Recommended: What's Wrong with America's Economy

This week's Economist has a good article, What's wrong with America's economy?  Worth reading and thinking about. The two paragraphs that got my attention are:

Youth unemployment is especially high, and joblessness among the young leaves lasting scars. Strong productivity growth has been achieved partly through the elimination of many mid-skilled jobs. And what makes this all the more worrying is that, below the radar screen, America had employment problems long before the recession, particularly for lesser-skilled men. These were caused not only by sweeping changes from technology and globalisation, which affect all countries, but also by America’s habit of locking up large numbers of young black men, which drastically diminishes their future employment prospects. America has a smaller fraction of prime-age men in work and in the labour force than any other G7 economy. Some 25% of men aged 25-54 with no college degree, 35% of high-school dropouts and almost 70% of black high-school dropouts are not working .

Beyond the toll to individuals, the lack of work among less-skilled men could have huge fiscal and social consequences. The cost of disability payments is some $120 billion (almost 1% of GDP) and rising fast. Male worklessness has been linked with lower marriage rates and weakening family bonds.

Along the same lines it is worth reading Don't Mean to be Rude, but the Economy Sucks, by Henry Blodget on the Business Insider website. It's not an upbeat view, but worth reading and thinking about anyway. Once again, I have to fault the Democrats and the Obama administration for wasting so much time and political capital on the health care bill while the economy continued to go South.