How Bad Is This Recession, For Actual Human Beings? 3-4 Times As Bad As Any Other Post-WWII Recession

And we're a long way from done.

Here's Calculated Risk's chart showing how this recession compares to all other post-WWII recesssions, in terms of job losses:

 

 

The best measure, here, is the size of the area over each curve and under the zero line.  (Geeks like me would call that an integral, but that's more math than we need.)  Each of those squares between the faint lines represents the loss of 0.2% of our pre-recession jobs, for one month.  Sum up the squares above a curve and below the zero line, and you get a measure of how bad this has been for how long, in terms of job losses.

Just from a quick eyeballing, it's clear that you could fit three or four of any previous postwar recessions into the area over the red curve measuring this one.  And we've got years to go before that red curve gets up to the zero line.

This recession is already 3-4 times as bad as anything else that's happened in the past 70 years, in terms of people being unable to find work.  And it's likely to wind up being more like 5 or 6 times as bad by the time that curve gets up to zero.

And yet, nobody other than us DFHs seems to be particularly concerned about it.  Ruth Marcus is bothered more by a teenage girl who used words like 'sucks' and 'blows' in a tweet to her friends.  The GOP is adamantly opposed to doing anything about the problem, but you expect that: their mission is to keep the supply of labor as cheap and abundant, relative to job openings, as possible - and boy howdy, they've succeeded.  But most of the time, it doesn't even seem like the Democrats are really all that concerned about it, about the loss of jobs, the continuing damage to lives and families and people's hopes of having a decent career and saving for retirement.

Because that's what the area over that red curve represents: a titanic gutting of people's lives and hopes.  It's a graph of millions of individual tragedies. 

Comments

[low-tech cyclist]

My apologies for the graph not fitting in the space there - I lack the HTML skills to shrink it. At any rate, only one month is missing from the right-hand side of the graph, and if you imagine the red and brown lines continuing their arc for that much extra distance, you've mentally filled in all that's missing.

[nancy]

Can barely stand to examine this graph, much less comment.

But most of the time, it doesn't even seem like the Democrats are really all that concerned about it, about the loss of jobs, the continuing damage to lives and families and people's hopes of having a decent career and saving for retirement. Indeed. Calculated Risk does reassure that the arc for the Great Depression would appear far lower. Gee -- what a relief.

Sent this post on to Digg.

[Phil Perspective]

LTC:
But most of the time, it doesn't even seem like the Democrats are really all that concerned about it, about the loss of jobs, the continuing damage to lives and families and people's hopes of having a decent career and saving for retirement.

Which is exactly why you get people saying the two parties are one and the same. The Republicans are driving towards the cliff at 100 mph, but the Democrats are doing the same, only at 50 mph.

[oddjob]

but the Democrats are doing the same, only at 50 mph

I don't think that quite captures what I observe. What I see is some congressional Democrats trying very hard to hit the brakes and turn the car around, and some trying to drive over the cliff at 50 mph, and many sitting there behind the steering wheel with eyes wide shut.

[kathy a.]

i like oddjob's assessment, although i don't think dems as a group are quite as hopeless as he does. i think many democrats are very concerned. so are all the people they represent -- not just their immediate constituents, but those who are affected by what does and does not get done in the legislature.

but they and we are facing an opposition party which has made clear that the plight of regular citizens is not their concern; the unified and stated objective is to block anything proposed by democrats, and particularly the president.

they are doing so in an environment in which however reasonable and justified their proposals are, however idiotic and untrue and uncaring the opposition, the news accounts are likely to be presented as a false equivalence, "the two sides disagree." and the story is framed as the "disagreement," not the underlying issue; and not much is there a fact-based evaluation of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the proposals.

except for the side-show of watching potential GOP candidates self-destruct, we've got nothing to go on except identifying problems and their causes, identifying possible reality-based and humane solutions, maintaining that the dignity of all citizens is worthy [no matter net worth], and so on. we don't believe that scorched-earth politics and makin' shit up shows leadership or leads to good governance. we do believe in fairness and discussion and inclusion, which puts us at a disadvantage when it is all scorched-earth on the other side.

i have to believe in the arc toward justice; that truth will win; that just because a journey is hard and we are battle viciousness and ignorance does not mean we should abandon core principles.

what is so frustrating is that it is in our collective power to create more jobs, and to alleviate the financial crisis at basically all levels of government. and that we got in this mess because of horrible policies implemented in past decades -- with pressure from big money and big business, who pay less and less to gain more and more profit and influence, because they have decided personal gain and enormous power for a few is their god-given right.

lt-c, this graph is so enormously depressing. but it reflects what we all know, that this really is the worst economic time in our lifetimes. so many lost their homes, or had their savings wiped out; the more fortunate merely lost home value, value on investments [often meant for retirement], and/or income and benefits. our kids have few prospects, and are competing with experienced people who cannot find work. our elders and disabled people and the very poorest among us are in danger of losing safety nets. our schools, universities, and infrastructure have all taken hit after hit these last decades. and yet, the richest keep getting richer.

