What we appear to suffering from is a prolonged, widespread pessimism about the state of affairs. By a variety of political and media means, we are perpetually being told that Europe is sinking and there is little hope for the EU; that US jobs have moved to China and the the middle class is fading out; that enormous deficits have been compiled by our governments, and there is no hope of anything positive until they have been cleared away. What Krugman recommends would be appropriate if the problem were simply cyclical in the Keynesian sense, but it's much deeper than that; it's become a thing of negative mass psychology. Perhaps we do need another war, not a little one like Iraq or Afghanistan, but a big one like WWII, which brought an end to the Great Depression. Where oh where are Hitler or Stalin when we need them?
Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Arthur Cordell To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION' Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 10:11 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Krugman's the man. Not one or the other. Krugman overlooks the fact that perhaps a million people were taken out of the labor force and into the armed services. And millions were spent on constructing factories to build things that were exploded, shot down or sank. A recurring market. That said, I think that Krugman is being a bit obsessive in his constant push to spend our way out the current situation. We may, or may not. Time will tell. But WW2 was indeed a game changer, and it wasn't just about priming the pump. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 12:44 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Krugman's the man. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ May 10, 2012 Easy Useless Economics By PAUL KRUGMAN A few days ago, I read an authoritative-sounding paper in The American Economic Review, one of the leading journals in the field, arguing at length that the nation's high unemployment rate had deep structural roots and wasn't amenable to any quick solution. The author's diagnosis was that the U.S. economy just wasn't flexible enough to cope with rapid technological change. The paper was especially critical of programs like unemployment insurance, which it argued actually hurt workers because they reduced the incentive to adjust. O.K., there's something I didn't tell you: The paper in question was published in June 1939. Just a few months later, World War II broke out, and the United States - though not yet at war itself - began a large military buildup, finally providing fiscal stimulus on a scale commensurate with the depth of the slump. And, in the two years after that article about the impossibility of rapid job creation was published, U.S. nonfarm employment rose 20 percent - the equivalent of creating 26 million jobs today. So now we're in another depression, not as bad as the last one, but bad enough. And, once again, authoritative-sounding figures insist that our problems are "structural," that they can't be fixed quickly. We must focus on the long run, such people say, believing that they are being responsible. But the reality is that they're being deeply irresponsible. What does it mean to say that we have a structural unemployment problem? The usual version involves the claim that American workers are stuck in the wrong industries or with the wrong skills. A widely cited recent article by Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago asserts that the problem is the need to move workers out of the "bloated" housing, finance and government sectors. Actually, government employment per capita has been more or less flat for decades, but never mind - the main point is that contrary to what such stories suggest, job losses since the crisis began haven't mainly been in industries that arguably got too big in the bubble years. Instead, the economy has bled jobs across the board, in just about every sector and every occupation, just as it did in the 1930s. Also, if the problem was that many workers have the wrong skills or are in the wrong place, you'd expect workers with the right skills in the right place to be getting big wage increases; in reality, there are very few winners in the work force. All of this strongly suggests that we're suffering not from the teething pains of some kind of structural transition that must gradually run its course but rather from an overall lack of sufficient demand - the kind of lack that could and should be cured quickly with government programs designed to boost spending. So what's with the obsessive push to declare our problems "structural"? And, yes, I mean obsessive. Economists have been debating this issue for several years, and the structuralistas won't take no for an answer, no matter how much contrary evidence is presented. The answer, I'd suggest, lies in the way claims that our problems are deep and structural offer an excuse for not acting, for doing nothing to alleviate the plight of the unemployed. Of course, structuralistas say they are not making excuses. They say that their real point is that we should focus not on quick fixes but on the long run - although it's usually far from clear what, exactly, the long-run policy is supposed to be, other than the fact that it involves inflicting pain on workers and the poor. Anyway, John Maynard Keynes had these peoples' number more than 80 years ago. "But this long run," he wrote, "is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the sea is flat again." I would only add that inventing reasons not to do anything about current unemployment isn't just cruel and wasteful, it's bad long-run policy, too. For there is growing evidence that the corrosive effects of high unemployment will cast a shadow over the economy for many years to come. Every time some self-important politician or pundit starts going on about how deficits are a burden on the next generation, remember that the biggest problem facing young Americans today isn't the future burden of debt - a burden, by the way, that premature spending cuts probably make worse, not better. It is, rather, the lack of jobs, which is preventing many graduates from getting started on their working lives. So all this talk about structural unemployment isn't about facing up to our real problems; it's about avoiding them, and taking the easy, useless way out. And it's time for it to stop. Or how to make America Spain. REH MORE IN OPINION (3 OF 25 ARTICLES) Editorial: The Human Cost of Ideology May 10, 2012 The Human Cost of Ideology For more than a year, House Republicans have energetically worked to demolish vital social programs that have made this country both stronger and fairer over the last half-century. At the same time, they have insisted on preserving bloated military spending and unjustifiably low tax rates for the rich. That effort reached a nadir on Thursday when the House voted to prevent $55 billion in automatic cuts imposed on the Pentagon as part of last year's debt-ceiling deal, choosing instead to make all those cuts, and much more, from domestic programs. If this bill were enacted, estimates suggest that nearly two million Americans would lose food stamps and 44 million others would find them reduced. The bill would eliminate a program that allows disabled older people to live at home and out of institutions. It cuts money that helps low-income families buy health insurance. At the same time, the House bill actually adds more than $8 billion to the Pentagon budget. In all, the bill would cut $310 billion from domestic programs; a third of that comes out of programs that serve low- and moderate-income people. Other provisions would slash by half the budget of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up after the financial meltdown to protect consumers from predatory lending and other abuses, and reduce the pay of federal workers. Fortunately, it will never be taken up in the Senate, where the majority leader, Harry Reid, has said it would "shred the social safety net in order to protect tax breaks for the rich and inflate defense spending." House Republicans are already claiming that this bill, along with the equally inhumane overall 2013 budget written by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, shows their seriousness in reducing the deficit and why they should keep control of the House in November. In fact, it does the opposite on both accounts - and serves as a reminder of their destructive priorities. As a resolution to the debt-ceiling crisis, Republicans had already agreed to $109 billion a year in automatic spending cuts - half from defense, half from the domestic side - if lawmakers failed to agree to lower the deficit in more reasonable ways such as mixing targeted cuts with tax increases on the rich. Even Democrats who supported big defense cuts wanted them chosen carefully, not with the sequester's cleaver. But Republicans refused to take that path when the supercommittee deliberated and now are trying to make all of the cuts on the domestic side. In just one particularly destructive example, the bill would eliminate the social services block grant, a $1.7 billion fund that is given to the states to help people struggling the hardest. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the fund provides services to 23 million people, including Meals on Wheels and other programs that help older Americans. It also helps pay for child care assistance, foster care and juvenile justice at a time when states are cutting back these programs. House Democrats offered an alternative bill that would replace the $109 billion sequester by raising taxes on the wealthy, ending oil company tax loopholes and cutting farm subsidies, but it was rejected. Republicans are determined to protect millionaires and defense contractors, no matter the costs to the country. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
<<image002.gif>>
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
