Thus The New York Times today. “Five years into an economic recovery in which corporate profits have surged, the number and quality of jobs are still lagging badly, as are wages and salaries,” elaborates the newspaper. Pitiful but true. If it can be called a recovery at all, it is only for the few. But there are two underlying causes of the conundrum. To begin with, years of quantitative easing have bolstered the profits without having much of an effect on new investment. The Fed’s bubble is hard to hide. On top of that, much of the investment has gone into replacing labor with capital. As far as modern capitalists are concerned, there would be no labor left in an ideal world. Zilch. Everything would be done by robots of one sort or another. They are costly, but they are a joy to work with. The trouble with this ideal is that robots are lousy customers. The only solution to the puzzle is for the government to dole out the money to the unemployed so as to buttress their purchasing power. Taxes go up with profits, after all. This is politically unimaginable, though. And especially in the States. So, what will happen with labor tomorrow? The number and quality of jobs will keep lagging, and so will wages and salaries. Recovery, what recovery?