Tag: ek Politics

First of all you have to give up the idea that “money” has any utility except as a medium of exchange.

If you have a goat or a camel you can milk it, you can eat it and use the hide, AND you can make cute little baby goats and camels.  On the other hand they eat and are smelly and ill tempered.  Gold is shiny and pretty, non-reactive and a good electrical conductor, as well as being easy to shape and bend.  You can’t eat it or use it for tools (try tightening a bolt with a solid gold wrench).

Now whether it’s Dollars or Gold or Yap Island Rais the essential concept of “money” is that it is something that you can trade for a goat should you happen to need one for milk or meat (not to mention those cute little baby goats) without the inconvenience and stink of actually being a goat herder.

Moreover if you’re weighing the economic advantage of camels v. goats (you can ride them and use them to haul heavy things, on the other hand they spit at you and bite you) instead of figuring out how many goat carts makes a camel load you can go to the magical free marketplace and find out how many carved stone doughnuts it takes to get one.

And it gives you an easy way to deal with fractional goats.  How much is a a haircut worth?  A pair of shoes?  A suit?

Because of it’s adaptable and arbitrary nature “money” is a useful measure of the difference in societal desire between various objects.  This is one reason inflation is economically useful, because it encourages investment in actual goats and camels that produce milk and meat and stinky little goats and camels rather than simply holding hoards of rocks you can’t eat.  There are no cute little baby golds.

“Money” is a lousy store of value.

There is over $700 Trillion of ‘notional’ value floating around in the magical free market place.  This is enough to buy all the little goats and camels for 30 years but that’s not a problem if you don’t need one right now so you can sacrifice to the gods and read the entrails for augury.  Should everyone need ALL THOSE GOATS AT ONCE RIGHT NOW! there is literally not enough “money” in the world, even including camels.  Store of value?  Goats 1, Rocks 0.

It’s really all about convenience.

Nobody wants to smell like a goat herder and hard think make brain hurt.  Especially pampered privileged Masters of the Universe types.  They whine and complain not only over their pwecious wittle fee fees but are constantly surprised when the magical marketplace doesn’t conform to their ignorant expectations.

Ah, if only we had less uncertainty.  And it was a bad lie, I’m taking a mulligan, it’s not that I’m a horrible golfer at all.

Dollar dominance is a historical oddity.  It’s partly a result of the fact that after WW II we were the only economy left standing.  It’s also a result of elite intellectual laziness and the fact that there are penalties for being the world’s reserve currency.

Felix TV: Will the US downgrade be a nonevent?

Felix Salmon, Reuters

Jul 27, 2011 12:50 EDT

The fact is that Treasury bonds are going to remain the global fixed-income benchmark, simply because there’s no alternative. There are $9.3 trillion in marketable Treasury securities outstanding – that’s five times the debt stock of triple-A countries like France, Germany, or the UK. And when it comes to liquidity, the gap is even bigger: daily Treasury volume of $580 billion is 17 times higher than the next most liquid triple-A security, UK gilts. And UK gilts are denominated in pounds, which is hardly a global reserve currency; they’re certainly not much use for, say, financial institutions needing collateral for their dollar-based triparty repo transactions.

Please remember that criticising Barack Obama and his failed economic policies is racist.

Recession Study Finds Hispanics Hit the Hardest

By SABRINA TAVERNISE, The New York Times

Published: July 26, 2011

WOODBRIDGE, Va. – Hispanic families accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any ethnic and racial group in the country during the recession, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Foundation.

The study, which used data collected by the Census Bureau, found that the median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66 percent from 2005 to 2009. By contrast, the median wealth of whites fell by just 16 percent over the same period. African Americans saw their wealth drop by 53 percent. Asians also saw a big decline, with household wealth dropping 54 percent.

The declines have led to the largest wealth disparities in the 25 years that the bureau has been collecting the data, according to the report.

Median wealth of whites is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, double the already marked disparities that had prevailed in the decades before the recent recession, the study found.

Electoral victory my ass.

Obama leaves Hispanic activists unsatisfied

By David Nakamura, The Washington Post

Posted at 10:25 AM ET, 07/26/2011

Appearing at a luncheon at the Wardman Park Marriott for the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the country, Obama sought to shore up support from a critical pillar of the coalition that got him elected in 2008. It did not go as smoothly as the president might have hoped.

