"FDR told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. But when future historians look back at our monstrously failed response to economic depression, they probably won't blame fear, per se. Instead, they'll castigate our leaders for fearing the wrong things. ...While debt fears were and are misguided, there's a real danger we've ignored: the corrosive effect, social and economic, of persistent high unemployment. And even as the case for debt [alarmism] is collapsing, our worst fears about the damage from long-term unemployment are being confirmed. ...We are indeed creating a permanent class of jobless Americans. And let's be clear: this is a policy decision."—Paul Krugman, in a great piece on the continuing US unemployment crisis.
Which, as a not-insignificant aside, does not demonize people who are unemployed, unlike many of the pieces on this subject. Krugman is well aware of the folly of tasking individuals with finding solutions to systemic problems.
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