What happens to a nation’s collective psyche when millions of once-productive people remain out of work for months or even years? What happens when unemployed husbands resign themselves to relying on a wife’s income, when unemployed wives feel trapped at home, when twenty- and thirtysomethings calculate that they’d rather live off their parents than face a cut-throat job market, when middle-aged men and women stop searching for jobs after realizing they’re hopelessly lost in a haze of rapid-fire technological change?

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Dear Annie: I have a very close friend who’s been out of work for almost a year now. He was my college roommate: I’ve known him for almost 20 years and, for about half that time, we worked at the same company. Then he got laid off. Last week one of my kids told me that my friend’s youngest son missed out on a ski trip with the rest of his class because of the expense, even though the cost was minimal (to those of us with jobs).

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