…

(T)he crowd was not completely convinced. A group of students stood during the president’s remarks, in a silent protest against his policies. And at a news conference afterward, La Raza President Janet Murguía said Obama had failed the Latino community.

“We’re not satisfied the president has kept his promise,” she said. “On the issue of immigration reform, it’s fair to say that we didn’t hear anything new.”

Netroots Nation 2011, Immigration and the Power of the Latino Vote: Why Harry Reid Came Back and Alex Sink Sunk–

It is a category error to consider Barack Obama a Democrat.

Elizabeth Drew Wants a Better President, Also a Pony

By: Scarecrow, Firedog Lake

Monday July 25, 2011 11:24 am

You can hardly blame the growing number of decent folks, long respected, admired writers like Elizabeth Drew, who are now, or still, calling on Barack Obama to stop being a wimp, a disappointment, a terrible negotiator, or a betrayer to his people, principles and Party and become a better President. But he won’t, people, so what’s plan B?

I’m a great fan of Ms. Drew; have been for, um, decades. In her now widely seen article, she joins many others urging Mr. Obama to just say no to the economic terrorists holding the government, its credit, its finances and its functions hostage. Just demand a clean, no strings bill to raise the debt limit and tell the nation, and the Tea-GOP, that he’s had enough. The nation would cheer.

The problem with all such urgings is they assume the President is being forced to accept terrible public policy, and that only a stiffer spine, backed by his supporters, or perhaps a more clever bargaining strategy, would release the inner President he keeps hidden.

…

There is ample evidence, delivered almost daily in his press conferences and statements by his closest advisers, that he deeply believes in the economic austerity, confidence fairy, and debt hysteria notions that fully account for this public positions. The President and his men simply support terrible policies.

If for no other reason than naked political self preservation, the nominal leaders of the Democratic Party should be disconnecting from the suicide pact Mr. Obama wants them to sign. But where is the evidence they understand this?

In the Senate, Harry Reid is fashioning an alternative plan for his Party to self destruct. It even includes another anti-democratic Cat Food Commission to finish the job. What political genius came up with the idea that an acceptable out would be to slash federal spending during a still possible depression by $2.6 trillion or so, with or without new taxes, and putting the family jewels at risk again, as the best way to appease the terrorists? What will the terrorists demand next as they dismantle government’s ability to function?

Obama takes political, policy gamble on ‘big deal’

By Zachary A. Goldfarb, The Washington Post

Published: July 24

Obama’s political advisers have long believed that securing such an agreement would provide an enormous boost to his 2012 campaign, according to people familiar with White House thinking. In particular, they want to preserve and improve the president’s standing among political independents, who abandoned Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections and who say reining in the nation’s debt is a high priority.

…

The risk for Obama now is that his pursuit of a far-reaching package could deeply disappoint his Democratic allies who believe he may be giving away too much. By calculating that an ambitious plan to reduce the nation’s debt by $4 trillion over 10 years is so important, he’s willing to endanger one of the best weapons in his party’s arsenal – the argument that Democrats will protect Medicare and Social Security at all costs.

…

Administration officials said the shift fits with Obama’s vision of what his presidency should look like.

…

Obama is focused on the views of independent voters in the general election. In polls, independents still show support for Obama, but his numbers have come down significantly since he took office.

“He sees the achievement of a big deal as a way to reach out effectively to the kinds of independent and moderate voters who supported him so strongly in 2008 and who have become somewhat disaffected in the interim,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

A deal would also help Obama inoculate himself against criticism from Republicans that he has failed to tame the debt.

“It benefits him politically a great deal if there’s a big deal,” said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy and a co-founder of Third Way, a left-leaning group that has been supporting an ambitious plan. “The deficit favors Republicans. But if it seems like it’s been solved, then you take away one of the biggest Republican issues and at worst you neutralize it and at best you win it.”

Left leaning?

And how is that working out for you?

Public Policy Polling as cited by John Aravosis and Taylor Marsh–

For the first time since last July Barack Obama does not lead Mitt Romney in PPP’s monthly national poll on the 2012 Presidential race. Romney has now pulled into a tie with the President at 45%.

