“Why Don’t the Unemployed Get Off Their Couches?” and Eight Other Critical Questions for Americans:
But aren’t there small-scale versions of economic “rebirths” occurring all over America?
Travel through some of the old Rust Belt towns of this country and you’ll quickly notice that “economic rebirth” seems to mean repurposing buildings that once housed factories and shipping depots as bars and boutiques. Abandoned warehouses are now trendy restaurants; a former radiator factory is an artisanal coffee shop. In other words, in a place where a manufacturing plant once employed hundreds of skilled workers at union wages, a handful of part-timers are now serving tapas at minimum wage plus tips.
Of course the thing about looking at any individual unemployed person is that you can always find something they can do to get a job, even more so when you don’t care what job they get. However, doing so for all of them is impossible in a situation where there are more unemployed than there are job offers.
