I’ve posted versions of all of these charts here at one point or another, but it’s nice to have them all in one place to give a full picture of the Second Great Depression that we are currently in. What these numbers show is that the Obama “Recovery” is the worst post-recession period since the Great Depression, and is the second-worst post-recession period in American history. This is quantified through a number of measures:
- This is the worst post-recession job growth since the Great Depression.
- This is the worst post-recession GDP growth since the Great Depression.
- The unemployment rate has only improved through people dropping out of the workforce. If you include those people, we’re worse off than we were at the peak of the depression. The Keynesian models have been tested and proven to fail.
- To get a true measure of how many jobs are out there, we need to look at the civilian employment ratio. This number has been fully stagnant since Obama’s “Recovery” began.
- And of course, we can actually show how many people are dropping out of the workforce by looking at the labor force participation rate. It’s dropping very fast. Under Obama’s policies, we’re becoming a nation of government dependence with a large permanent welfare class.
I’m surprised they didn’t include a graph showing the declining median incomes as well, but that would be implied by the persistently high unemployment.
It’s time to face the facts. Obama has brought our country into a new Great Depression. America has been losing its economic strength, its prevalence of opportunity, and its philosophy of individual achievement under Obama. Franklin Roosevelt’s original experiment in Keynesianism, the New Deal, led to an era of economic stagnation and financial hardship. Now, Obama has repeated the experiment with his stimulus and “New Economic Patriotism” plan, and achieved the same results. The conclusion we can draw from this should now be very clear: Trickle-Down Government is not the solution to recessions. It only draws them out and increases hardship for everyone while forcing us to pay off its debts in the future.
To encourage rapid recoveries from recessions, we need to restore the free-market focus of our economy. There are millions of innovators and entrepreneurs out there who want to start businesses and create jobs, but can’t because of the maze of regulations, licensing laws, labor laws, government fees, taxes, and incentives not to work that threaten to crush their attempts. Additionally, their large competitors are all receiving government assistance, making it impossible for a new business to compete.
Let’s get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers in the economy. As Mitt Romney pointed out in his first presidential debate, Obama has a habit of only picking losers, simply because the winners don’t need any help. That’s how we end up with such monumentally expensive failures like Solyndra and the Chevy Volt. The government should not be using taxpayer money to invest- let us keep our money so that WE can choose where to invest it. We know better how to handle our own money than the government does. Romney made an excellent case for his election when he demonstrated that he understood this.
Obama claims to believe in the free market, but every policy he seeks to enact seeks to restrain the markets and put more of its resources in his own personal control. This is the path to national failure.
It’s time to get the failures out of office and replace them with people who actually trust the capabilities of the general public to make their own investments without the government being an eternal middleman. Through liberty, we can return to the path of rising prosperity.
The Libertarian Scientist 
