Before the Fall, What Goes First Again?

Published in 1929, before the October '29 stock market crash, which led to America's Great Depression from '29 to '39. 

"Our national wealth increased by more than 35% in the last decade... We have no unemployment worth mentioning." (From In Behalf of Advertising.) 

High Unemployment Leads to Pogroms?

"Bear markets of sufficient size appear to bring about a desire to slaughter groups of successful people. In 1793-1794, radical Frenchmen guillotined countless members of high society. In the 1930s, Stalin slaughtered Ukrainians. In the 1940s, Nazis slaughtered Jews. In the 1970s, Communists in Cambodia and China slaughtered the affluent. In 1998, after their country's financial collapse, Indonesians went on a rampage and slaughtered Chinese merchants."

-- Bob Prechter, Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior, p. 270

Obama Not Helping the Unemployed?

Interesting link about the job market and excerpt below:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1752

We’ve spent the last seventy years increasing the hidden overhead and downside risks associated with hiring a worker — which meant the minimum revenue-per-employee threshold below which hiring doesn’t make sense has crept up and up and up, gradually. This effect was partly masked by credit and asset bubbles, but those have now popped. Increasingly it’s not just the classic hard-core unemployables (alcoholics, criminal deviants, crazies) that can’t pull enough weight to justify a paycheck; it’s the marginal ones, the mediocre, and the mildly dysfunctional.

If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, you’re not paying attention. It’s a recipe for long-term structural unemployment at European levels of 10%, 15%, and up. What’s even crazier is that the Obama administration wants to respond to this problem by…raising taxes and piling more regulatory burden on employers.

Raise the cost of something fungible, and demand usually falls. Raise the cost of hiring someone, and unemployment usually rises.

California's Unemployment Fund Problem

From the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst's Office:

The Unemployment Insurance fund is currently insolvent. In its most recent fund forecast, the Employment Development Department projects that the fund will experience a year-end deficit of $7.4 billion in the 2009 calendar year, rising to $18.4 billion in 2010 and $27.2 billion in 2011.

Perhaps this explains why the unemployed might be having a harder time getting approved for benefits.

Interactive Unemployment Chart (2009)

The NYT published this interactive unemployment chart, showing rates of unemployment nationwide:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/03/us/20090303_LEONHARDT.html