and intensifying the tax burden on everyone else. They falsely portray themselves as “job creators,” but this InfoGraphic shows who The Real Job Creators are. They pretend to fret over a class war that they themselves are waging. And because they know that the people overwhelmingly support the principles of economic fairness and justice, these conservative elites are conspiring to suppress the votes of average Americans, particularly seniors, minorities, students, and low-income voters.

Make no mistake, this is a coordinated campaign financed and managed by shadowy, but powerful, business and political entities like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Their mission was aided by the Supreme Court’s odious decision in the Citizens United case that opened the floodgates of corporate money into the electoral process. And, of course, they have the propaganda power of Fox News to advance their greedy, magisterial interests. But the people are fighting back against ludicrous notions like “Corporate Personhood,” and the Upper Crusters are afraid. Even Republican strategist Frank Luntz is admitting as much:

“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

So keep up the fight because Corporations Are Not People. Here are some ways to contribute and participate:

Move To Amend is organizing a national action on January 20, 2012, to oppose and reverse Citizens United: Occupy the Courts!
Public Citizen is organizing a national action on January 21, 2012 to oppose and reverse Corporate Personhood: Occupy the Corporations!

Get up. Get involved. Get mad. And get to work.

Occupy Messaging: Who Are The Real Job Creators?

Posted by Mark NC on December 13, 2011 at 10:53 am. 8 Comments :

For too long now, right-wing propagandists like Frank Luntz have been manipulating language to distort the real issues that impact so many lives of American citizens. They engage in dishonest wordcraft that disguises their true meaning in order to shape public opinion and deceive voters. It’s time to counter that rhetorical offensive by restoring definitions that actually reflect reality.

One of the most recent and insidious examples of this practice is the conservative effort to replace references to “the rich” with the phrase “job creators.” It is of no interest to these hacks that no evidence exists to validate the claim. In fact, NPR’s congressional reporter, Tamara Keith, asked members of congress and representatives of conservative business groups to refer her to business people who could substantiate the assertion that tax cuts for the wealthy would induce them to increase hiring. They were unable to come up with a single name or example to affirm their half-baked theory. However, Keith found several examples of her own that utterly refuted it. This caused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to note that “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They are impossible to find and don’t exist.”

The agenda that Republicans have adopted has literally no popular constituency. Every poll taken on the subject reveals that majorities of Americans (including majorities of Republicans) favor increasing taxes on the rich. Even polls of the rich show that they believe that they are not presently sharing the sacrifice required to restore the nation’s economic health. An independent group of Patriotic Millionaires released a video beseeching Congress to raise their taxes.

So the next time you hear some GOP flunky whining about the plight of the rich whose only desire is to be unburdened from the shackles of what are the lowest taxes in decades, remember that they have not, and cannot, certify any claim that lower taxes will spur hiring. In fact, the evidence is all to the contrary. And whenever possible, we need to recapture the phrase “job creators” and use it in a manner that is more in line with reality. Here is a handy, shareable chart that illustrates who the real job creators are:

(click to view larger)
Job Creators

[Addendum] President Obama asked these questions in his economic address last month:

Are you going to cut taxes for the middle class and those who are trying to get into the middle class? Or are you going to protect massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, many of whom don’t even want those tax breaks?

Are you going to ask a few hundred thousand people who have done very, very well to do their fair share? Or are you going to raise taxes for hundreds of millions of people across the country – 160 million Americans?

Are you willing to fight as hard for middle-class families as you do for those who are most fortunate?

What’s it going to be?

The GOP Agenda Becomes Fox News Programming

Posted by Mark NC on September 7, 2011 at 12:02 pm. 6 Comments :

Long ago it was established that Fox News is not a legitimate journalistic enterprise. It is the PR division of the Republican Party. Fox bristles at that characterization despite the fact that they have admitted that they approach the news from “the other side” of what they consider the liberal media. They have even been caught reading “news” items straight from Republican press releases.

Now Fox News is promoting a special slate of programming for next week that they are calling “Regulation Nation.” The promotion shows Fox bragging that “We expose how excessive laws are drowning American business.”

