NEW YORK TIMES Editorial: …The February unemployment rate of 6.7 percent, for example, would have been 10 percent if the 5.7 million workers who are waiting on the sidelines for job openings were included in the jobless rate. The share of jobless workers out of work for more than six months actually increased, from 35.8 percent in January to 37 percent, or 203,000 people, a situation made all the worse by Republican refusal to reinstate expired federal unemployment benefits this year. Nearly half of the new positions added last month were in temporary jobs and low-paying fields, including bars, restaurants and janitorial services…
Recent experience has shown that it is possible to have a growing economy without strong job growth and decent wages. All that is needed is an asset bubble, amplified by financial speculation and accompanied by excessive tax cuts and unfettered lending…
Even President Obama’s recent and welcome call to spend $56 billion through 2024 on new and improved infrastructure and other far-reaching projects could be more aggressive. Mr. Obama has proposed to pay for his initiative by reducing inefficient government subsidies and curbing high-end tax breaks. That is sensible, but it would be more stimulative to the economy to borrow at today’s low rates for a ramped-up program of long-run investments, which would return more over time than the cost of the loans to make them… (more)
Again? Isn’t this about the 6th time?
EDITOR: Exactly. Without fiscal stimulus, a real recovery has not yet taken hold. We have repeated the mistakes of 1936.