Borrowing this chart from Brad De Long, our most excellent econoblogger and polymath, to make a few points:

The mainstream media don't (doesn't?) talk about work in a way that fits the times. In the 50s, when I was a kid, and well past 1969, after which I needed income to buy food, roof over head, and so forth, in my country less than 58% of adults worked even in good times. The signified premise behind this statistic was what we saw, back in the day, in TV sitcoms: one adult, usually male, supported a family. Over time that adult, with hard work and a little luck, earned increasing income, bought a larger house, saw its value go up at least according to inflation, enjoyed the tax deduction of the mortgage interest and so earned a retirement "nest egg," and worked for the same employer for eight years or even more. The stay at home spouse raised the children. This was the occasionally maligned (especially in novels) The American Dream.

The downturn of 1974-6 marked the end of this particular Dream (just as I graduated law school and had a devil of a time finding work, as did my classmate Clarence Thomas, by the way). The single income earner model was too risky for most families. Women had to join the work force to make ends meet, and the rights revolution was just beginning to open doors for them at the same time. Perhaps their need to work made them bang a little harder on those doors, and possibly the men who needed help in earning the income were a little more willing to see the doors open. But in any event, after that downturn women entered the workforce to an increasing degree - because, among other reasons, families needed the money.

Divorce, families breaking into smaller units, people choosing to live alone, the old growing much older and living apart from the rest of their family members -- these are the other emerging characteristics of our America that contribute to a greater collective need for work. To put the point ridiculously, in a one-person family unit everyone needs to work to make ends meet. So in the good times, when work has been abundant, of the late 80s and the late 90s, the percentage of the population that has gone to work has increased. The high water mark of 2000 registered the remarkable fact that two-thirds of adults were working. The good news was that work was found everywhere; the bad news was that given the unrelenting trend of declining or only slightly rising income for 80% of so of Americans most everyone needed the money.

But since the end of the Clinton era's work-boom and the commencement of the era of indifference to what truly matters (my view of the Bush years), not so many Americans have been able to find work. I doubt very much that they who haven't worked have not needed the money. The current downturn will take the percentage of those working to below 60% for the first time in nearly a quarter-century.

Given the way Americans live now, what should be on television, if we had any true reality TV? What should be in the newspapers, if they weren't written for shareholders instead of income-earners and, sadly, former income-earners? What should be the way politicians describe the plight of our country? Our discourse is lacking. We know what is happening to ourselves, our friends, and our neighbors, but we don't see the truths of these hard times in the media or in the language of many of our leaders. The President, more than anyone, appears aware that in our country two-thirds need to work and yet we are heading rapidly toward the possibility that closer to half are able to find work. His budget recognizes that as the difference between those who need to work and those who can find work yawns greater and greater, it is an imperative to assure decent health care for everyone. It is imperative to keep everyone connected to the communications networks that define so much of our participation in society. It is imperative to create new jobs. These are imperatives because if we are to be a country of decency we must care about each other - but also because we are all better off economically if all those who need work and want work have work.

The stock market will go up, and it will go down. Economists will have to renew their efforts to figure out why, since previous explanations are insolvent. But it's when the opportunities for work rise or fall that Americans see the Dream live or die.

In the longer run, meaning sometime in the very near future, but not today, we have to find ways to create high and rising incomes for most people, and not just the tiny few at the very top of the skills and income and wealth ladders. We need to make investments today in the structural changes that will produce high and rising incomes. We can for example open a huge sector of the economy to long-term steady growth: I refer to the need to create a Green Bank that invests and attracts investment into alternative energy for many years after the stimulus legislation has expired. That Bank should be created in the pending energy legislation being written in Congress. But right now we need to increase greatly the number of jobs available in this country - far beyond the numbers that are possible with the stimulus, as wise and sound as that legislation in fact was.

We need a Congress that is demanding a conference on work. We need many new ideas for new work, work for youths and seniors and women and disabled and on and on. We need agencies that have stimulus money to figure out not just how to spend it quickly, but how to generate more jobs rather than fewer with the forms and methods of spending. We need loans that produce work and not just loans that preserve a handful of broken banks. We need projects, in energy and transportation, that attract private sector money so as to expand the amount of work.

We have a great new secretary of Labor and a fine new Administration that will be even better if it can get its nominees confirmed - and Congress should stay in session every day until that happens. With all this talent, there's no doubt that a relentless focus on work creation will succeed. That requires a microeconomic look at the economy. It requires a focus on markets and market structures. It requires a willingness to accept public-private partnerships, and quasi-governmental entities, and a variety of other flexible techniques to create work opportunities. But the answer to the question of whether we can create opportunities for all who need and want work is: yes, we can.