Putrid Lies:
The Skills Gap
31 March 2014
¶ Whether we were roused from our habitual complacent but tacit assent to almost everything that Paul Krugman has to say in his column at the Times by a wave of springlike weather or by an exceptional acuity of insight, we decided to begin a collection of Putrid Lies for use as a self-test. If you fail to smell the rank decay, then you must retire to the Nuisance Corner and compose an eloquent defense of the proposition in question. In today’s case, it concerns the alleged “skills gap.”
Unfortunately, the skills myth — like the myth of a looming debt crisis — is having dire effects on real-world policy. Instead of focusing on the way disastrously wrongheaded fiscal policy and inadequate action by the Federal Reserve have crippled the economy and demanding action, important people piously wring their hands about the failings of American workers.
Moreover, by blaming workers for their own plight, the skills myth shifts attention away from the spectacle of soaring profits and bonuses even as employment and wages stagnate. Of course, that may be another reason corporate executives like the myth so much.
Don’t listen to anyone from the One Percent who claims that the skills gap is a problem.