Krugman- Against Learned Helplessness

Unemployment is a terrible scourge across much of the Western world. Almost 14 million Americans are jobless, and millions more are stuck with part-time work or jobs that fail to use their skills. Some European countries have it even worse: 21 percent of Spanish workers are unemployed.

Nor is the situation showing rapid improvement. This is a continuing tragedy, and in a rational world bringing an end to this tragedy would be our top economic priority.

Yet a strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic, a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs. Instead of a determination to do something about the ongoing suffering and economic waste, one sees a proliferation of excuses for inaction, garbed in the language of wisdom and responsibility.

So someone needs to say the obvious: inventing reasons not to put the unemployed back to work is neither wise nor responsible. It is, instead, a grotesque abdication of responsibility.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/opinion/30krugman.html

because rollback of broad-based prosperity & the welfare state = game plan.

It's simply extraordinary how this goes on. When I started my career in the mid-70s, it was a given that employers felt the well being of their employees to be important. A given.

Now, forget it. I'm glad I'm within five years of retirement, and hope to make it there. Others not so lucky, including my significant other - after a lifetime of hard and successful work, she was unceremoniously booted in January 2010. I have moved in with her so she can keep her house. At our age, new employment is impossible. I'm grateful to my employer, but I'm also a realist. No guarantees.

As long as there are more "buyers" than "sellers", they control the market.

..and keep the pay the same.

That would possibly free up more than 10 million jobs in this country.

That is, unless they think they can get the same product from 7 employees as 8? I doubt it can be done since most employees have maximized production down to the second already.

just tell all foreign workers to go home

a good cause for revolution. And fertile ground for recruiting.