[kathy a.]

an article from the new yorker, arguing that the UK has tried the kind of austerity measures proposed by the clown car, and it's not been good.

i'm not an economist, but it makes an awful lot of practical sense that people who do not have money spend less and pay fewer taxes, and so both government and businesses make less, and so on.

[Sir Charles]

L-t c, Phil, and oddjob,

With all due respect and affection (and I do get tired of playing this role), but didn't Obama introduce a jobs bill that garnered majority support in the Senate only to fall victim to another Republican filibuster?

Oh yes -- they did. With only two Dems dissenting, while every last Republican voted against.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/politics/obamas-jobs-bill-senate-vote.html?pagewanted=all

And, in this instance, didn't the President campaign whole-heartedly for the passage of the bill -- in state after state?

What exactly would anyone here suggest that the Dems do at this point? The only remedy is for the electorate to vote for the pro-jobs side -- and I am not necessarily holding my breath in the terms of the Senate.

I really wish we at least would dispense with the notion that the Dems are essentially (or even 50%) equlivalent -- I know we are all frustrated, but it's really not true.

It certainly isn't going to help us accomplish what we need to do in 2012.

[Phil Perspective]

Sir Charles:
You are right. But people like Ben Nelson, HolyJoe, Harold Ford, Jr.(he still is on Mr Fluffyhead's Sunday morning bobblehead show) and other so-called Democrats still rankle. While the GOP is still the biggest obstacle, people like Nelson, HolyJoe and others also help water down policy, which doesn't help Democrats.

[Sir Charles]

Phil,

You've just named a group that I must admit make me want to lose my lunch. But Holy Joe is about to become a has been and Harold Ford is already there.

The sad fact is that as gutless and mediocre as he is, Ben Nelson is as good as we are going to get in Nebraska. He votes with the Dems a surprising amount of the time and if he loses his seat, we will never get a single vote from his GOP replacement.

Sometimes we have to take what we can -- or, in the case of someone like Leiberman, we take him out. (Sadly, we won't actually get the pleasure of beating his ass in an election, but he knows what the deal would be.)

As long as we are part of a party that is a broad coaliton and as long as the Senate is structured in such a way that we are going to need seats from red states, we are likely to have to deal with the Ben Nelsons of the world. It's not a pleasant thought, but it's the reality of a country in which only about one if five voters really identifies as a liberal.

[oddjob]

didn't Obama introduce a jobs bill that garnered majority support in the Senate only to fall victim to another Republican filibuster?

And this has been going on for, oh what, three-plus years now, and how many Dem. senators are willing to do what must be done to make it stop?

Eyes wide shut.

[oddjob]

Eyes so wide shut in fact that it leads directly to the public perception that voting for Dems. for congress is a useless thing to do.

Their unwillingness to rein in the filibuster abuse almost certainly led to the drubbing the Dems. got in 2010 and to the real possibility that Obama will lose next Nov.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

I certainly agree tha tfilibuster reform would have been a wise thig to pursue. But, again, the problem has been unprecedented abuse of the process by Republicans.

It is institutionally difficult to get individual senators to act to curb their own power. But I think we need to be clear about which party bears the blame for not only indifference to unemployment, but I believe, would actually like to exacerbate the problem. I think this latter point is pretty much unprecedented in my lifetime at least -- I have never seen a political party actually deliberately sabotage the economy for their own ends.

[Joe S]

Sir C, I think there are a couple of things you are overlooking in regard to this administration and Democrats in general: (1) Democrats (which LTC complained of, not just the Administration); and (2) the Administration.

First, the conservative Democrats don't want to curb the power of the Republicans because they want the ability to thwart a progressive agenda without taking responsibility for it. The bottom line is that a big chunk of elected Democrats are not progressive at all-- but they need the 30% of liberal/progressive votes even in red states. The Senate procedures allow them to do this two-step.

As for the Administration, it could have: (1) use the recess appointment power to appoint members of the Fed who take the full employment mandate seriously. This Administration has repeatedly outsourced its monetary policy to the Geithner/Rubin wing of the Party. It shows-- and please, for those of you out there who are so inclined to defend the Administration, save "the fainting couch and smelling salts routine" about using the recess appointment power. It really does look unseemly when you make that argument while whining impotently about Republican obstruction on appointments. It makes the Republicans look like winners and achievers, and the Administration look like the kid who gets his/her lunch money stolen. To quote a great American movie: "Americans love a winner, and hate and despise a loser."

