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Being out of a job can erode people's confidence and their sense of possibility and employers, often unfairly, tend to take long-term unemployment as a signal that something is wrong.

James Surowiecki

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James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Jobs
Employers
Often
Signals
Sense
Unemployment
Take
Tend
Long
Confidence
Something
Possibility
Unfairly
People
Term
Erode
Wrong
Signal

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If army ants are wandering around and they get lost, they start to follow a simple rule:Just do what the ant in front of you does. The ants eventually end up in a circle. There's this famous example of one that was 1,200 feet long and lasted for two days the ants just kept marching around and around in a circle until they died.
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The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable.
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The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization's benefits.
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Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.
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