The New York Times http://nyti.ms/9Q7ypq reports that US employment performance, measured in terms of the number of job seekers and long term unemployed, appears to have deteriorated markedly over the past ten years, not only during the recent recession. It is now in the worst shape since the 1930s.
Combined with the data showing that middle class America suffered a real drop in income over the last period of expansion from 2002 to 2007, it seems that something strange happened to the economy sometime in the early noughties.
Interestingly, it was early in that decade that President Bush introduced tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, based on the premise that the wealth creators need to be coddled, nurtered and warmly incentivised to keep going on generating all that wealth. This would be a bargain for America, we were told by wealthy pundits, as the extra wealth created by these alchemists would propel the economy to new heights. It seems that if they are not permitted to keep as much as possible of their surplus income, very rich people suffer from narcolepsy, passing out head first into their swan soufflé.
Imagine if those tax breaks had never been given to all the wealth creators. What kind of mess would America be in now?
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