Secular Café: The truth about unemployment?

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The truth about unemployment? May 23rd 2012, 08:36 Karabell attacks Krugman. http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...misguided.html Quote: there is ... a chronic employment problem in the United States. Why this is the case has been the source of a heated and increasingly imperative debate: is the issue cyclical or structural? Is the problem the result of a particular recession and crisis that began in late 2007 and intensified in 2008–09, or is it instead a long-term shift in the nature of our economy? This debate has become increasingly heated, especially because those who claim the problem is cyclical have a tendency to describe those who see the problem as structural as partisan tools of a right-wing agenda that preaches slashing government spending, reducing debt, and balancing budgets in the name of long-term austerity and balance. The most egregious offender here is Paul Krugman. While his passion and desire to see better policies in the United States are evident, his virulent disdain for those who contest his analysis leaves no room for disagreement. In his new book and recent columns, he has intensified the pitch of his attacks on any who argue that the employment issue is primarily structural... ...The only correlate to the current transition occurred more than a century ago as agriculture became more mechanized, which led to the massive displacement of farmers and helped cause the Great Depression. That began a process that saw tens of millions displaced from farms to the point that fewer than 2 million farmers today produce far more food than 30 million did in 1900. Today, the same transition has been occurring in manufacturing, a process that began in the 1970s and which the Internet and stock-market bubble of the 1990s and then the housing bubble of the mid-2000s only partly obscured.

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