Charting Socialism In America

Even Barack Obama, the Master of the Forked Tongue, wasn't doing much bragging over the 0.1% decrease in the unemployment rate in March. Because no matter how little he thinks of our intelligence, and no matter how much water the press will carry for him, even he knows he can't sell this bag of shit as Shinola.

And maybe that's because he's finally starting to feel the rumble of discontent in the nation under his feet. It's bad out there, and maybe he knows it, after all.

But what he desperately does not want us to know that it is his policies that have brought us to such a low ebb. James Pethokoukis gives us a few stats and & charts that make it clear even to the dimmest blue bulb how wrecked the American economy is:

1. If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7% then vs. 63.8% today down from last month—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 10.9%.

2. But what if you take into the account the aging of the Baby Boomers, which means the labor force participation (LFP) rate should be trending lower. Indeed, it has been doing just that since 2000. Before the Great Recession, the Congressional Budget Office predicted what the LFP would be in 2012, assuming such demographic changes. Using that number, the real unemployment rate would be 10.5%.

3. Of course, the LFP rate usually falls during recessions. Yet even if you discount for that and the aging issue, the real unemployment rate would be 9.4%.

4. Then there’s the broader, U-6 measure of unemployment which includes the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate, perhaps the truest measure of the labor market’s health, is still a sky-high 14.5%. 5. The employment-population ratio dipped to 58.5% vs. 61% in December 2008. An historically low level of the U.S. population is actually working.


Yeah, socialism tends to do that.  When the unproductive are lauded as heroes and the productive are demonized as economic vampires, it certainly makes more sense just to...quit trying.  Especially if the government promises to take care of you in perpetuity, in exchange for your vote.

Is that message getting through?  Ask the freakin' chart:

This is what happens when you employ an economic philosophy based on the infamous "From each according to their ability, to each according to his need".

You wind up, not unsurprisingly, with a lot of people who decide it's a better deal to be needy.

Welcome to Barack Obama's America...