Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman Wednesday called for more government spending and an end to U.S. austerity measures in a bid to jolt the sluggish economy back to life.

In a new book released this week, Krugman, a columnist at The New York Times, contended the Unite States was in a state of "depression" -- though one less dire than the Great Depression of the 1930s -- an assertion that runs counter to most economists' view that the economy is merely in a sluggish recovery from a major recession.

Krugman said the nearly 4 million long-term unemployed -- those out of work more than a year -- will have a "corrosive" impact on the economy and "do enormous damage" to the country in the long run.

"The magnitude of this disaster tends to get forgotten," he said during a talk at the Economic Policy Institute, adding that long-term unemployment will set back the careers of many young people for years to come, impacting not only incomes but also tomorrow's U.S. tax receipts.

The book, entitled "End This Depression Now," calls for a reversal of austerity measures on state and local governments, a boost in infrastructure spending and a short-term increase in unemployment insurance.

A large cash injection would get the economy back to full employment within two years and would be relatively easy to pull off, he wrote.

"People like me are not preaching some outlandish, radical economic theory," he said. "We're actually saying take your textbooks seriously. And take what we know, take what we've learned from economics from 80 years of experience and apply it to the situation."

He added that U.S. austerity measures have actually shrunk the economy, precisely the opposite of what they were intended to do.

Krugman takes umbrage with Republicans' theory that spending cuts will increase confidence, likening the concept to what he snarkishly called the "confidence fairy" -- a fictitious character that causes economic confidence to appear out of nowhere.

The book comes amid an ongoing rivalry between Democrats, many of whom assert that more spending will help get millions of U.S. jobless back to work, and Republicans who fear that adding to the already massive deficit could drive the country to financial ruin.

Krugman wrote that the 787-billion-U.S. dollar stimulus implemented in 2009 was the biggest job creation program in history, although it failed because it was too small.

Worse, he wrote, the stimulus's failure to bring jobs discredited the concept of spending to create jobs in the minds of many Americans voters.