Paul Krugman’s recent New York Times column opens by comparing the labor situation in the U.S. and Europe:

Consider, for a moment, a tale of two countries. Both have suffered a severe recession and lost jobs as a result — but not on the same scale. In Country A, employment has fallen more than 5 percent, and the unemployment rate has more than doubled. In Country B, employment has fallen only half a percent, and unemployment is only slightly higher than it was before the crisis.

Don’t you think Country A might have something to learn from Country B?

This story isn’t hypothetical. Country A is the United States, where stocks are up, G.D.P. is rising, but the terrible employment situation just keeps getting worse. Country B is Germany, which took a hit to its G.D.P. when world trade collapsed, but has been remarkably successful at avoiding mass job losses.

What Krugman fails to mention is that unemployment in Germany was high before the crisis. In fact, in many European countries unemployment has been at what in the U.S. would be considered dire levels for decades.

By Krugman’s logic, what we really ought to do is start following the policies of Zimbabwe. After all, I hear that unemployment is actually down there this year (from 94% to 90%).

Of course, the fact that unemployment has tended to be higher in Europe than in the U.S. The question is why. For an answer to that, I’ll turn to another Nobel Prize winning Princeton economist, Paul Krugman. Writing back in the 1990s in Slate, Krugman wrote of high unemployment in France:

To an Anglo-Saxon economist, France’s current problems do not seem particularly mysterious. Jobs in France are like apartments in New York City: Those who provide them are subject to detailed regulation by a government that is very solicitous of their occupants. A French employer must pay his workers well and provide generous benefits, and it is almost as hard to fire those workers as it is to evict a New York tenant. New York’s pro-tenant policies have produced very good deals for some people, but they have also made it very hard for newcomers to find a place to live. France’s policies have produced nice work if you can get it. But many people, especially the young, can’t get it. And, given the generosity of unemployment benefits, many don’t even try.

This isn’t the first time that Krugman has made arguments that seem to be directly refuted by things he had previously said. Here, for example, is Krugman vs. Krugman on trade, and here he is on the budget deficit (note: the issue here isn’t that Krugman changed his mind; everyone does that; it’s that the arguments he gives for his new position are precisely the ones he had previously refuted). In the words of Steve Landsburg “time after time, Krugman leaves me wide-eyed with wonder at how much economics he has to forget to write those columns.”