The New York Times highlighted a sobering number onSunday—at the rate of current job growth—about 200,000 per month—itwill take 10 years for the US to recover its job losses from the2008-2009 recession and at the same time keep up with growth in thelabor force. Then keep in mind the country never did fully recoverjobs lost from the 2001 recession. That means it would take twodecades for our “vaunted” economy to catch up at the current paceunless the jobs engine ignites suddenly and at the same timemanages to avoid another downturn (highly unlikely)… On the not soencouraging front JC Penney (retailing) andYahoo (technology) announced layoffs last weekwhile the Labor Department jobs numbers (at 120,000 new hires) forMarch were below economist expectations—they almost never get itright (February was a recent exception) and were way off this time.It all suggests a long haul to make those catch up numbers… Whileour economist friends (most of whom work for financial institutionswho don’t want to highlight any bad news that could impact theircompanies’ profits) thought hiring activity would be much morevigorous than it was, they also predicted no way the unemploymentrate would go down in the anticipated numbers—wrong again. The ratedropped a very modest tenth of a percent (because fewer peopleentered the labor force). It’s like why do we pay any attention totheir their forecasts?

The dismal science, which mostly bases its prognostications onpast trends and cycles, doesn’t offer much guidance when the futurecourse will be determined by a host of rapidly changing parametersand conditions, involving job killing technology, the vagaries ofclimate change, deteriorating and obsolescent infrastructure,increasing congestion, and cheap overseas labor markets, amongothers… Of course, the explosion of the debt bomb will take yearsto get over absent a heady rush of inflation. Moody’sAnalytics reports that average home equity per homeownerhas fallen to 1968 levels (adjusted to 2011 dollars)—that is fromabout $200,000 at the 2006 peak to only $78,000 today. Whathappened to those big home value nest eggs everybody was countingon for retirement? I guess that equity was mostly refinanced out ofexistence… I got another call this past week from a 55-plus someoneI used to work with, looking for a job that really doesn’t existanymore and certainly not for an over-the-hill baby boomer, whopiled on too big a mortgage, lost a pension, and doesn’t have muchin the 401K. It’s scary and depressing, because these stories arenot particularly exceptional. I’m sure you know at least a fewfolks in your circle in the same dire straights… And despiteour recent wake up calls—the credit crisis debacle, the latestround of energy spikes, the totally unsustainable deficitnumbers--our political parties sell the same old snake oil in thecurrent election cycle—we have a choice of solutions—either moretax cuts (you cannot take in less and somehow get more–it justdoesn’t work) or the same old high price social programs (they aretotally unsustainable). Oh yes, and our leaders pander to us abouthow we can continue to use as much energy per capita (fracking isthe answer), and expect cheap gasoline (put more drilling rigs inthe Gulf), while buying as much stuff (I need an I-pad since myI-phone doesn’t show movies in high definition) and eating as muchunhealthy food (don’t dare tax my soda—you’re taking away myliberty and being a nanny) as we desire… I recommend you see a newdocumentary film just opening in the US called “SurvivingProgress.” My cousin Daniel Louis was the lead producer (MartinScorsese is an executive producer). It raises a bunch ofprovocative questions that lead you to the obvious conclusion thatwe all need to make a lot of lifestyle changes and some sacrifices,if we want the next generation to have any chance atprospering.

Or we can continue to buy into the snake oil and pay attentionto economists.