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that next weeks special programming, on both Fox News and Fox Business, was scheduled at precisely the same time as the Republican Party’s announcement that they will be pursuing an anti-regulation agenda for the remainder of this year. The GOP’s House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, just published his list of the “Top 10 Job-Destroying Regulations.” Cantor describes the list as a memo on the jobs agenda, but the list is nothing more than a collection of health, safety, and environmental regulations that he and the GOP oppose (and one anti-union bill for good measure).

The effects of these proposals will serve only to produce dirtier air and water, more hazardous working conditions, and astronomical leaps in costs related to health care. And that isn’t even addressing the human toll of disease, disability, and death. Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic summed up the fallacy embraced by the GOP plan with an example taken from Sen. John Barrasso’s (R-WY) analysis of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (which is included in Cantor’s Top 10 list).

“By 2014, the agency predicts, the new rule will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 71 percent and nitrogen oxide emissions by 52 percent.

“Of course, the companies that still maintain plants with high emissions will have to spend money to comply with the new rule. And, according to the Barrasso memo, the bill for that compliance (including, as far as I can tell, higher prices the companies might pass along to customers) comes to $2.4 billion a year. But the source of that figure is the EPA’s own assessment, which notes that $1.6 billion of that represent a one-time-only capital investment, already underway – and that even the $2.4 billion pales next to the $120 to $280 billion in annual benefits that the regulation will generate. Those benefits include reduced emergency room visits, missed days at work, and mortality.”

The entire Republican deregulation campaign is fraught with similar examples of proposals that oppose measures that may require modest investments, but will produce far more in savings and new revenue, not to mention a higher quality of life. And despite the Republican deceit of calling these anti-regulation proposals a jobs agenda, there is no evidence that any part of it would create a single job. As pretty much every credible economic expert has affirmed, the current employment situation is not the result of taxes and regulations. It is due to lack of demand. And demand increases when middle-income consumers have more money to spend, not when wealthy people and corporations are taxed less.

What the Republicans are seeking, by their own admission, is competitiveness in global markets, and their deregulation plan is certain to achieve that. It will finally make the United States competitive with nations like China for having the lowest wages and the highest levels of pollution, and the worst standard of living.

And isn’t it convenient that Fox News would choose this time to produce programming that adopts the very same positions on the economy and the agenda going forward as the leaders of the Republican Party?

[Update 9/12/11] Media Matters has posted an excellent article with additional research affirming that taxes and regulations have little impact on job creation.

A Hire Power: The Local Approach To Resolving The Job Crisis Nationally

Posted by Mark NC on September 5, 2011 at 3:59 pm. 3 Comments :

Hire Power America is at a crossroads on this Labor Day. We can sit back and wait for greedy, impersonal corporations, or politicians with conflicts of interest and hyper-partisanship, to come to the rescue of middle and low-income citizens, or we can submit to a Hire Power!

About two and half years ago the United States hit a boulder in the economic road. Venerable money center banks were crushed under the weight of spurious investments and barely legal schemes. There was a broad consensus that absent some dramatic response there would be a catastrophic failure of the nation’s financial foundations which, of course, would spread throughout the world.

The markets panicked, plummeting 5,000 points (45%) from September 2008 to March 2009. Home foreclosures skyrocketed and the unemployment rate rose from 6.2% to 8.6%. In the meantime, Washington scrambled to legislate bailouts and stimuli for banks, insurance companies, and auto manufacturers, somehow neglecting to provide aid to millions of middle and low-income victims of this banking-driven disaster.

Today the Dow Jones average is back above 11,000, about where it was in September 2008, and nearly double its low. Investment firms like Goldman Sachs have fared well also. Goldman’s stock today is 150% above where it had bottomed out. Automakers like GM and Chrysler are once again profitable and paying back their government loans. And the unemployment rate has … well … it’s gotten even worse, rising to 9.1%.

So by almost every measure the economic recovery has been swift and robust with one exception: Jobs. The nation is experiencing what analysts call a “jobless” recovery. The companies that have been enjoying renewed success thanks to consumer support are still hesitant about hiring. They are hoarding their resources to either avoid new risk or to reward themselves with higher salaries and bonuses.

