Well…an interesting article in the times this morning by Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize winning economist, addressing the myth of structural unemployment in regards to the current recession. Before you righties start bitching that Krugman is liberal leaning so his ideas are not credible…let’s see your Nobel prize winner who disagrees with J. M. Keynes (hey, this could be the Keynes one that I promised you) and who has a credible history of being right…..ok, still waiting…..still waiting…yep, thought so…you don’t have one.

In an economy with structural employment driven by a lack of skills, you would have at least a few industries who would be running ads looking for workers; looking to expand but not being able to because of the shortage of skilled workers. But, that is not the case in this economy, there is no demand for labor since the demand for goods and services is not rising. No matter what their skill level. Can the right truly believe that an industrial worker trained in Kaizen, The Toyota Production System, or JIT, no longer has a use and that is why they are out of work. If that is the case, then the billions and billions of dollars spent on training and equipment for these programs by management was one of the greatest scams ever perpetrated on American industry. When did managing an American company change completely so that someone with a Masters degree in Management and 30 years in industry no longer is qualified to manage? The skill deficit of the American worker is a myth that needs to be exploded and not used by the right as an excuse to do nothing to get people back to work…but, that’s what they want…they don’t care about workers; only their rich buddies that can reward them with enough money to get re-elected so they can maintain their income redistribution scheme that will take 3.7 trillion dollars over 10 years from you and me and give it to the rich. That’s the first one…going to look at some news and come back for the others…

Okay…had lunch and wanted to get back to one other thing…the complete disdain that the right has for conventional economic thought that traces itself back to Reagan and his embrace of Arthur Laffer and his “Laffer curve theory” that cutting taxes will increase government revenue by stimulating growth in the economy. This kind of baloney has been discredited long ago by the CBO and other economic organizations and analysts that have shown that all the cuts did was to explode the deficit. Something that is conveniently forgotten, or deliberately forgotten so the right can pursue the radical agenda of giving away America to the rich. But the point I wanted to make was that while the repubs are railing against government intervention in the economy and discounting Keynesian theory, they propose an even larger government intervention by the continuation of the Bush tax cuts that would dwarf the 800 billion stimulus program of the Obama administration. Again, intellectual dishonesty disguised as cutting edge political thought…geez…