A Simple, Cost-Free Remedy for the Hard-Core Unemployed: View

Some day the economic slump will be over, and then where will we be? The slowdown has hit Americans hard, but not equally hard. The unemployment rate is 8.1 percent for white Americans. For Hispanics, it’s considerably higher -- 11.3 percent. And it’s almost double for blacks -- 15.9 percent.

The economic gap between the races has widened, partly because their job prospects have diverged. A recent study by the Pew Research Center reveals that the median household worth for whites was 20 times that for blacks and 18 times that for Hispanics in 2009. The differentials were roughly twice what they had been since 1984, when Pew first started tracking this data. The Great Recession has produced a less egalitarian society.