The latest monthly jobs report is bleak. The private sector is gaining jobs, but not nearly enough of them. The total of 80,000 jobs added in June were far fewer than projected. With the official unemployment rate stuck at 8.2 percent, the thorns are overtaking the roses.
There are signs of progress, but they come amid more signs of economic sluggishness, due in part to the unstable European financial situation. Even a more optimistic economic forecast sounds like an Irish weather report — "Showers, with sunny spells.''
So, how do we create jobs? How do we pull ourselves out of the ditch we landed in after the excesses of the last decade?
Politically speaking, two roads are diverging here, and which path we choose to travel down in the next four years will indeed make all the difference.
We can choose trickle down, or trickle up.
Or, blend the two and choose trickle both ways. But to assume that tax cuts alone for the wealthiest among us will insure prosperity for the vast middle class is a presumption that is based more on hooey than facts.
To borrow from the musical "Cabaret," "Money makes the world go 'round." We all know that. But, the fact that you may have lots of money does not automatically make you a "job creator."
Some people with lots of money do in fact create jobs, but it is more due to their entrepreneurial spirit and sense of adventure, and taking of risks, that jobs are produced, as opposed to what tax rate they may be paying or not paying.
And on the issue of whether this should be a topic of political discussion, a frank discussion about what private equity firms like Bain Capital — which Mitt Romney used to run — do, and do not do, is not an anti-capitalist, anti-American spirit debate. Anyone who would characterize it as such is misguided.
Money is indeed a big deal, and there are some who have money who merely hoard it, like Scrooge McDuck, and wallow in the benefits money can bring. There is no automatic job creator factor attached to wealth, as people like Frank Luntz, the Republican word strategist would have you believe. Substituting the term job creator every time you want to say rich person not only fails to shrink the economic divide in this country, it furthers a myth that can only serve the interests of the money hoarders and the excessively greedy.
Wouldn't it be lovely if those in the "have" category adopted as their mantra, "I've got mine, how can I help you get yours?" instead of, "I've got mine, to hell with you, and stop trying to climb aboard my boat"?
Protecting the rights of the rich to get richer is part of the American psyche.
As the advertisement for the state lottery used to say, "you never know ... a dollar and a dream!"
But who do you see in the convenience store lining up for lottery tickets? It is not where the affluent "job creators" among us go.
Who do you see at the casinos that have sprung up all over the country? It's not the rich, it seems, so much as it's people on Social Security and people with various disabilities, often smoking up a storm on their way to hitting the big jackpot.
But, hey, we all have to dream!
Yet to not engage in a discussion about what works and what doesn't in a capitalist society, and how to prevent excesses at the margin and wild speculative risks by money managers who then run to the government to be bailed out of the pitfalls of their own misguided financial judgment would be foolhardy.
It is a conversation we need to have. So let's talk.
As for the disappointing jobs report, there are four more monthly reports to come before the election. As Romney once said, "It takes a while to turn things around."
Hope springs eternal, awaiting the sun bursts amid the showers.
John T. Sullivan Jr. lives in Saratoga Springs and in Pittsburg, Kan. He previously served as the Democratic mayor of Oswego and co-chairman of the state Democratic Party. His email address is jtsullivanjr@gmail.com.