AND IF JAPAN BOMBED PEAR HARBOR IN THE MORNING OF THIS DECEMBER 7TH...:

Ask yourself the hard question: What, exactly, will bring us back to full employment? [...]

But won't voters eventually demand more? Well, that's where I get especially pessimistic.

You might think that a persistently poor economy -- an economy in which millions of people who could and should be productively employed are jobless, and in many cases have been without work for a very long time -- would eventually spark public outrage. But the political science evidence on economics and elections is unambiguous: what matters is the rate of change, not the level.

Put it this way: If unemployment rises from 6 to 7 percent during an election year, the incumbent will probably lose. But if it stays flat at 8 percent through the incumbent's whole term, he or she will probably be returned to power. And this means that there's remarkably little political pressure to end our continuing, if low-grade, depression.

Someday, I suppose, something will turn up that finally gets us back to full employment. But I can't help recalling that the last time we were in this kind of situation, the thing that eventually turned up was World War II.

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