KRUGMAN: "remarkably little political pressure to end our continuing, if low-grade, depression"

[kpete]

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Defining Prosperity Down
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 7, 2013

........


n short, there’s a real risk that bad policy will choke off our already inadequate recovery.

But won’t voters eventually demand more? Well, that’s where I get especially pessimistic.

You might think that a persistently poor economy — an economy in which millions of people who could and should be productively employed are jobless, and in many cases have been without work for a very long time — would eventually spark public outrage. But the political science evidence on economics and elections is unambiguous: what matters is the rate of change, not the level.

Put it this way: If unemployment rises from 6 to 7 percent during an election year, the incumbent will probably lose. But if it stays flat at 8 percent through the incumbent’s whole term, he or she will probably be returned to power. And this means that there’s remarkably little political pressure to end our continuing, if low-grade, depression.

the rest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/opinion/krugman-defining-prosperity-down.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

[byeya]

1. U-6, the statistic most used by money mangers to gauge the state of the labor market, shot

up last month because 300,000+ permanent jobs were converted to temp jobs(along with new temp jobs) and is, I think, 14.3%

The headline employment figure looked good but digging below the surface shows a different picture.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. So long as people's kids have *something* to eat, americans are remarkably docile.

One of the interesting tidbits of the recent study published by the national academy of sciences is that the participants in a rigged game (one fated to lose, and one fated to win - and they know it) will begin to internalize their role; the winner becomes peremptory, entitled and superior while the loser becomes sympathetic and servile.

As a species, we're fated to do this dance. Until the winners make most of the losers kids hungry, this is how it'll be.

[Myrina]

3. Yep, and +400 Federal workers started their 'furlough' today in Central Indiana ...

.... the majority of them in a small town near Grissom AFB.

This isn't gonna put any additional money into that town's coffers or help it's recovery, for damn sure.

[devils chaplain]

4. Of course not...

Those with the means to apply political pressure are doing just fine, thank you.

[Hydra]

5. "Just as planned..." n/t