Your Friday Morning Dose of Doom and Gloom

This photo shows some of Stars of David with names of those killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in Saturday's shooting, at a memorial outside the synagogue, Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Milton Wolf has a column detailing exactly how much damage ObamaCare is doing to the country now (lots), and how much it will burden the economy in the future (smothered to death). But one figure shocked me:

Advertisement

What’s worse, Obamacare is a parasite that threatens the very survival of its host economy. When Mr. Obama signed his namesake health care takeover into law in March 2010, he converted his wishful-thinking “recovery summer” into the Obama Depression. This before-and-after moment of the Obama presidency saw private-sector job creation plummet from a modest 67,600 new jobs per month to a flat line of 6,500. Compare that with the 285,800 jobs created per month under President Reagan during the similar time period in the 1980s.

If you’re about my age or older, you remember those heady days of 1984. Employment was skyrocketing, but better yet, so were real wages. In the 11 months leading up to Reagan’s reelection, personal income swelled more than seven percent. It’s the jobs-created figure that really needs to be put in perspective, however.

In Reagan’s recovery, we averaged 285,800 jobs each and every month. That was working from a population of 235 million, and a labor force almost exactly the same percentage of the population as it is today. So the overall population has increased by almost exactly 30% since 1984, and the labor participation rate has declined (dramatically) back down to where it was in 1984.

Advertisement

Do the math.

Starting in the “Recovery Summer” of two years ago, the Obama recovery should have been generating 371,540 jobs, on average, each and every month. Today, we still have fewer people working worse jobs for less pay than we did in 2009.

It’s no coincidence that the 371,540 figure is pretty much right in the middle of Joe Biden’s 2009 estimate that any month now, the economy would be generating between 250,000 and 500,000 jobs each month. “Any month now” was 28 months ago.

They really thought the jobs would come. They really did. They thought they could jump up and down on this economy and threaten and castigate the entrepreneurs and embolden the union leaches and swell the debt and everything would still come roaring back to life.

Well, it hasn’t Jobs creation is off by a factor of almost five, compared to 1984. And total full-time employment has actually decreased since then — the net gain has been in part-time work that nobody wants, but anyone will accept.

Could we at least see a repeat of 1984’s 7% increase in wages? Fuggidaboudit. And if you have any savings in something other than commodities, it’s either evaporating in the stock market crash, or sitting in your bank account and suffering the death of a thousand Bernankes.

Advertisement

The solution is strait-forward. It is also painful:

1. Stop borrowing.

2. Raise interest rates to protect the dollar.

3. Repeal the last 32 months worth of laws. Do it in one bill called “The Omnibus Do-Over Act of 2013.”

4. Lower marginal tax rates, eliminate deductions, broaden the base.

Oh, and hold a kick-ass election next year, or else you can’t even get to the first step.

In the meantime? We’re pretty much screwed.

Recommended

Trending on PJ Media Videos

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Advertisement
Advertisement