"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

What's Different This Time Around?

Here is a chart from James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise blog, comparing the change in employment in recessions since World War II.   The recession that began in 2008 should be obvious:



What's different?   Probably a number of things.   One is that companies have been shifting manufacturing jobs overseas because of high labor costs in America.   Two is that the American economy, so long touted as a "knowledge-based" economy, has become more and more a paper-pushing economy, where jobs that go away oftentimes don't go back, because they weren't that necessary to begin with.  

But I think the obvious answer is that Obama's high-tax, high-spend, heavy-on-the-regulations, hard-left, crony capitalist, statist administration has scared the beejeesus out of American businesses.   That's why the unemployment curve flattened out and hasn't gotten back to pre-recession levels.   Businessmen are waiting him out.   2012 can't come soon enough.

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