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    Back to To the Point

    To the Point

    Have People in Power Turned Their Back on Job Creation?

    US unemployment is back up to 9.1 percent and 45 percent of the jobless have been out of work for more than six months, 30 percent for more than a year. Joblessness has become chronically high on both sides of the Atlantic, but "policy makers are sinking into a condition of learned helplessness on the jobs issue.

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    By Warren Olney • May 12, 2014 • 1 min read

    US unemployment is back up to 9.1 percent and 45 percent of the jobless have been out of work for more than six months, 30 percent for more than a year. Joblessness has become chronically high on both sides of the Atlantic, but "policy makers are sinking into a condition of learned helplessness on the jobs issue. The more they fail to do anything, the more they convince themselves there's nothing they could do." That's according to Nobel-Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who insists it's time for governments to take action. Is stimulus spending the answer? What about the deficit? Are both Democrats and Republicans failing to govern? In the meantime, what are the consequences of chronic unemployment? Will the US go the way of Spain? We talk with Krugman and others.

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      Warren Olney

      former KCRW broadcaster

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      Frances Anderton

      architecture critic and author

    • Sonya Geis with wavy brown hair wearing a black dress with red accents and decorative earrings against a white background.

      Sonya Geis

      Senior Managing Editor

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      Paul Krugman

      New York Times / Princeton University

    • KCRW placeholder

      John Martin

      Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development

    • KCRW placeholder

      Kristen Soltis Anderson

      Republican pollster; founding partner, Echelon Insights

      NewsNationalPolitics
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