Defining Prosperity Down By Paul Krugman

[Joanne98]

I’m starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers — but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.

Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.

And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.

Not long ago, anyone predicting that one in six American workers would soon be unemployed or underemployed, and that the average unemployed worker would have been jobless for 35 weeks, would have been dismissed as outlandishly pessimistic — in part because if anything like that happened, policy makers would surely be pulling out all the stops on behalf of job creation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02krugman.html

[Demeter]

1. I felt sick in 2004

when I realized that W was going to steal another four years, and that he was hell-bent on destroying the economy for the TBTF thieves to steal everything.

[applegrove]

2. Rich bankers want us to get used to volatility that is inherent when markets are king.

The investment bankers and other rich people can handle volatility. They just live off their savings for a short time. But 61% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and start to loose their homes if they loose their jobs or get layed off. And yet the market kings want us to accept this volatility and not squak as if it is a bad thing when it happens. Witness the bankers sitting in front of congress not apologizing for the subprime market failure. They didn't even want financial regulation reform. We are all supposed to accept a less secure world....... rather than a very mixed market economy and with investment in things other than markets.

[bhikkhu]

3. It is structural - built into our current system

There is an underlying theme of energy decline driving down economic growth, and it is perhaps a better thing for the planet if we just let it happen...but also we have been shipping good jobs overseas for decades - the whole giant scam of "globalism". The tax code needs to be changed to turn that around, but I have yet to see any politician suggest it.

[lib2DaBone]

4. Our elected leaders DO NOT CARE.. they fiddle as Rome Burns...

As long as CONgress has their $174,000 salary and their solid gold health care that we pay for.. they could care less.

Just recently CONgress failed to vote down tax cuts for Corporations that ship our jobs to China. With the stroke of a pen they could have improved our job market.. but they chose not to.

NOTHING has been done for job creation.. and please don't tell me about meaningless tax cuts for small business or Home loan programs that only 10 people in the entire USA qualify for. Or training programs for jobs that don't exist.

This whole stinking mess we call an economy is going down the tubes.. soon.

Bernake warned just last week that the Feds are "out of bullets.. they are pushing on a string and it's not working". Bernake looked VERY worried.. he knows what is about to happen.

They even brought Alan Greenspan out of retirement to go on the Sunday News Shows and ring the alarm bell...yet no one is listening. We are in the summer of 1931. Obama is Herbert Hoover. The band plays as they re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

[LiberalEsto]

5. We should index congressional salaries

with the rate of unemployment in their districts