TheMillerCircle.org

About the only time I get exposed to economist Paul Krugman is by reading his column in the  NYT  or periodically seeing him on television programs such as the Bill Maher show on HBO. That’s about it. The mainstream press has not adopted Krugman as an economics expert, despite his Nobel Prize and his many books on current economic policies. He’s too liberal. But, as an article in Salon points out, Krugman is a national celebrity in many European countries, especially those going through gut-wrenching times of neoliberal austerity, such as Spain, where the unemployment rate for young people under age twenty-five is at 50%. His latest book “End This Depression Now,” is in its fourth printing in Spain (“¡Acabad ya con esta crisis”). So as the article in Salon points out, in America, Krugman writes columns, but in Europe he makes headlines. Krugman favors government intervention to generate full employment. One of his ideas is that, in recessionary times,  governments should take on the debt required to maintain full employment and repay the debt when the economic good times return. He writes consistently about how the austerity programs in Europe, the United States and Great Britain are making the economy much worse, because while belt-tightening for an individual may work, because his or her income would not change, it does not work for an entire country since everyone’s income will drop, creating a tailspin economy where all members suffer. According to Krugman,  Obama should be declaring a jobs emergency program right now, based on the most recent anemic jobs report and the sluggish growth or our economy. I have referred to this period as the Great Depression for young people and if anyone has a son or daughter trying to get a job right now, they know how difficult it is to get employment, how much more employers are demanding for reduced pay scales and how insecure almost any job is these days with respect to one’s economic future. We are not moving in the right direction, and there is no excuse for not doing more to make right our very sour economy. Even though policies implemented during the Obama administration have reversed the trend of job loss in manufacturing, which began in the late 1990s,  and replaced that picture with net job growth in this vital sector, this anemic growth is not strong enough to stimulate a more significant recovery.  But as Krugman points out in his most recent column, America is already going through its Republicanized economy, and we are one election away from going down the austerity road even further, in which case we will join Europe by sliding back into a more devastating recession. Isn’t the one we’re in bad enough?  Republicans hope to use this stark economic news to make serious cuts in our social programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, in addition to the elimination of safety net programs that protect us from economic devastation.
RFM