Stupidity and Ignorance in the NYT

It makes me sad when I read something very wrong in a paper I like, but the NYT is doing that to me today. Their article “U.S. Jobless Rate May Soon Top Europe’s” starts as follows:

For many years, unemployment in the United States was lower than in Western Europe, a fact often cited by people who argued that the flexibility inherent in the American system — it is easier to both hire and fire workers than in many European countries — produced more jobs.

That is no longer the case. Unemployment in the United States has risen to European averages, and seems likely to pass them when international data for April is calculated.

“The current economic crisis,” wrote John Schmitt, Hye Jin Rho and Shawn Fremstad of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a research organization in Washington, “has turned the case for the U.S. model almost entirely on its head.”

It seems that the Center for Economic and Policy Research needs to relearn some fundamental economics. The US system is indeed good at creating jobs, but what is happening now is not the creation of new jobs, but the destruction of old ones. The American system is also much better than the European system at doing that. Europe is not beating the US in creating new jobs, they are simply better at protecting existing ones.
The real test of the US model will be when the recovery starts, not in the midst of the downturn. I’m willing to predict that the US recovery will be much more rapid and vigorous than anything that will be seen in the Western European welfare states. If this doesn’t happen, then maybe the Center for Economic and Policy Research can talk about systems being turned on their heads.