Small businesses in Massachusetts, beset by the high cost of employing people, are reluctant to hire new workers. It makes sense, of course. A logical remedy would be to reduce or eliminate the government regulations that impede hiring (minimum wage and insurance requirements, as well as payroll taxes). It will not happen, of course.

Mort Zuckerman lays out the grim unemployment numbers for the nation as a whole. Like the Great Depression, this Great Recession will last for many years.

As the President introduces his new budget, which Fred Barnes believes is pathetic, it includes many foolish things, large and small, but perhaps the most foolish is his proposal to spend even more money on passenger rail service, as Robert Samuelson explains.

Irwin Stelzer explains how politics trumps economics, while Paul Krugman believes that politics, and an uninformed or misinformed public, is leading to GOP proposals that will eat the future.

Each of these columns has something valuable within it, even Krugman's column. At the core, in my opinion, is the fact that the general public does not have a good understanding of the realities of public spending at either the state or the federal level. That does not mean that there are not individuals out there who have such an understanding. It simply means that majorities cannot at present be found who do understand those realities. What are the realities? At the federal level, no real progress can be made at reigning in annual deficits or paring down the accumulated debt without either significantly raising taxes or cutting entitlement spending, or some combination of both. Here is a link to a simple pie chart representing the federal budget. Combine health care and pension programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the pensions and health care of all federal employees and retirees, including military) and you get to 44% of the entire pie. Add 24% for defense and you are talking about 68% before you even get to things like foreign aid, or rail service subsidies, and the like. As long as majorities can be found to defend these spending programs, we will continue to rack up huge deficits until a crisis point is reached.