You can tell Krugman's angry as hell, but trying to be polite. Because he realizes how cynically establishment politicians, bankers and media types are defending the myth of "structural" unemployment -- which is essentially blaming workers for
September 28, 2010

You can tell Krugman's angry as hell, but trying to be polite. Because he realizes how cynically establishment politicians, bankers and media types are defending the myth of "structural" unemployment -- which is essentially blaming workers for being out of work:

What can be done about mass unemployment? All the wise heads agree: there are no quick or easy answers. There is work to be done, but workers aren’t ready to do it — they’re in the wrong places, or they have the wrong skills. Our problems are “structural,” and will take many years to solve.

But don’t bother asking for evidence that justifies this bleak view. There isn’t any. On the contrary, all the facts suggest that high unemployment in America is the result of inadequate demand — full stop. Saying that there are no easy answers sounds wise, but it’s actually foolish: our unemployment crisis could be cured very quickly if we had the intellectual clarity and political will to act.

In other words, structural unemployment is a fake problem, which mainly serves as an excuse for not pursuing real solutions.

Who are these wise heads I’m talking about? The most widely quoted figure is Narayana Kocherlakota, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, who has attracted a lot of attention by insisting that dealing with high unemployment isn’t a Fed responsibility: “Firms have jobs, but can’t find appropriate workers. The workers want to work, but can’t find appropriate jobs,” he asserts, concluding that “It is hard to see how the Fed can do much to cure this problem.”

Now, the Minneapolis Fed is known for its conservative outlook, and claims that unemployment is mainly structural do tend to come from the right of the political spectrum. But some people on the other side of the aisle say similar things. For example, former President Bill Clinton recently told an interviewer that unemployment remained high because “people don’t have the job skills for the jobs that are open.”

Well, I’d respectfully suggest that Mr. Clinton talk to researchers at the Roosevelt Institute and the Economic Policy Institute, both of which have recently released important reports completely debunking claims of a surge in structural unemployment.

After all, what should we be seeing if statements like those of Mr. Kocherlakota or Mr. Clinton were true? The answer is, there should be significant labor shortages somewhere in America — major industries that are trying to expand but are having trouble hiring, major classes of workers who find their skills in great demand, major parts of the country with low unemployment even as the rest of the nation suffers.

Bill Clinton's not dumb enough to get this wrong, so that means he's pitching in to help excuse the abysmal performance of the Obama administration -- and justify the corporate indifference to our plight.

This also has the added bonus of "validating" Arne Duncan's three-day MSNBC school reform marathon. See, the real problem is that we just haven't had enough corporate-friendly schools, grinding out corporate-ready employees who are desperate enough to take $13 an hour for their highly skilled labor.

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