(2) The Administration could have also not spent nearly two years rambling on endlessly about the dire need to address the deficit. The constant focus on deficits simply ignored the problem at hand. And again, this is a result of outsourcing economic policy to the Geithner/Rubin wing of the party.

(3) The Administration could have had Congress raise the debt ceiling in the lame duck Congress. This would have taken a bomb out of the Tea Party's hands.

In light of their behavior since after the first stimulus was past, I think LTC is basically right-- the Democrats as a party, and the Administration as well, have been rather unconcerned about unemployment- or maybe, the Democratic Party and the Administration has had no ability to correctly diagnose this Country's economic problems. Either way, the Country is FUBAR. And yes: disclaimer: the Republicans are a lot worse.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

I agree that the Administration blew the call on the economy -- and was inexplicably like a deer in the headlights when "recovery summer" did not prove to be a reaility.

I also agree that the Administration should have been far more aggressive in the use of recess appointments and made a mistake in not seeing the debt ceiling problem coming. Overall there has been a disturbing level of naivte in understanding the nature of the opposition.

However, unlike the GOP, I think there is actual concern about unemployment among the Administration and the vast majority of Dems and that this was manifested in the belated attempt at jobs legislation, which, although relatively modest, could have had a very positive impact in terms of limiting layoffs of local and state government workers. Given the signs of life in private sector hiring, this would have been a pretty significant thing -- and blame for its demiste falls ssquarely on the Republicans.

[nancy]

Sir C -- kathy a. wrote: what is so frustrating is that it is in our collective power to create more jobs, and to alleviate the financial crisis at basically all levels of government. and that we got in this mess because of horrible policies implemented in past decades -- with pressure from big money and big business, who pay less and less to gain more and more profit and influence, because they have decided personal gain and enormous power for a few is their god-given right.

I can tell you that from the hinterlands, it looks as though Dems keep walking into the same traps that have been laid over and over only now at the state and local level. How can voters where I live be perfectly aware of the ridiculousness of the GOP slate 'performing' for them at the national level and at the same time unexpectedly hand off local races to that same party? Why? I'm with oddjob. Eyes wide shut and an inability to demand a continued accounting for what is and is not going on. In Washington state, the GOP want the state house back. For starters. And it might just happen with the rise of the the suburban vote and a nice assist from Citizen's.

All manner of nonsense could ensue, but we know for sure what land speculators have up their sleeves. Ain't pretty. These people do not give a shit about much other than raking it in with their 'property rights'. Who needs a healthy commons? Jobs, education, social services are not on these folks minds at all. I doubt the above graph would register much alarm with the guys and gals down at our Chamber -- that red line does not apply to them -- and the rest is mere abstraction.

[kathy a.]

good point, nancy, that we need to be paying attention at the state and local levels. that has to be part of the long-term strategy, because state and local policies matter, and bad ideas have tended to float up to the national level. also, the people in washington all come from someplace else. the GOP has certainly been cultivating and/or courting the crazies for decades.

this is easy for me to say, since i live very near berkeley and there is no market for radical conservatives in my neighborhood. but -- california also produced nixon and reagan, bad ideas that sold nationally -- so it's not like we can claim purity and wisdom and call it a day.

also, i think the anti-tax zealotry started here on a large scale with prop. 13; it will take decades to dig us out of the mess that has caused. (my locality actually just voted ourselves a special tax to keep open a regional trauma center and ER, part of a hospital that has had deep financial problems because it serves so many poor and uninsured people.)

[oddjob]

Some of the CA GOP crazies who've gone to DC have been among the country's very worst wingnuts (e.g. Richard Pombo, Robert "B-1 Bob" Dornan). It almost seems like CA specializes in producing especially awful wingnuts.

[oddjob]

Programs to fight lead poisoning in Massachusetts have been slashed during the past two years because of squeezed state and federal budgets, and now Congress is poised to eliminate the remaining federal aid - even as scientists last month concluded that the toxic metal can harm children at half the levels previously thought....

The lead paragraph in today's front page news in the Boston Globe.

[oddjob]

I'm with oddjob.

I also wanted to be clear that I don't think it's that the legislators acting this way are necessarily ill-intentioned, but rather that they're giving themselves permission to be feckless. In our present political climate that's very nearly the same thing as being ill-intentioned.

If the GOP played by traditional rules it wouldn't matter so much, but the present crop of GOP legislators stopped doing that some years ago.

[nancy]

Here's the regional view of this recession from my window. [front page/Seattle Times] The Democratic governor and house are busy cutting deep into the state budget while not shouting fire and identifying the culprits. And one of the highest sales tax rates in the country is about to go higher. Here in eastern WA where poverty is much deeper, that will hurt even more. Yet the Republicans now will hold not only all three county commission seats (where the worst mischief occurs) but now also our city government.

Democrats have to see this for what it is and call it out better and sooner and much, much louder.