A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

From Brad DeLong's blog, here is a graph showing the percentage of the adult working age population that is employed. The picture makes it clear that the "stimulus" wasn't enough and that the US economy is is doldrums heading for a "lost decade" of deflationary miasma:

Click to Enlarge

Now that Obama has failed them, I guess the American people can await with hope that some fascist dictatorship -- Iran? China? North Korea? Russia? Myanmar? Saudia Arabia? Syria? Libya? Zimbabwe? -- will start a world war so that Keynesian stimulus will be seriously tried to get the US economy out of the ditch. Oh... wait a sec... the US is already bogged down in two fair-sized land wars. Well... how about George Bush's idea? A crash project to land space tourists on Mars? Hmm... My favourite is John Maynard Keynes' suggestion that you hire people to dig holes, you plant gold at the bottom, then fill them in. Voila! Instant economy as people rush out -- like the California gold rush -- to buy shovels and dig holes madly all over the place trying to find the hidden gold. Instant jobs! Full employment!

And I can't leave without citing a Nobel Prize winning economist who has this finger on the pulse of the country. From the Gary Becker/Richard Posner right wing fanatic blog:

The real threat to a robust recovery on the labor side has come from employer and entrepreneurial fears that once the economic environment improves, a Democratic Congress and administration will pass pro-union and other pro-worker legislation that will raise the cost of doing business and cut profits. In this way the obvious pro-union-pro-worker bias of the present government has contributed to a slower recovery, especially in labor markets. This helps explain the depressingly slow decline in unemployment rates and in the number of workers who have given up looking for jobs.

Yes, that bleeding heart liberal Obama is out to put unions in the catbird seat and dictate to struggling businesses. Those unionized workers have no interest in jobs or money, they simply want to enslave the hard-working managerial class, take away their 40,000 sq foot "vacation homes", and their 500 foot yachts! Oh yes, those union workers are especially cruel. They think business should pay a living wage. Why any fool knows you make money by nickle-and-diming the down and out. Everybody knows that union leaders roast little babies on a spit over an open fire and feast on them each morning. Meanwhile the owners of capital get up each morning concerned about the health, the education, the safety, and the well-being of their employees. Everybody knows that weekends are consumed as the ultra-rich compete in fantasy charities to give the most to needy people. Socialites struggle to pay tens of thousands of dollars to have the chic new gowns that let them show up without shame as these charities collect big piles of nickels, sometimes even a few dimes are tossed onto the pot, to ensure the well being of out-of-work employees, the uninsured sick, and the other "deserving" poor.

As Becker points out, if only government would get off the backs of the ultra-rich -- pass an extension of the Bush tax cuts -- then employment would pick up. I can assure you when you cut a million dollars in tax obligations, that means the ultra-rich can create one more minimum wage job for a butler, maid, or chauffeur. If you want to get America working again, tax the poor and get rid of any taxes for the entrepreneurial class, those with incomes above $250,000 per year or family wealth of more than $5 million. That would quickly send that depressed line on the above graph soaring and armies of workers marched off to be field hands, cleaning staff, and liveried bowing-and-scraping factotums at the mansions of the rich.

Addendum 2010aug06: I notice that Brad DeLong appears to opt for the WWIII option:

The solution? The last time the U.S. was in such a situation was at the end of the 1930s. Mobilization for total war cured the incipient structural unemployment problem with ease. The solution is to rapidly boost aggregate demand: quantitative easing, raising the Federal Reserve's inflation target, banking policy to take more risky assets onto the government's balance sheet, and fiscal expansion. Time is of the essence. For the odds are now better than 50-50 that two years from now we won't have the ability to quickly and cheaply reduce unemployment to normal levels through boosting aggregate demand.

I'm sure hoping DeLong was saying this with his fingers crossed behind his back. I would have felt better if he had put a smiley face at the end of the above paragraph or added the words "just joking!".