I saw a diary at DailyKos the other day that I wanted to spread to just a little wider audience. Some are from the Economic Policy Institute and some are from other sources. I will reprint one of the graphs – it’s one that I’ve seen monthly for the past 3 years and think it speaks volumes as to why the Occupy Movement remains viable and is growing.
Calculated Risk
As you can see, horrific job losses continue 4 years after the month of peak employment. This is the longest such occurrence in modern history in the U.S. If we extrapolate that trend, employment numbers last seen in 2007 will finally be achieved in 2015. Meanwhile, population will increase and replacement jobs will continue to pay less than the originally held jobs.
At this point, it is worth pointing out that President Obama needs to start owning the economic conditions his policies have created. He can’t keep pointing to Congress as if they’re exclusively the problem while he tries to play Mr. Nice Guy in Washington. Americans don’t want Mr. Nice Guy and barely functional economic policies. They want fully functional policies and politicians that can get them enacted. Everything else is secondary.
In the larger scheme of things however, this graph shows one of the effects of Teabagger economic policy: longer and longer employment recoveries. Make no mistake, this is exactly the type of situation that the 1% want to occur. Will there be recoveries after the next couple of recessions? I still think we’re witnessing a new normal condition of our economy. How soon that theory is validated or refuted remains to be seen.
