We’re Doomed

Update: So you see what I mean. We have a terrible failure of demand — and Carly Fiorina thinks the key problem is excessive taxes on corporations (our effective rate is actually fairly low). Hey, if only we had low rates like Ireland, we could have 14.7 percent unemployment … oh well, never mind.

Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt thinks the problem is a shortage of workers in some high-skill fields. As Dean Baker points out, businesses were saying the same thing in 1935; so were the era’s Very Serious People.

Everything makes David Walker think of the need for entitlement reform. Everything makes George Will think of Ronald Reagan.

Sigh.

That was my reaction after the debate on This Week, which was actually taped Friday. We had what was supposed to be a spectrum of informed opinion, and which actually was a good spectrum of what passes for informed opinion. And what we got … well, watch it. More comments after it has aired.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/were-doomed-2/

"Skilled Workmen in Demand Despite Vast Unemployment"

That was the headline of a Washington Post article (March 13, 1935, p 22). The subhead was, "technological progress has been so rapid during the depression that welders and other experts, idle since 1929, are outmoded." The first paragraph told readers:

"unemployment may run into the millions, but as the iron, steel, and metal-working industries improve, a scarcity of skilled workmen is developing, states the magazine Steel this week."

This shows that technology might change rapidly, but economic reporting at the Washington Post doesn't. Many of the stories it has written in the last two years about shortages of skilled workers in the midst of mass unemployment could have been plagiarized from this 1935 piece.

It is also striking that this piece, like much current economic reporting, relies exclusively on business sources. The article does not make any reference to any independent experts and of course, no one from a union or any workers' organization.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/qskilled-workmen-in-demand-despite-vast-unemploymentq