Top 2009 Forecasters Saw High Unemployment - WSJ.com

Top 2009 Forecasters Saw High Unemployment - WSJ.com

More on Unemployment and Causes:

What you may be missing with salaries are several things:

1. As with any business, you pay what you have to for top talent. (In a normal environment, these high salaries should be promoting competition (not castigation or anger). The fact that more businesses aren't there to compete is what should be questioned (another subject).

2. As for a lack of raises for many workers, here again the government wants to obfuscate and hide the fact that it has increased the cost of all sorts of benefit programs - so added worker productivity gets channeled into support for such programs rather than into cash worker salaries.

(A subtle example is the 'cost-shifting' government uses to support Medicare and Medicaid programs. You wonder why your health insurance costs go up - well, there's a subsidy for the government programs you pay through higher prices than paid by government.)

3. As for younger workers, besides the crazy minimum wage laws or unions, there is the basic 'nut' of extra costs for employment. So, if the government requires this and that benefit, then jobs just don't get done or they're outsourced because the economic cost is higher than the utility benefit to the purchaser.

After years and years - and, it is vastly worse under Obama, Pelosi, etc. - the distortion in the economic utility equation just gets worse and worse. Thus, fewer jobs!