Krugman Blog: Latvia and the Romney Record
June 11, 2012, 3:32 PM
Latvia and the Romney Record
OK, not a connection you expected anyone to make. But theres something there.
You see, there has been some back and forth over Romneys job creation record as governor of Massachusetts. The truth is that governors dont have much impact on such things, but for what its worth, MA job creation was lousy. The response of the Romney people has been to cite the states low unemployment rate when he left office; the response to the response is that this was due to people leaving the state.
Now, theres nothing wrong with labor mobility; but driving down unemployment by getting people to move someplace else isnt exactly a recipe for national recovery.
Which brings us to Latvia, where unemployment, though still very high, has come down. But this has a lot to do with a huge fall in the labor force, driven to an important extent by emigration. From Eurostat:
Again, nothing wrong with labor mobility but if Latvia is supposed to be a role model, somehow having all of Europe move to someplace else in Europe doesnt quite seem like a sustainable proposition
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/latvia-and-the-romney-record/