Monday, April 14, 2014

Robert Samuelson Right For Once (About Long Term Unemployed)

I have probably picked on Robert Samuelson of WaPo more times than any other in posts here, most often over his regularly misleading columns on Social Security.  So, I guess I should note when for once he has it right.  He notes today in a WaPo column entiteld, "Idle and unwanted," that the long term unemployed are facing a very difficult situation in the US, with prospects that could lead to many of them simply never becoming employed again, and many of those who have managed to get jobs getting ones far below their previous jobs.  The problem is that prospective employers increasingly just assume that there must be something wrong with these people, and in many cases there is a problem of the degradation of specialized skills over time.  While he does not come out vigorously for demand expansion, he agrees that the economy is not near some inflationary breakout point, thus effectively supporting such an expansion to help these people, even if such an expansion may tend to help them less than others.

All of this may be widely accepted and effectively conventional wisdom almost.  But, I am pleased to agree with RJS for once.  Maybe he will write more that I can agree with in the future, although I suspect that he will continue to be a hopeless case on the Social Security issue.

Barkley Rosser

1 comment:

TheTrucker said...

So perhaps the correct approach is to address the coercion as opposed to attempting to directly address the inequality. Organizations such as Move To Amend and Public Citizen are attempting to do just that by seeking a constitutional amendment to reinstate the BCRA (McCain Feingold) law. The coercion is real when the super wealth own the congress and the judiciary. And until that problem is addressed we are all screwed.