The Phantom Menace and the Shameless Few

Judging from the rising unemployment claims of the past few weeks, there's little likelihood that unemployment will show much if any decline when those figures are announced later today.  Perhaps in anticipation of that, Paul Krugman wrote a scathing column .  He notes the weak recovery and its negligible effects on employment: "Employment has risen from its low point, but it has grown no faster than the adult population. And the plight of the unemployed continues to worsen: more than six million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, and more than four million have been jobless for more than a year.  It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared."

Krugman writes that Washington isn't exactly complacent--it is quaking with fear, but afraid of all the wrong things: debt crisis, dollar crisis, inflation crisis, none of which, he claims, are likely to happen, especially now or in the next few years.  What is happening is the jobs crisis.  "Unemployment isn’t just blighting the lives of millions, it’s undermining America’s future. The longer this goes on, the more workers will find it impossible ever to return to employment, the more young people will find their prospects destroyed because they can’t find a decent starting job. It may not create excited chatter on cable TV, but the unemployment crisis is real, and it’s eating away at our society... So we’re paying a heavy price for Washington’s obsession with phantom menaces."

Last week Think Progress worked out the figures and assembled a graph showing income inequality by nation.  Income inequality has been growing in the richest industrial nations the past few years--still, the United States is the most unequal among western nations, and is the least equal in the world except for one other country: Uganda. And that's pretty close to a tie.  There's a wider gap in America than in any Third World country that supposedly is defined by such gaps.  Pakistan is more equal.   Not since the Great Depression has there been this great a gap in the U.S.

Just as this is joblessness with cell phones, it may well be the Great Depression with color TV for many in America.  Income inequality has been growing since the 1980s, with the super rich amassing obscene wealth while everyone else slips back and now an increasing proportion are genuinely suffering, or are very near the edge of losing even the illusion of a middle class life.  How cynical would it be to suggest that the plutocracy in America will never experience shame for this?  But what about the country as a whole?  Is it possible to feel shame as a nation anymore?

That's in part a political question.  President Obama knows the costs of unemployment to people.  He sees those stories every night in the letters he reads from those who write to him.  With the GOPers threatening to hold the nation hostage in the debt ceiling debate, that takes immediate precedence.  It's not even clear what he can do, with this Rabid Right congressional fever, but the time is coming soon to try.

Update: The unemployment rate edged up to 9.0 from 8.8 but the economy added a "healthy" number of jobs--244,000-- beyond expectations. The New York Times business guy thinks it's because last month's unemployment number was off, and this is closer to the true number.