Are you brave enough to deal with THE CHART? [View all]

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Tue Jul 9, 2013, 01:00 PM - Edit history (3)

This chart is inconvenient, but not unimportant.

It identifies no villain. Whether this chart is explained by Obama being a bad egg, or the more sensible explanation that Republican obstructers are bad eggs, or a combination of both, the chart still exists.

It is a record of a reality, not merely a talking point or political football.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/a-potentially-tragic-taper/

This is a chart of the ratio of employed persons to the population, posted by Paul Krugman from Fed data. This measure can change due to demographics in the long term—older population, younger population, more women in the workforce, etc..

But we know the waterfall in 2008-2009 was not due to demographic trends. It's not like an extra 4% of the population all decided to retire early in 2008-2009 because they were so rich. The economy collapsed. A few million jobs went away. As the population continued to grow the economy was able to make barely enough jobs for that population growth, but not enough to repair the losses. One out of 20-25 jobs in America went to job-heaven and do not seem inclined to return.

Discuss. What does this mean to you? What does it mean about the political future short term and long term? What would you do to fix this, assuming it should be fixed?