Small Facts... Often Ignored

From a post by John Mauldin at The Big Picture blog:

The US has roughly the same number of jobs today as it had in 2000, but the population is well over 30,000,000 larger. To get to a civilian employment-to-population ratio equal to that in 2000, we would have to gain some 18 MILLION jobs.

And this:

Note that simply to reduce the unemployment rate to 8% over two years at the lowest participation rate of 64% would require 157,000 jobs a month. If those jobs started showing up, the number of people looking for jobs would increase, thus increasing the “official” unemployment rate. Most of the numbers of required new jobs are simply not possible, if history is any guide. (This is a politician’s nightmare. It will be years before they can take credit for something they didn’t do.)

Here's what happens when right wing governments that push for "deregulation" allow the big Wall Street banks to do "financial engineering" and destroy everybody's retirement fund:

Click to Enlarge
And, of course, nobody from the Wall Street banks has gone to jail. They caused a $10 trillion implosion, but golly gee, nobody did anything wrong!

For those who like that facts in pictures and not words, here is a chart from a different post on The Big Picture blog.