Someone needs to say the obvious: inventing reasons not to put the unemployed back to work is neither wise nor responsible. It is, instead, a grotesque abdication of responsibility. Full Story »
Posted by Jon Mitchell - via Dan Kennedy, Paul Krugman, Opinion Source, New York Times (Most Emailed), New York Times (Opinion), AllTop, David K. Miller (t), Patrick McDermott (t), Matthew Nadler (t), John Hollis (t), Johan Jessen (t), Kaizar Campwala (t), Salvador Sala (t)
But then, who is talking seriously about job creation these days? Not the Republican Party, unless you count its ritual calls for tax cuts and deregulation. Not the Obama ... More »
Krugman is making an important distinction between two issues that have been confused. In challenging himself and others to focus more on mechanisms to lower unemployment, he points out that people who see no way to improve the situation are treating political barriers as if they demonstrate limits of economic policy. In other words, Krugman is advocating a discussion of potentially effective economic solutions, whether or not they appear to be politically feasible, as a necessary first step to address the problem of high unemployment of skilled and experienced workers. In particular, he points to the flawed arguments conflating the failure of political action with the unavailability of possible solutions..
we could have W.P.A.-type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads — which would also, by raising incomes, make it easier for ... More »
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