Obama’s approval rating this month is 46% with 48% of voters disapproving of him. There are 2 things particularly troubling in his numbers: independents split against him by a 44/49 margin, and 16% of Democrats are unhappy with the job he’s doing while only 10% of Republicans give him good marks. Republicans dislike him at this point to a greater extent than Democrats like him and that will be a problem for him moving forward if it persists.

…

Obama’s numbers are worse than they appear to be on the surface. The vast majority of the undecideds in all of these match ups disapprove of the job Obama’s doing but aren’t committing to a candidate yet while they wait to see how the Republican field shakes out.

How undecideds change the race if you allocate them based on their approval/disapproval of Obama-

CNN Poll: Drop in liberal support pushes Obama approval rating down

By: CNN Political Unit

July 22nd, 2011, 01:01 PM ET

Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama’s approval rating is down to 45 percent, driven in part by growing dissatisfaction on the left with the president’s track record in office, according to a new national survey.

…

“But drill down into that number and you’ll see signs of a stirring discontent on the left,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Thirty-eight percent say they disapprove because President Obama has been too liberal, but 13 percent say they disapprove of Obama because he has not been liberal enough – nearly double what it was in May, when the question was last asked, and the first time that number has hit double digits in Obama’s presidency.”

Looking at that figure another way, roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he’s not been liberal enough.

Obama’s approval rating among liberals has dropped to 71 percent, the lowest point in his presidency. And the number of Democrats who want the party to renominate Obama next year, now at 77 percent, is relatively robust by historical standards but is also down a bit since June.

“It’s likely that this is a reaction to some of Obama’s recent actions, including his willingness to discuss major changes in Social Security and Medicare as part of the debt ceiling negotiations,” adds Holland.

Vicious Cycles: Why Washington is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse

Robert Reich

Monday, July 25, 2011

We now live in parallel universes.

One universe is the one in which most Americans live. In it, almost 15 million people are unemployed, wages are declining (adjusted for inflation), and home values are still falling. The unsurprising result is consumers aren’t buying – which is causing employers to slow down their hiring and in many cases lay off more of their workers. In this universe, we’re locked in a vicious economic cycle that’s getting worse.

The other universe is the one in which Washington politicians live. They are now engaged in a bitter partisan battle over how, and by how much, to reduce the federal budget deficit in order to buy enough votes to lift the debt ceiling.

The two universes have nothing whatever to do with one another – except for one thing. If consumers can’t and won’t buy, and employers won’t hire without customers, the spender of last resort must be government. We’ve understood this since government spending on World War II catapulted America out of the Great Depression – reversing the most vicious of vicious cycles. We’ve understood it in every economic downturn since then.

Until now.

When you’ve lost Jeralyn…

• Raising Medicare to 67: Not an Acceptable Option
• How Obama Has Failed Us
• What Obama Should Be Saying
• How Our Debt Rose to $14.3 Trillion: Blame Congress
• Monday Morning Message for Democrats: Get Up Off Your Knees

This time from Herr Doktor Professor-

Messing With Medicare

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: July 24, 2011

(A)ccording to many reports, the president offered both means-testing of Medicare benefits and a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. The first would be bad policy; the second would be terrible policy. And it would almost surely be terrible politics, too.

The crucial thing to remember, when we talk about Medicare, is that our goal isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, defined in terms of some arbitrary number. Our goal should be, instead, to give Americans the health care they need at a price the country can afford. And throwing Americans in their mid-60s off Medicare moves us away from that goal, not toward it.

For Medicare, with all its flaws, works better than private insurance. It has less bureaucracy and, hence, lower administrative costs than private insurers. It has been more successful in controlling costs. While Medicare expenses per beneficiary have soared over the past 40 years, they’ve risen significantly less than private insurance premiums. And since Medicare-type systems in other advanced countries have much lower costs than the uniquely privatized U.S. system, there’s good reason to believe that Medicare reform can do a lot to control costs in the future.

…

It’s true that Medicare expenses could be reduced by requiring high-income Americans to pay higher premiums, higher co-payments, etc. But why not simply raise taxes on high incomes instead? This would have the great virtue of not adding another layer of bureaucracy by requiring that Medicare establish financial status before paying medical bills.

But, you may say, raising taxes would reduce incentives to work and create wealth. Well, so would means-testing: As conservative economists love to point out in other contexts – for example, when criticizing programs like food stamps – benefits that fall as your income rises in effect raise your marginal tax rate. It doesn’t matter whether the government raises your taxes by $1,000 when your income rises or cuts your benefits by the same amount; either way, it reduces the fraction of your additional earnings that you get to keep.

