The basis of middle class prosperity in America has always been a full-time job. With one you can get married, buy a car and a house, and start and raise a family. That's the basic economic unit which gives life to everything in our society, starting with a strong tax base of families in single family homes on which we depend for tax revenue to erect schools, build roads, fund fire and emergency services, and provide for police to preserve, protect and defend law and order. Under Barack Obama full-time jobs have gone into deep trouble.
Examine the record of full-time jobs since the 1960s and you can't help but see how serious this is.
After recessions, full-time jobs have always recovered their former peaks within 2 to at most 3 years . . . until now. Full-time jobs bounced back to their former heights in 2 years after the recessions of 1973 and 1980, and in 3 years after the recessions of 1969, 1981, 1990 and 2001.
Full-time usually peaks in the summer months when the workforce is supplemented by young people flooding the jobs market to earn money for school and other things they want. Just before the onset of the most recent recession in 2007, full-time jobs peaked at 123,219,000 in July of that year. But now 7 long years later, full-time has still not recovered. After seeming to peak this August at 120,110,000 we've had a little headfake in October with full-time actually peaking for this cycle at 120,176,000. If we are lucky and continue to add jobs at a clip of 224,000 a month like we have added in the last twelve months, even next summer or fall we will still fall short of the 2007 high by 355,000 full-time jobs. That'll make it 8 years and counting that full-time has not recovered.
But factoring in the growth of the civilian noninstitutional population since 2007, arguably full-time jobs should be 130 million by now, not 120 million. Almost 5 million prime-working-age adults 25 to 54 do not work today who did in 2007.
The hostility of leftists to the middle class used to be well-known in America when it was a better educated country. It's not a coincidence that with an actual leftist in the White House for the first time in history that the basis of middle class life in America is under attack like it's never been before.
Obama has promised many things which have turned out just the opposite, especially in the healthcare arena. Now the Gruber affair shows that it was in fact all by design. A subterfuge. A deliberate fraud. Many of us tried to sound the warning, but it got rammed down our throats regardless, and now you wonder why you can't keep your doctor, can't keep your insurance and have to pay much more for it.
How long will it take Americans to figure out that gutting the middle class is also by design?
