pass a bill to help states put thousands of teachers and firefighters and police officers back on the job. they should have passed a bill a long time ago to put thousands of construction workers back to work, rebuilding our roads and bridges and runways. he wants to hire more government workers. he says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. did he not get the message of wisconsin? joining us now for the interview is paul krugman, nobel prize-winning economist, new york times columnist, and the author most recently of end this depression now! and he does mean depression. paul krugman, thank you for being here. good to be on. government jobs are real jobs, obviously. i do not think of them as a huge proportion of the overall american economy. how much of a difference could it really make to the overall economy, the overall unemployment picture if we just hadn t lost all the public sector jobs? okay, the right comparison is if we had normal job growth in the p
all of the leader candidates for president on the republican side said they support personhood to outlaw the most common forms of contraception in the united states. that was at the federal level. at the state level, it has been an antiabortion free for all with more antiabortion legislation being introduced and passed than at any time since it became a legal constitutionally protected right to get an abortion in the country in the early 1970s. so after that laser like focus on jobs, jobs, jobs, by which i mean abortion, it seems like now maybe in this current news cycle, maybe, the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction, or at least people
let s solve this. since the 2010 elections which in republicans did so well, particularly in the states, america s republican party has been laser focused on jobs, jobs, jobs, by which i mean abortion. in the republican controlled house of representatives in washington, the third bill, the
know, i sometimes wake up with nightmares of actually ending up being an elementary schoolteacher or a high school schoolteacher, which would be a much harder job than i have now. do you really think those hard-working teachers have an easy time because they don t have they have too few students to teach? but the other thing is, look, we are in a depression. right now, public sector employment doesn t crowd out private sector employment, it s reversed. slashing those jobs is making our economy worse. this is not the time i think it s a stupid argument to say we need fewer schoolteachers, but for sure this is a really bad time to be laying them off. even if we didn t have enough, this might be a good time for some extras. that s right. and, by the way, the president also did say, you know, what about the potholes, which are proliferating, certainly, all over my state of new jersey. what about construction? what about repair? what about all this public spending we ve been cutting
one-by-one. the first one is jobs. focus on jobs. explain. he has to focus on jobs. that is the top concern for the american public. the labor force is at 30-year low. number of people working. that is a key concern to everyone. if they re not working, they can t afford the goods and services neil: if you simplify a jobs plan, what do you say? that s the beauty of herman cain. the 9-9-9 plan. we don t know what it is in it but it was able to remember. and romney put out a 57-pliant in the primary, but nobody is talking about it and nobody knows what is in it. neil: he has to keep it simple. the same with government spending and you say the more the government spends more it hurts government. right? exactly. we released a poll today to show that the american pub