Guess what? The President is absolutely correct. If the country's productivity, as measured in standard economic terms (the amount of labor input to produce units of economic output), was the same now as it was 10-15 years ago, there would be no unemployment problem.

But that's not correct either. There still would be an unemployment problem, but for a different reason. If the productivity of the U.S. remained the same as it was 10-15 years ago, we'd still have unemployment because other countries with whom we compete have also achieved substantially improved productivity, in some cases even moreso than the U.S. If U.S. productivity rermained the same as is was a decade ago, we simply couldn't compete in world markets because our products and services would be much more costly than those produced elsewhere in the world. For that reason, we'd still have lots of unemployment because we'd have become non-competitive.

The President is correct. A significant part of our current unemployment has resulted from our increasing ability to produce goods and services with a substantially lower amount of labor input, with resulting unemployment. The only real way to reduce unemployment from it's current level is to increase economic activity--sales of our products and services--faster than our productivity increases.

That BBQman, is a far cry from the Ludditeism that you've accused the President of practicing.

Sometimes I'm amazed at how people take soundbites of what political opponents say, then either don't understand them or don't bother to think about them, all for the purpose of being critical. That's exactly what you did in this case.