history that they can remember.” To many, it seems obvious that the present is far worse than the past.īut Gregg Easterbrook has some news for them: The facts don’t support that conclusion. In 2017, 59 percent of Americans said this was “the lowest point in U.S. In the current media environment, that message is in heavy rotation, and it gets heavier all the time. If you watch the news, you could be forgiven for believing the world is on the brink of collapse. Optimism has gone out of style, a best-selling author argues, but he thinks the world is in better shape than ever News & Features (down arrow opens sub-menu)> Our Programs (down arrow opens sub-menu)> Get Involved (down arrow opens sub-menu)> Search SubmitĪbout Rotary (down arrow opens sub-menu)> He also writes a monthly column for the Snohomish County Business Journal.Enter the terms you wish to search for. James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. After analyzing our 2011 experience one thing about the coming year is clear: We won’t have to worry about being our own worst enemy, at least not while Congress is in session. And the woeful examples of Greece and Italy are there, in all their glory and grandeur, for any legislators who still don’t get it.Īnd, finally, we now have one less thing to keep us awake at night. The budget deficit is finally getting some attention, if not action. When we have to make hard decisions, as in this economy, the more realism the better. For the economy it is a major step forward to end the masquerade and start calling the deductions what they really are: “taxes,” not “contributions” to a retirement fund of questionable existence. One positive change, for example, went virtually unnoticed in the recent kerfuffle in Congress over extending the payroll tax cut. And the oppressed workers of the NBA, after an even longer cruel lockout, also returned to their workplace, although now enduring what is clearly an old-fashioned “speed up” of their production schedule.Įven the “atmospherics” of our economy are showing signs of improvement. The oppressed workers of the NFL, for example, survived a cruel lockout and returned to the workplace with a new contract. The problem is getting some increased visibility now and that might help, but at bottom we don’t have much of a plan except to hope that a more robust economic recovery will make it go away.Īnd even in the harder-to-take-seriously parts of our economy there was improvement, and that’s a very good sign. Currently the jobless rate for these men and women is running between three and four times the national average for all workers. The other part of the jobs picture that remains gloomy is the unemployment rate for returning military veterans. This is not your father’s economy it’s been more like your great-grandfather’s Depression. Many employers have not changed their perception of job candidates very much.Ī significant number of employers still view long periods of unemployment as suspicious and possibly revealing of an applicant’s character flaws or habitual behavior - a view that might have had some basis years ago but most certainly not now. This is discouraging enough by itself, but made worse by employers’ reaction to it. Many Americans who are currently out of work, though, have been jobless for a considerable amount of time. This wasn’t always the case for everyone, certainly, but was typical. Workers laid off from one job could readily find another. economy tended to be more frequent than in Europe, but of short duration. In the past, though, job losses in the U.S. Our free market economy owes a lot of its productivity and forward progress to job instability. Certainly the European experience in trying to fix this problem with government spending is neither appealing nor encouraging. The prospects for long-term unemployed are not much brighter than they had been, and the harsh truth is that we really do not know what to do about it. One part of the jobs picture is still troubling.
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