Making Unemployment Work--3 Questions
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Unemployment is a pressing national problem and, for individuals, a personal crisis. And, unfortunately, lots of our friends, neighbors, and colleagues are in the midst of this experience. However, an MIT economist has been thinking about how the experience of being unemployed can be improved.In the News Office's 3 Questions series, MIT economist Ivan Werning, who teaches macroeconomic theory, talks about his proposal to change the length and level of unemployment benefits and how that might help the nation.
Comments
Pete Murphy
Thu, 01/07/2010 11:09am
Unemployment, both in the U.S. and the world as a whole, marches ever higher because the field of economics doesn't account for the relationship between population density and per capita consumption.
Following the beating the field of economics took over the seeming failure of Malthus' theory, economists adamantly refuse to ever again consider the effects of population growth. If they did, they might come to understand that once an optimum population density is breached, further over-crowding begins to erode per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment.
And these effects of an excessive population density are actually imported when a nation like the U.S. attempts to trade freely with other nations much more densely populated - nations like China, Japan, Germany, Korea and a host of others. The result is an automatic trade deficit and loss of jobs - tantamount to economic suicide.
Using 2006 data, an in-depth analysis reveals that, of our top twenty per capita trade deficits in manufactured goods (the trade deficit divided by the population of the country in question), eighteen are with nations much more densely populated than our own. Even more revealing, if the nations of the world are divided equally around the median population density, the U.S. had a trade surplus in manufactured goods of $17 billion with the half of nations below the median population density. With the half above the median, we had a $480 billion deficit!
If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit my web site at http://PeteMurphy.wordpress.com.
Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"
nancyds
Wed, 01/06/2010 2:14pm
Sorry - the link is fixed now!
Nancy
Dan Greenberg
Wed, 01/06/2010 11:08am
Oh, there you are Perry.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/3q-unemployment-0105.html
Dan Greenberg
Wed, 01/06/2010 11:07am
It seems this story is truncated. Is there a link to this research? More information (e.g., what the three questions are)?