>>> "John K. Taber" <jktaber at dhc.net> 05/19/00 04:18PM >>>
For reasons of my own I've been going thru back issues of Irving
Kristol's _Public Interest_.
"A high level of unemployment is a persistent problem of the American economy. During the past 20 years, the average rate of unemployment exceeded 4.5%. In only one post-War year (1953) did unemployment drop below three per cent." --Martin Feldstein, "The Economics of New Unemployment"; _Public Interest_; pg 3; Number 33; Fall 1973.
Yes, I know it says "exceeded" 4.5%, implying still higher. But I read it as 4.5% being the floor.
Now, today, in the Dallas Morning News, it says "Jobless rate persistently low in Texas" pg D1:5; Charlene Oldham.
"The Texas unemployment rate last month was 4.5 percent..."
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Now, my question for the economists on this list is why is 4.5% high unemployment in 1973, and is low in 2000?
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CB: Facts don't speak for themselves. The bourgeois propaganda machine has axed out a lot of the anti-Americanism from those movement days that was even in the mass media of the 1973 period. Happy talk about U.S. success has been the strict media party line since about Reagan's telflon cover from the monopoly media. _________
Ohhh. I think I get it. The unemployment problem has been solved! Hooray, hooray.
So that what was once high, tsk, tsk, is now low, clap clap.
I guess the solution was savaging welfare, eh?
Or, am I getting too sarcastic. Comments anybody?
-- John K. Taber