This is why the Dems probably will lose the House in November.

 
The median time that jobless folks have been out of work is double the previous peak some 50 years ago. Derek Thompson, economics editor at the Atlantic, who calls this "The Scariest Unemployment Graph I've Seen Yet," enumerates the many policy options for turning around the dismal jobs picture, and finds them all wanting. Why? Because the Great Recession has been uniquely horrible.

Felix Salmon, ace Reuters blogger, takes the same message from the stats. He also marvels, between the lines, that the nutty bloviator Ben Stein hasn't been captured by the men in white lab coats yet, given this classic Steinism from the current edition of the conservative American Spectator - the only roost left to Stein after he was booted by the NYT:

The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job. Again, there are powerful exceptions and I know some, but when employers are looking to lay off, they lay off the least productive or the most negative. To assure that a worker is not one of them, he should learn how to work and how to get along -- not always easy.

Stein would be an exception to his rule, one assumes, having been abruptly retired as an NYT columnists for reasons other than the above - an assessment of the jobless being to blame for their plight I've only read in accounts of tycoons' initial reaction to the worsening conditions in the early stages of the Dirty Thirties. Amazing this view still exists, much less gains publication.

 

 

 

Comments

[MLC]

David, don't be amazed that blame the worker for their plight still exists. Barbara Ehrenreich's most recent book, "Bright-Sided," covers the propaganda industry of positive thinking. She sites the "classic of downsizing," "Who Moved My Cheese." As Ehrenreich summed up "Cheese": "Lessons for victims of layoffs: the dangerous human tendencies to 'overanalyze' and complain must be overcome for a more rodentlike approach to life. When you lose a job, just shut up and scamper along to the next one." A friend of mine in her late 50's complained to her boss about the workload increases. She worked in this small medical supply company for 16 years. The boss fired her for being too negative. The small company replaced her with two younger women for half her salary.

[dolive]

Many thanks, MLC. In a caring society, we would assign "transition case workers" to each laid-off employee. The task of these professionals would be to help the ex-employee deal with the blow to self-esteem of being laid off, to coordinate government and other benefits available to maintain sufficient household income, and of course to powerfully assist in getting that next job. The cost of that essential service would be borne by the employers laying off staff, as part of the "restructuring charges" in any layoff activity.
We've come some considerable way since the opening years of the Great Depression when it was commonplace to blame laid-off workers for their plight. But then as now, newly jobless folks still find some blame in themselves. If employers won't counter that - and, in fairness, some can't, because they're small businesses or they're large ones preoccupied with survival - than we need a government-coordinated embrace of those whom capitalism has failed.
Not that I've ever had time for the schlock of the "Cheese" books and that genre, but thanks for troubling to give us a passage to confirm the utter uselessness of it. A cynical uselessness, since the authors are vastly enriched by the genre they've created.