It's Not Whining, It's Real Recession Misery

With the Sept. 5 report that the unemployment rate rose from 5.7 percent to 6.1 percent in August, there are now 9.4 million unemployed people, including 1.8 million long-term unemployed. Meanwhile, inflation is up to 5.6 percent, making for a combined "misery index" of 11.7 percent.

Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, agrees that while some conservatives pooh-pooh the concerns about the deteriorating state of the economy as "whining," those same critics on the right are likely to find themselves embarrassed as these negative unemployment trends continue. As Mishel notes in this interview, the latest unemployment report should shift the policy debate away from conservative sloganeering about more tax cuts for corporations and cutting government spending, and toward a real debate about investments in our economy that will produce jobs and repair our broken infrastructure.