Dean Baker, everyone’s favorite progressive economist (mine, too), has an interesting take on our unemployment problem.

Give more paid vacations.

Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen gave a speech a few weeks ago that was doubly unusual.

In the wake of an unprecedented period of high unemployment and amid turmoil overseas, a president stood before a joint session of Congress for his annual State of the Union address, offering a bold vision to expand economic opportunity, strengthen the middle class and reduce inequality. The year was 1944. The president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This bill will create a national jobs program, including 3.1 to 6.2 million jobs, and 1 to 2 million additional jobs indirectly over the first two years, in affordable housing, rural and urban community rehabilitation, energy conservation and weatherization, infrastructure repair, education, human services, and first response teams.