The author is not a dummy. He is CEO of a top tier polling organization. Surely he understands U3 and U6, etc. He may have partisan leanings to the extent that this can be taken as a criticism of the current administration. Current policies may not be helping but I'm not sure that any partisan solutions provide the answers needed.
The bigger picture here is that the US sacrificed some broad-based increase in prosperity over the last 20+ years while helping the developing world to climb out of true poverty. You cannot bring 1 billion Chinese (and to a lesser extent other peoples) into the "middle class" through trade while at the same time sustaining the exceptionally high standard of living of so many Americans -- at least not without some major, hopefully-temporary dislocations.
At the same time, somewhat related to this, we are witnessing the passing of a period in which America enjoyed unique competitive advantages which are unlikely to re-occur in a similar form. No amount of IT innovation can make up for the passing of peak-US-cheap-oil-production (1970s), or the loss or diminishing of the dollar's reserve status and the US's central role in global trade (ongoing), or the temporary advantage of economic competitors being crushed in WWII (50's and 60's)...
The Americans worst affected by these policies were bought off to some extent with cheap imported consumer goods (think Walmart), oodles of credit, the spread of two income households and of course benefit programs.
Now, if you were to try to address this problem sincerely from a position that jobs and employment are desirable social goods you wish to maximize, you might aim for sensible policies that would reduce the cost of living for typical Americans (allowing them to attain desirable, economically justifiable employment at globally competitive wages), increase labor mobility (ability to move for opportunity), and reduce the barriers to employment at the bottom of the employment ladder. Secondary policy objectives might include simplifying the tax system, encouraging household formation, and restructuring education so that expensive college degrees are less necessary.
A lot of this has to do with how people are living in what kind of housing, how that housing is financed and what kind of transport they use to get to work and what kind of shape they are in mentally, physically and perhaps even spiritually to be be productive. I think major changes are needed to achieve broad-based 21st century prosperity growth in the US. Some of these changes would be deeply unpalatable and will only be considered if economic conditions worsen substantially.
Some here seem to think we are entering a post-employment society where jobs will be increasingly scarce because they are not needed and that this is a good thing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. This kind of thing is the hallmark of privileged bubble thinking. If you really remove the dignity of work from so many, you run the risk of making the people themselves seem redundant.
The bigger picture here is that the US sacrificed some broad-based increase in prosperity over the last 20+ years while helping the developing world to climb out of true poverty. You cannot bring 1 billion Chinese (and to a lesser extent other peoples) into the "middle class" through trade while at the same time sustaining the exceptionally high standard of living of so many Americans -- at least not without some major, hopefully-temporary dislocations.
At the same time, somewhat related to this, we are witnessing the passing of a period in which America enjoyed unique competitive advantages which are unlikely to re-occur in a similar form. No amount of IT innovation can make up for the passing of peak-US-cheap-oil-production (1970s), or the loss or diminishing of the dollar's reserve status and the US's central role in global trade (ongoing), or the temporary advantage of economic competitors being crushed in WWII (50's and 60's)...
The Americans worst affected by these policies were bought off to some extent with cheap imported consumer goods (think Walmart), oodles of credit, the spread of two income households and of course benefit programs.
Now, if you were to try to address this problem sincerely from a position that jobs and employment are desirable social goods you wish to maximize, you might aim for sensible policies that would reduce the cost of living for typical Americans (allowing them to attain desirable, economically justifiable employment at globally competitive wages), increase labor mobility (ability to move for opportunity), and reduce the barriers to employment at the bottom of the employment ladder. Secondary policy objectives might include simplifying the tax system, encouraging household formation, and restructuring education so that expensive college degrees are less necessary.
A lot of this has to do with how people are living in what kind of housing, how that housing is financed and what kind of transport they use to get to work and what kind of shape they are in mentally, physically and perhaps even spiritually to be be productive. I think major changes are needed to achieve broad-based 21st century prosperity growth in the US. Some of these changes would be deeply unpalatable and will only be considered if economic conditions worsen substantially.
Some here seem to think we are entering a post-employment society where jobs will be increasingly scarce because they are not needed and that this is a good thing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. This kind of thing is the hallmark of privileged bubble thinking. If you really remove the dignity of work from so many, you run the risk of making the people themselves seem redundant.