So what’s the difference between means-testing Medicare and raising taxes? Well, the truly rich would prefer means-testing, since they would end up sacrificing no more than the merely well-off.

How so Herr Doktor Professor?

(T)he difference between means-testing and just collecting a bit more taxes? The answer is, class warfare – not between the rich and poor, but between the filthy rich and the merely affluent. For a tax rise would get a significant amount of revenue from the very, very rich (because they have so much money), while means-testing would end up imposing the same burden on $400,000 a year working Wall Street stiffs that it imposes on billion-a-year hedge fund managers.

What we need is actual control of health costs. Means-testing of Medicare is just a badly designed, unfair form of taxation.

Of course, it’s possible that the reason the president is offering to undermine Medicare is that he genuinely believes that this would be a good idea. And that possibility, I have to say, is what really scares me.

Why Medicare Is the Solution – Not the Problem

Robert Reich

Friday, July 22, 2011

Americans spend more on health care per person than any other advanced nation and get less for our money. Yearly public and private healthcare spending is $7,538 per person. That’s almost two and a half times the average of other advanced nations.

Yet the typical American lives 77.9 years – less than the average 79.4 years in other advanced nations. And we have the highest rate of infant mortality of all advanced nations.

…

(A)dministrative costs eat up 15 to 30 percent of all healthcare spending in the United States. That’s twice the rate of most other advanced nations. Where does this money go? Mainly into collecting money: Doctors collect from hospitals and insurers, hospitals collect from insurers, insurers collect from companies or from policy holders.

…

Medicare’s administrative costs are in the range of 3 percent. That’s well below the 5 to 10 percent costs borne by large companies that self-insure. It’s even further below the administrative costs of companies in the small-group market (amounting to 25 to 27 percent of premiums). And it’s way, way lower than the administrative costs of individual insurance (40 percent). It’s even far below the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare.

…

Estimates of how much would be saved by extending Medicare to cover the entire population range from $58 billion to $400 billion a year. More Americans would get quality health care, and the long-term budget crisis would be sharply reduced.

Dictatorship.  Enabling Act.

These terms are not too strong to use in response to the latest obscenity being floated by the Billionaire Bootlicking Beltway Versailles Villager Idiot Evil Elite.

Evil ek?

The proposal “on the table” for a joint bi-partisan “Super Committee” is nothing less than taking away your right to vote.

It doesn’t get any more fundamentally evil than that.

Taking away our right to vote?

Elections have consequences, for now.  If your party loses you lose Committee Chairmanships, Members, and Votes.  You lose your ability to advance your agenda whether it be progressive or radically reactionary.  “More and Better”?  Under this proposal you could have a “Democratic” Super Majority of 80% and the Rump Republican Teabagger Twenty Percent would have equal representation, equal influence, and no majority however large elected by the people regardless of the margin of victory would be able to stop them.

Of course as we have seen no super majority is enough for the cowardly “Democratic” Party and their leader, Barack Obama.

Teddy Partridge is not wrong to compare it with the fall of the Roman Republic-

One phase critical to undermine democracy and set citizens’ constitutional protections aside is when The Owners replace the people’s elected representatives (proven dysfunctional through a series of invented ’emergencies’) with a super-governing body of Owners’ Overseers to decide what’s best for everyone.

…

Stripping the people’s elected representatives of their constitutional right to legislate is a crucial step in ensuring that messy democratic principles no longer interfere in the upward escalator of wealth.

This is nothing new, of course: when Caesar crossed the Rubicon he effectively implemented imperium within Rome, something previously prohibited for generals serving in the territories and provinces ruled by the imperium but outside Rome. A general ‘crossing the Rubicon’ was seen to be subverting the people’s elected representatives with military might under his command. It hadn’t happened until Caesar did it.

But things were going so badly in Rome on January 10th, 49BC! No one remembers exactly what was going quite so wrong, anymore; we only remember that representative Roman democracy ended that day.

Only one question remains for our current Old Congress: will they flee in fear and with their dignity intact as the people’s representatives, as did Pompey and the elected Roman pro-consuls and Senators? Because it seems, observers, that if Ryan Grim’s Super Congress reporting is true, alea iacta est : the die is cast.

