I think two unrelated articles, one by Paul Krugman (the Nobel Prize Winning American Economist) and one by Catherine Rampell (who I can’t otherwise identify) are worth talking about.

First, Krugman in a post on his Blog titled ‘A strange madness‘ comments on what he calls “a bit on the craziness sweeping America”.  Among other things he notes that his ‘hate mail’ has reached levels he hasn’t seen since 2004 and that he now gets “spitting, incoherent rage over articles on, um, health care economics or macro modeling” where he finds it “impossible to tell” what enrages people so much about those articles.  In the end, Krugman says:  “Something is going very wrong in the heads of a substantial number of Americans”.  Not having seen the specifics of either Dr. Krugman’s articles or the replies he alludes to, it doesn’t strike me as other than common sense that if enough people:

•    lose their jobs;

•    lose confidence in the notion of the ‘American Dream’ being theirs for the taking; and,

•    find their standard of living deteriorating or think it might

that one well might find themselves surrounded by vocally unhappy people.  My hope would be that the protests remain vocal and the baseball bats (or worse) are kept in the closets of America.  I can’t imagine Dr. Krugman at some level doesn’t see things this way as well.

Second, Rampell, in an article titled ‘Oh What a Time to Be Young!’ quotes statistics suggesting the U.S. unemployment rate among ‘unemployed teens’ currently is 25.5%, the highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948.  I have said in previous posts on this Blog that youth unemployment is in my view a large potential problem.  Happy people from my observation broadly have a few things in common.  First, they are busy doing whatever interests them, and don’t have excessive amounts of ‘time on their hands’.  Second, they feel they are productive members of society as they measure that – and as a result are reasonably ‘ego-satisfied’.  Third, as the old saying goes ‘Idle Hands Are The Devil’s Tools’ and ‘idle hands’ can lead to anti-social behavior – I suspect particularly among youth.  In my view that young people are having increased difficulty finding jobs in the current economic environment does not bode well.  As I have commented on previously I think this should be an issue that ranks high on the agenda of the current U.S. Administration, and on the agendas of all governments.

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