Yesterday, Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman spoke at EPI about his new book, End this Depression Now! A key point of the book and his speech is that there’s a common and very wrong belief that the economy is like a morality play: Lots of people made irresponsible decisions in the run-up to the economic collapse, and, like a hangover, they must now suffer the consequences of their actions.

As Krugman points out, the majority of the people who have been hurt by this crisis do not deserve the blame. Over eight million people lost their jobs and, with an unemployment rate of more than 8 percent for more than three years now, many of those same workers, along with new entrants to the labor market, have been unable to find jobs. Their jobs disappeared through no fault of their own, and the pace of their return is nowhere near sufficient to get everyone back to work anytime soon.

More importantly, Krugman points out that, unlike a hangover that needs to be waited out, we could easily fix the economy now and put these millions of people back to work. First, we should halt the fiscal austerity efforts that recently doomed the British economy. Second, we should embark on aggressive fiscal expansion to boost consumer and business spending, stimulating demand for goods and services and creating jobs. As Krugman notes, this is basic Econ 101. All we need is the political will.