This is why there is a United States.  Our Founders fought a war for freedom from exactly this kind of tyranny.  Our “Greatest Generation” died in droves on the Normandy beachheads and around the world to prevent exactly this kind of corporate fascism.

If you will stand by and let tyrants take your liberty you are a Quisling, a Benedict Arnold who had at least the excuse of poor treatment and did great things in service of country before turning traitor.

I found a piece, again by Kevin Gosztola, last night.  Titled In Support of the Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers it has excerpts of 13 statements of support collected from The World Can’t Wait website.

The highlighted contributors are-

• Susan Sarandon
• Dr. Cornel West
• Mark Ruffalo
• Gloria Steinem
• Nawal El Saadawi
• David Straithairn
• Boots Riley
• Edward Asner
• Richard Falk
• Kathleen and Henry Chalfant
• Jeff Kaye

There are many more statements here and Kevin Gosztola urges you to send your own statement to- debrasweet_at_worldcantwait.net (replace that _at_ with a shifted 2).

Public Policy Polling as cited by John Aravosis and Taylor Marsh–

For the first time since last July Barack Obama does not lead Mitt Romney in PPP’s monthly national poll on the 2012 Presidential race. Romney has now pulled into a tie with the President at 45%.

Obama’s approval rating this month is 46% with 48% of voters disapproving of him. There are 2 things particularly troubling in his numbers: independents split against him by a 44/49 margin, and 16% of Democrats are unhappy with the job he’s doing while only 10% of Republicans give him good marks. Republicans dislike him at this point to a greater extent than Democrats like him and that will be a problem for him moving forward if it persists.

…

Obama’s numbers are worse than they appear to be on the surface. The vast majority of the undecideds in all of these match ups disapprove of the job Obama’s doing but aren’t committing to a candidate yet while they wait to see how the Republican field shakes out.

How undecideds change the race if you allocate them based on their approval/disapproval of Obama-

Those are terrible numbers.  Do you think it might have anything to do with this?

Mitch McConnell for President! Or, No Wonder Ed Schultz Is Confused

By: Scarecrow, Firedog Lake

Wednesday July 20, 2011 11:00 am

The saddest part of Jane Hamsher’s interview on Ed’s show last night was listening to Ed groan in the background as Ms. Hamsher calmly explained that it was his supposedly Democratic President who was insisting on putting Social Security and Medicare at risk as a condition for avoiding a default on the national debt. How could this be?

Ed’s cognitive dissonance only got worse when Ms. Hamsher noted that Mitch McConnell’s original “clean” debt limit bill would have been acceptable, but the Democrat Harry Reid, on orders from the White House, demanded the bill be made “dirty” enough with harmful spending cuts to attract Tea-GOP votes. So when she pointed out this absurd revision was designed to make up for giving away the store last December in extending the Bush-Obama tax cuts, he couldn’t handle it.

But who can blame poor Ed, one of cable television’s most ardent liberal defenders, for snapping, wondering who is on whose side? One can only handle so much betrayal and cognitive dissonance before the mind’s defenses kick in to invent excuses for why your heroes only appear to be nuts.

…

So now we get to watch Harry Reid be the puppet for the CREEPs working for Mr. Obama as he turns a clean, common sense, analytically correct solution from Mr. McConnell into a “dirty” bill that slashes spending by a trillion and a half dollars or so and sets up procedures that allow Congress to slash more and be even less accountable and transparent than it already is. And the most tempting logical targets for the slashers in this process will be Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

The White House is not content with that terrible solution. No, they want something worse, like the Gang of Six mess whose framework and priorities mimic those of the Cat Food Commission. Since the media views only the debt reduction totals as the measure of the public interest, they have conveniently forgotten that the Simpson-Bowles recommendations, like the Gang of Six version, would worsen the inequality and maldistribution of the nation’s wealth.

That’s right. These geniuses believe the nation’s fiscal and economic problems stem from the richest not being favored enough and everyone else not giving enough to shared sacrifice. At the end of the day, the middle class and poor would be worse off, the wealthy would be even richer, and that outcome is what has the millionaires in the US Senate excited. They and their contributors would win, the rest of you would lose.

TheMomCat and I have been persuaded by long time contributor davidseth’s advocacy to support the California Prisoner’s Hunger Strike (commonly called the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike, though it has spread to other institutions).

