But you have failed, yet again, to tell the whole truth in order to further your agenda.
From his Friday column in the NYT
It’s time for an economic policy like Germany’s that saves and creates jobs
Consider, for a moment, a tale of two countries. Both have suffered a severe recession and lost jobs as a result — but not on the same scale. In Country A, employment has fallen more than 5 percent, and the unemployment rate has more than doubled. In Country B, employment has fallen only half a percent, and unemployment is only slightly higher than it was before the crisis.
Don’t you think Country A might have something to learn from Country B?
This story isn’t hypothetical. Country A is the United States, where stocks are up, GDP is rising, but the terrible employment situation just keeps getting worse. Country B is Germany, which took a big hit to its GDP when world trade collapsed, but has been remarkably successful at avoiding mass job losses.
What Krugman refuses to inform us of is that a “normal” unemployment level in Germany hovers very near or above 8%. Here in America, we like to believe that a “full employment” level should be at 4.5-5%.
But hey, what is almost a million more people working to a Keynesian?
Oh yeah, almost a million people whose lives the government can’t control.
I’m still divided about Germany’s version of unemployment: Cutting worked hours but the workers get paid for full time employment via the government giving the money to the employers. If your country absolutely MUST have an unemployment insurance program, that isn’t a bad way to go. Except for the inability to ditch the “dead weight” employees.
But I’d almost rather have that than people getting paid to sit around for fifteen months and in leisure, waiting for the perfect job to drop into their lap.
We already have that here. The United Auto Workers’ contract says that if they are laid off, they get 95% of their pay, for showing up and sitting around a break room at the factory, for up to three years.
Germany didn’t have a new government come into power and start implementing a radically different change in fiscal policy. That’s why they look “stable” compared to us. But I don’t want to be anything like them.