Saturday, June 04, 2011

Today's Economics Lesson

Is the rinse-repeat one Atrios reminds us of so often.

This time it comes from Robert Kuttner:
Lately, the media and the Washington hothouse have been busy debating deficit reduction. Those are the wrong debates. Deficit reduction does nothing for job growth, and is economically perverse at this stage of a weak recovery.

Yup. The overall May 2011 unemployment rate still hovered around 9% and the rates for African Americans (16.2%) and Latinos (11.9%) were even higher, not to mention the youth unemployment rate (24.2%). But guess what the most relevant rate for those Washington insiders themselves might be? Probably the rate for individuals over 25 with at least a bachelor's degree.

Now that was a relatively puny 4.5% in May. Which explains why the Village can concentrate on worrying about the deficits.