It's As In, 'Stick a Fork in Him, He's Done'

The FLUBA Committee on Meritorious Service in Providing Feedback for Impolite Company recognizes Econopundit Steve Antler for:

Using a truly complex mixed metaphor (someone has to "lay down a marker that Steve Antler writes with forked tongue") Brad DeLong proves I'm doing something other than economics by demanding my numbers be adjusted....

Okay Brad, listen up. I'm just a working class guy teaching at a working class university. EconoPundit is blue collar, and he keeps things simple. He tries to stay away from charts his readers don't know how to duplicate or (adjust if they want).

I know you Berkeley guys have all this economic sophistication we Midwest rubes lack, but Brad, try to get this....

We've moved out of a world with more-frequent recessions but shorter job search times, into a world with fewer recessions and longer job search times. But is the working class (to which I belong, remember) ready to join Krugman's Committee for the Return to Depression Economics?

Polling data say "no", and maybe there's a good reason.

Don't just look at average duration of unemployment, but also look at price-corrected quarterly unemployment insurance benefits per unemployed person....

Well, just bless my forked-keyboard (or whatever one uses to "write" with a "forked tongue")! Doesn't it look like real quarterly unemployment benefits per unemployed person have trended upward over the past half century?

So we live in a world of fewer recessions, longer job-search-time, and higher benefits per person. Maybe that's why everyone is so optimistic.

As well as the Chief, James Bennett, who manages to confront the Edward Scissorhands of Berkeley Blogging without becoming a non-person.