- High Unemployment: The New Normal

The AP is now saying that a higher unemployment rate is "The New Normal":

"Many factors are pushing against a quick recovery," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute. "Things will come back. But it's going to take a long time. I think we will likely see elevated unemployment at least until 2014."

"Why is that" you may ask? Why hasn't the 'Dear Leader' taken a moment from stilling the waters and created or saved a job or two? Well the answer is actually quite simple.

The private sector is dynamic and reacts very quickly to opportunity. But in the Obama Economy, the private sector has been replaced with public sector jobs. That means that a smaller portion of the economy must work even harder to create growth, which will in turn create tax revenue, which will eventually lead to jobs.

Fixing unemployment is actually an easy thing, you just need to let the private sector do what it does best. When you deregulate an industry, that's exactly what happens. But we're not going to do that. Instead we're talking about nationalizing the Healthcare and Energy industries, and spending even more money bailing out the unions and the various state governments.

Instead of creating jobs that also create wealth, we've created jobs for bureaucrats who just tell the people creating the wealth what do do, and then redistribute the wealth once it's been created.
And since that's so, get ready for the new normal.

But what do I know... I'm only a labor economist whose spent the last 20 years doing this stuff.