Dear Dr. Paul Krugman, This Has All Happened Before

[Yavin4]

Today, Dr. Krugman has a wonderful op-ed about the growing acceptance of high levels of unemployment by our top policy makers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02krugman.html?ref=opinion

It's a good read. What Dr. Krugman ignores is that this has all been done before to the African American community in particular. Soon after African Americans finally won the legal right to end job discrimination, our industrial sector began to die off in the 1970s and into the 1980s. Factories began to disappear in major urban hubs like NYC, Philly, Boston, LA, Chicago, etc. African Americans were left living in areas for which there were no jobs, and the UE rate skyrocketed higher.

Back then, as is happening now, top policy makers were not concerned about the economic plight of African Americans in the inner cities. We were conditioned as a nation to accept it, and blame the social pathologies of the inner city African Americans-- teenage pregnacies, unwed mothers, drugs, gangs-- for their plight. In the end, we just came to accept that there were people who would forever be on the outskirts of the larger American economy.

Today, that conditioning is being applied to a larger group of Americans. Instead of African Americans being left in hollowed out urban centers, it's IT workers who are left in pockets of America without jobs. In addition to racial discrimination, there's now open age discrimination.

Career professionals who've been unemployed for a year or more are now experiencing what life was like for those inner city African Americans who were also were unemployed for long periods of time.

Just like this country wrote off inner city African Americans in the 1980s, we are doing the same with a broader class of Americans today.

[Starry Messenger]

1. k & r

I haven't read the Krugman piece yet, good commentary Yavin.

[Yavin4]

2. It's A Good Piece by Krugman

I was struck by the similarities to the plight of inner city African Americans.

Look at the cities of Oakland and Richmond in California. These cities were established around the ship building industries during WWII. When those industries died off, the people were left there without the ability to support itself economically, and the government did nothing about their plight. They were abandoned.

Flash forward to today. Thousands of IT workers in the Silicon Valley, just south of Oakland and Richmond are also being economically abandonded without any government assistance or help.

[Starry Messenger]

4. I know exactly what you mean.

Lived in East Oakland and worked in Richmond. People of color were just left to rot after the war. I wonder what it is going to finally take for people to start fighting this crap. Arnold just declared a state of economic emergency in CA and state workers are getting squeezed again too. I'll read the Krugman piece, I'm glad you pointed out the history of where this all started.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

3. Welcome to the plutocracy..........

We're quickly becoming a nation of burger-flippers and Wal-Mart greeters.

Good Krugman article and good Yavin4 commentary. Rec.

[Blue_Tires]

5. ttt