"The Ghost of Full Employment" (9/29 American Prospect)

The Ghost of Full Employment
by Jefferson Cowie
American Prospect, September 29, 2010

In the 1970s, Americans also faced a global recession and double-digit unemployment -- but back then politicians had the courage to think big.

Hubert Humphrey, 1974 (AP Photo)

"..After nearly two years of bad economic news, which topped off three decades of economic insecurity, perhaps it's understandable that we've grown indifferent to labor-market pains. We shrug at long-term double-digit unemployment. We greet the news of record-breaking poverty with a national yawn. We've come to believe that unconscionable levels of inequality are something natural to the social order.

The government's direct response to the jobs and poverty crisis has been simple indifference. Wedded to the idea that propping up the market will naturally lead to job growth, officials have responded with "solutions" drawn only from the narrow menu of economic fundamentalism -- tax cuts and stimulus. Now that gross domestic product is positive, the unemployment problem is mostly considered "structural" -- a skills mismatch -- and thus beyond our capacity to solve.

Yet not that long ago, in the midst of another long-term economic meltdown, politicians dared to think beyond the idea that growth alone would solve all problems. National leaders, including mainstream politicians in both parties, went so far as to propose a federally mandated and legally enforceable right to a job for every American.

That's right -- the federal guarantee of a job.

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Posted by Chuck Bell at 3:10 AM