What that means for you as readers and contributors is that we’ll be featuring pieces related to the strike as often as we can, even if there is some duplication in content and information.  This doesn’t mean that we’re uninterested in other subjects, but if you have something you’d care to add on the topic we certainly encourage you to do so.

It’s with that in mind I’d like to direct your attention to this post from FDL contributor Kevin Gosztola, who, with Jeff Kaye (Valtin), is now covering the civil liberties/justice/war crime beat (emptywheel and bmaz are now at www.emptywheel.net).

Pelican Bay Prisoner Hunger Strike: Prison Staff Not Following Medical Protocol

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Tuesday July 19, 2011 11:33 am

Prisoners engaged in a hunger strike at Pelican Bay supermax prison have been on strike for more than fifteen days now.  With a growing group of supporters on the outside, the strike against solitary confinement and other conditions in the prison has spread to at least thirteen other prisons. But, those providing support for the prisoners are concerned about the deteriorating physical conditions of the prisoners and whether the prison will be able to provide the prisoners with proper medical care.

Carol Strickman, staff attorney for Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and staff to the mediation team representing the hunger strikers, reports medical protocol is not being followed. They are supposed to be doing “daily assessments after two days and that includes weighing, physical condition, emotional condition, vital signs (such as blood pressure) and hydration status.

…

Scales for weighing prisoners are not synchronized and sometimes the prison staff weighs prisoners with chains and sometimes without chains. So, the accuracy of information is questionable right now. Additionally, the doctors are supposed to be performing physical exams. Strickman reports, instead of providing physical exams, “The medical staff is doing what I have been told are called drive-by exams, where they stand outside the door with no physical contact and just ask if people are okay, which is basically saying, ‘Are you alive?'”

Strickman further reports “medications are being eliminated entirely or reduced.” Multivitamins and salt tablets were to be provided to prisoners. Prisoners were given a sheet of medical advice on what to do during the strike. Yet, none of the prisoners have been provided with any tablets.

…

“Many of these prisoners are older and have pre-existing conditions such as advanced lymphoma, congestive heart failure, hypertensive disease, debilitating muscle disease and so on,” Strickman explains. “So for all these reasons every day the situation is becoming more critical.”

News of deterioration of prisoners’ health may lead one to suggest that is what a prisoner gets for engaging in hunger striking or prisoner resistance activity. That may be true, but there is a callousness and inhumanity to such a statement. The prisoners have five core demands and, according to Molly Porzig, Critical Resistance representative in the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, they are asking for “incredibly standard” and “basic” adjustments to prison policy.

I hope this is resolved soon and without permanent damage to the striker’s health.

Can Obama Pull a Clinton on the GOP?

Robert Reich

Friday, July 15, 2011

Some in the White House and on Wall Street assume the anemic recovery will turn stronger in the second half of the year, emerging full strength in 2012. They blame the anemia on disruptions in Japanese supply chains, bad weather, high oil prices, European debt crises, and whatever else they can come up with. These factors have contributed, but they’re not the big story.

When the Great Recession wiped out $7.8 trillion of home values, it crushed the nest eggs and eliminated the collateral of America’s middle class. As a result, consumer spending has been decimated. Households have been forced to reduce their debt to 115% of disposable personal income from 130% in 2007, and there’s more to come. Household debt averaged 75% of personal income between 1975 and 2000.

We’re in a vicious cycle in which job and wage losses further reduce Americans’ willingness to spend, which further slows the economy. Job growth has effectively stopped. The fraction of the population now working (58.2%) is near a 25-year low-lower than it was when recession officially ended in June 2009.

Wage growth has stopped as well. Average real hourly earnings for all employees declined by 1.1% between June 2009, when the recovery began, and May 2011. For the first time since World War II, there has been a decline in aggregate wages and salaries over seven quarters of post-recession recovery.

This is not Bill Clinton’s economy. So many jobs have been lost since Mr. Obama was elected that, even if job growth were to match the extraordinary pace of the late 1990s-averaging 300,000 to 350,000 per month-the unemployment rate wouldn’t fall below 6% until 2016. That pace of job growth is unlikely, to say the least. If Republicans manage to cut federal spending significantly between now and Election Day, while state outlays continue to shrink, the certain result is continued high unemployment and anemic growth.

Electoral Victory my ass.