It’s clear that the American people cannot rely on big business to address the jobs deficit that is still burdening so many families. It’s time to take matters into our own hands. Small businesses have the power to effect a massive change in the current economic environment. Some estimates show that more than 70% of new jobs are created by small businesses. It is within that market that ordinary citizens can bypass the greedy and insensitive corporations who are only interested in enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of us. They have already demonstrated that they couldn’t care less about American workers by their refusal to create new jobs, or when they do create jobs, it’s for workers in other countries.

So what can we do about It? We can promote the creation of new jobs by small business in our own communities. If small businesses with fewer than 100 employees were to commit to hiring one person – just one person – the effect on the community could be significant. Take Rhode Island, for example. The state has about 6,200 businesses with between 10 and 100 employees. If each one of them hired a single new employee, that would be 6,200 Rhode Islanders with a job that previously did not have one. It would reduce unemployment in the state by one percent. It would mean that 6,200 fewer people would be receiving unemployment benefits and other government aid. 6,200 more people would be contributing to, rather than draining, public resources.

More importantly, it would mean an additional 6,200 people would have income with which to patronize other businesses in the community. Restaurants, dry cleaners, book stores, etc., would prosper. Suppliers and manufacturers who service those businesses would see increased demand. And all of those businesses would then be able to explore hiring more people as well, continuing the cycle of prosperity.

Make no mistake about it. The right-wing myth of trickle-down economics is a proven failure. For ten years corporations have enjoyed the supposedly temporary tax cuts implemented under the Bush administration, but they have not been creating jobs. The reason is simple. Companies do not create jobs for the heck of it. Lowering their taxes or repealing regulations will not produce a single new job. After all, why would a company hire people to make more of something that they aren’t selling just because their taxes went down? Companies hire people when they have increased demand for their products or services. Increased demand occurs when consumers are buying things. So when people have good paying jobs and money in their pockets they will make purchases which will spur companies to meet the new demand by hiring more workers.

But maybe there is a way to prime the jobs pump. The goal should be to put more people to work so that they can distribute their income back into the economy. This effort may take some measure of faith on the part of the businesses who take the initial step to hire a new employee. Some businesses may not be able to fully justify a new hire. Do it anyway! The potential upside for the business and the broader economy makes it a reasonable risk. There is a sort of patriotic duty to assume such a risk on behalf of the welfare of our country. If enough of your neighbors join in, the rewards will be substantial. In the worst case scenario, you may have to let the new employee go in a few weeks or months. But at least he or she would have been employed briefly, and the cost to the business would have been negligible. It’s the sort of speculative investment that is worthwhile even if it does not guarantee a return.

On the other hand, if it does succeed, the nation’s economic health can be restored community-by-community. We can build out this program and spread it across the country. Neighbors helping neighbors. No dependence on government programs that do too little and are too difficult to implement. Medium-sized businesses can participate by hiring two or three new people. Big businesses would eventually recognize the momentum and loosen up their own purse strings to hire in even greater numbers. And the spending by all of these newly employed citizens would finance the economic rebound that everyone has been hoping for.

Does this seem too idealistic? Too fanciful and unrealistic given the harsh dimensions of our economic hardships? Let’s ask the city of Atlanta whose “Hire One Atlanta” program is already in progress and showing promising results. So far, nearly 1,500 businesses have added more than 13,000 workers. They are aiming for 150,000 jobs over the course of a year. They make a compelling argument on their web site:

“Hire one new employee and you’ll start a chain of events that can positively impact individuals and our entire economy. According to one analyst, a single new hire can (on average) increase U.S. GDP by about $100,000. Imagine if 150,000 businesses each hired just one person.”

That’s a $15 billion boost to the economy, and that’s just in one city. Last week the city of Greensboro, North Carolina announced that they will implement a program similar to the one in Atlanta. Why not spread this across the nation and put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work? The spike in spending, investing, and consumer confidence could be just what is needed to finally bring the economic recovery to the job market. And rather than just the top 1% of the nation’s wealthy elite enjoying the benefits of a rebound, all Americans can share in a growing and healthy economy.

The best part is that all of this can be accomplished by ordinary citizens inspired by the power unleashed in the simple act of of hiring their neighbors. So let’s get started. This is what we call Hire Power!

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