Saturday, October 09, 2004

MaxSpeak on the economy's job-creation record:
The unemployment rate is 5.4 percent. If this was 1995, that would not be a bad number. Unfortunately, we know that the rate can be four percent, the social implications of which are huge, since the lower level means those routinely excluded from the job market get a taste of the American dream. The 5.4 figure glosses over such people, who are no longer counted in the labor force.

Much evil flows from the presumption that 5.3 or 5.6 reflects a "structural" unemployment that is an artifact of irresponsible personal behavior. Lo and behold, in the latter 90s the economy stumbled into a lower unemployment rate, more by accident than design, and these allegedly shiftless types suddenly got religion and worked, by God.

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