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I'm no economist, but I suspect that the difference between "bump in the road" and "hell in a handbasket' is unemployment.

Significant, long-term unemployment is what turns a recession into a depression. I used to think inflation was the culprit, but now I do not; working people in an inflationary economy still suffer, but as long as they are employed and earning some kind of income the suffering is limited to living lower off the hog while wages catch up to prices. A working man can accept the price of beer or gasoline going up fairly easily as long as he is steadily employed; he simply drives less and drinks less beer. In my household during the inflationary '70s, my folks called this "beans and cornbread" living; since the prices of staples like beans and cornbread remain relatively steady even in times of signficant inflation, survival becomes a matter of doing without luxuries, not necessities. "We'll just have to eat beans and cornbread until things get better."

But long-term unemployment is much more serious. Without income of some kind, even beans and cornbread (and rent and bus fare and laundry money) become luxuries, and doing without them for any length of time leds to misery, despair, and anger. It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that maintaining full employment is much more important than keeping prices low or inflation under control; without steady work, stomachs rumble -- and a man can only see his children go without for so long before he decides to Do Something. (And that "something" can be very serious, indeed.)

A working-class family that is used to doing without can endure periodic joblessness out of experience, living paycheck-to-paycheck and waiting for the next job to come along is par for the course, and low-wage labor is always in demand somewhere. But when long-term unemployment becomes endemic among the middle classes -- skilled artisans, educated technicians, small-practice professionals, and unionized labor -- that's when the real trouble begins.

What's the solution to our growing problem with long-term unemployment? I don't know. Federal jobs programs (WPA style) might be worth considering if the unemployment trend accelerates, but all the federal pump-priming in the world won't stimulate the economy if your workers have nothing to buy -- and at current rates of capital formation, industry is closing down widget factories, not building them.

One could also argue that what we need now is another World War. World War II pulled the U.S. out of the 1930s Depression, after all; total war on a global scale fires the economy as government provides both the capital (federal money) and the market (the military). Factories get built, Rosie the Riveter goes to work; and the products sold are"consumed" in battle, leading to ever-increasing demand. Presto, full employment!

However, the current trend towards automation has affected the military more than any other segment of society; the recent three-week conquest of Iraq is proof that in the future war will be a short, sharp, highly automated affair. There's no more need to build fleets of B-29s to firebomb Tokyo when a few "smart" cruse missiles can take out the Imperial General Staff building. Small groups of soldiers with high-tech battle gear can now perform tasks that would have required D-Day quantites of ships, planes, and men fifty years ago. One can only conclude that even with our current ongoing War on Terror this less-is-more trend will result not in massive growth in war industries but in mass layoffs, as assembly-lines building hundreds of planes are replaced by smaller highly-automated shops building super-accurate, super-survivable unmanned fighters by the dozens. Barring another truly global war (i.e. a war of survival between the United States and the rest of the world combined) or an invasion from space, we cannot hope for another war boom to rekindle the economy.

(And, of course, there's the human misery of a global war to consider.)

So what is to be done? Disciples of Friedman might well argue that a negative income-tax of some sort might be the solution; by simply paying the unemployed to stay home, the government might at least generate purchasing power where none existed before. (But where does the money come from?) Socialists likewise would advocate the insitution of a federally-funded "living wage", where janitors and broom-pushers are granted hourly wages of fifteen dollars an hour to enable them to live like human beings. (This will certainly spark growth in the bathroom-leaning and floor-sweeping automaton industries.)

But is either idea workable? I'm too uneducated to know.

I do know this: long-term unemployment among the former middle classes will lead to social upheaval if not ameliorated. Barring the introduction of Buchananite tarriffs, manufacturing employment will continue to decline until U.S. wages are equalized with those in the rest of the world; ultimately, every job that can be done by a machine or a sweatshop worker will eventually be done by them. (This goes double for non-manufacturing service jobs like software deveopment and systems administration). Service jobs will be lost at an ever increasing pace as American workers are replaced by outsourced foreign labor (agriculture and custodial work), automated service systems (banking, vending, etc.), and online commerce. In fact, the only industries that will not experience a massive drop in hiring are the medical fields (skilled nursing, hospital administration, etc.), creative professionals (artists, musicians -- but not actors!) and, of course, government and law enforcement. In a time of social chaos, policemen have the most secure jobs of all.

If I'm wrong about any of this, I'd welcome some learned correction.

What if Walmart said we will buy nothing made in China?

Thanks for the reply.

Well I wonder what is it going to take to turn the middle class unemployment around...will those tech jobs ever come back?

I don't know that this "globalization" is such a good idea after all...not only for jobs at home, but sort of all the world's eggs in one basket sort of thing.

I mean we've got basically a global recession, no?

On one hand it seems we were due a correction for all the excesses of the mid to late '90s, right? But I'm hearing really troubling news about our good middle class jobs going to India and the Phillipines.

I know the economy is not supposed to be a zero sum game...is it possible for the pie to be large enough to support us all at the level Americans are used to?