FURTHER LEFT THAN ATTENTION IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, DEEPER TROUBLES IN THE ECONOMY?

The public doesn't need to search for far right views, including the views farthest right. The media push such views forward -- most notoriously on the Fox channel, of one thing. The sam cannot be said for views on the left. The spectrum offered falls short of bringing on Paul Krugman prominently (as on PBS) very often, with his apprehensions about one or another stimulus being too little and being cut too early, with his disgust, too, at the callousness and confusion that leads to unemployment insurance lapsing for so many. The media do not bring the views of Noam Chomsky forward either, in spite of Chomsky's unsettling record of extreme good sense. The upshot, however, for the general public is only misgivings about the slowness with which full employment seems to be returning. Even Krugman seems not to be ready to suggest that full employment may not return at all, that we may have run out of Keynesian soltions to stimulate the economy, even if we press them vigorously. The time has come, perhaps, to fall back from Keynes to Marx. Marx much admired the impressive performance of capitalism as a system for promoting economic growth, but he held that in time the performance would falter: booms would be shorter, and busts longer. In time -- maybe now -- we have to face an economic reality in which large-scale unemployment under capitalism is irreducible. What then can be done? The central thing to do would be a permanent program for public employment, which would expand when unemployment in the private sector explanded and contract when and to the extent that private employment increased. By regular rotation, workers with special skills in construction, for example, would use those skills in the public sector when they were not demanded in the private sector. Would this be "socialism" ? Until we can use the term intelligently, perhaps the term "socialislm" should be relegated to the sidelines. On the field itself, the game could allow for a vigorous private sector and even aim at making it more vigorous all the time.