Labor Pains

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

-Krug, man

Well, lives may be blighted by the absence of food and shelter and clothing and entertainment and all the things that present arrangements demand money to acquire, but the absence of jobs? What? Oh, god, my life is going to be so debased, like, spiritually if I do not spend it grinding in a perpetual circle as a greasy cog in the satanic machine. I mean, I know that some people find themselves fortunately plugged into a remunerative avocation, bopping out biweekly columns from some leafy Princeton study, but most of us, even those of us fortunate enough to more or less like our jobs, would gladly do without.

But let's stipulate that what people need are jobs. Hey, Krugman, doing what?