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End This Depression Now!

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End This Depression Now!

W.W. Norton,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

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The United States has the means to create jobs and boost its economy, but it does not have the will.

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Editorial Rating

8

Recommendation

Best-selling author and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman minces no words when he describes the US economy: He says it’s in a depression. The lackluster, sideways, jobless recovery since the 2008 financial crisis has left some 24 million people unemployed or underemployed. Krugman believes the country could have avoided this calamity and can still resolve it, but only if politicians and central bankers take decisive, bold steps. The way forward isn’t a mystery, he asserts, arguing that past experience and new information point to government spending that stimulates demand as the only way to get people working and consuming again. His review tackles the human and social costs of unemployment, deficits and debt. Krugman explains why the longer these ills remain untreated, the greater the long-lasting damage to American prospects. While always politically neutral, getAbstract suggests this considered, research-based prescription for curing the US economy to policy makers and policy watchers.

Summary

Amid the Ruins

The US recession that began in December 2007 officially ended in June 2009, but little has improved for most people. Unemployment statistics peaked in October 2009, but 15% of US workers – some 24 million people – still are either unemployed or underemployed. Millions more suffer in “the penumbra of formal unemployment,” including from shopkeepers with fewer buyers to the relatives and friends of the unemployed. Chronic joblessness is a human problem that exists well beyond the theoretical musings of economists. It devastates household incomes, depletes savings and leads to hopelessness. And the longer you’re unemployed – a quarter of those 24 million have been without work for more than six months – the more your skills and marketability fade and the harder it is to land another job. Moreover, the United States offers less of a social safety net of unemployment benefits than most countries provide.

Today, applicants outnumber available jobs four to one, a quarter of new university graduates can’t find work, and many young people who can’t afford to live on their own are returning to their parents’ homes. Amid such trends, those who believe the jobless...

About the Author

Paul Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton University, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 2008.

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