Paul Krugman: The Mutilated Economy

Policy failures can be very costly:

The Mutilated Economy, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Five years and eleven months have now passed since the U.S. economy entered recession. ... Official unemployment remains high, and it would be much higher if so many people hadn’t dropped out of the labor force. Long-term unemployment ... is four times what it was before the recession.

These dry numbers translate into millions of human tragedies — homes lost, careers destroyed, young people who can’t get their lives started. And many people have pleaded all along for policies that put job creation front and center. Their pleas have, however, been drowned out by the voices of conventional prudence. We can’t spend more money on jobs, say these voices, because that would mean more debt. We can’t even hire unemployed workers and put idle savings to work building roads, tunnels, schools. Never mind the short run, we have to think about the future!

The bitter irony, then, is that it turns out that by failing to address unemployment, we have ... been sacrificing the future, too. ... Or so say researchers from the Federal Reserve, and I’m sorry to say that I believe them. ...

According to the paper..., our seemingly endless slump has done long-term damage through multiple channels. The long-term unemployed eventually come to be seen as unemployable; business investment lags thanks to weak sales; new businesses don’t get started; and existing businesses skimp on research and development.

What’s more, the authors ... suggest that economic weakness has already reduced America’s economic potential by ... more than $1 trillion a year ... for multiple years. ... The ...evidence is overwhelming that ... by not even making unemployment a major policy priority ... we’ve done ourselves immense long-term damage.

And it is, as I said, a bitter irony, because one main reason we’ve done so little about unemployment is the preaching of deficit scolds, who have wrapped themselves in the mantle of long-run responsibility — which they have managed to get identified in the public mind almost entirely with holding down government debt. ...

Is there any chance of reversing this damage? The Fed researchers are pessimistic, and, once again, I fear that they’re probably right. America will probably spend decades paying for the mistaken priorities of the past few years.

It’s really a terrible story: a tale of self-inflicted harm, made all the worse because it was done in the name of responsibility. And the damage continues as we speak.