Nice graphic, but it’s more like a flood up.
Actually, I don’t attribute our problems to communism. Our problems are due unemployment due to stupid trade policies. We lowered the import tariffs till they are almost non-existent. We tariff 1% but tax domestic producers 10% on labor. So there is a large tax incentive to off-shore.
Nevermind that it’s stupid to have free trade with countries that have massive amounts of unemployment. You’re just asking to have your industries devastated and to import their unemployment problem.
And then there’s immigration, illegal and legal in a period of high unemployment.
On the whole, the economy has been screwed up for over a decade....going back into the Bush administration. When the North American Free Trade deal went through.....it dissolved various small industries around every state and destroyed all of those $10-to-$15 jobs that existed. In my home county area where I grew up....the paper mill finally shut down. The 1,000 employees were all local guys who grew up....had only a high school diploma and were pulling in $40k a year starting out (union wage) and the guys in the 50’s were making $75k a year. Their lifestyle is gone, and most were stupid enough to spend every penny they ever made.
The 2008 economic fall? The recovery? Non-existent. Look around at business operations shut down and banks that used to exist which no longer exist. Folks run their cars another two to four years longer than they used. No one buys magazines at the grocery anymore. The ten-day vacation era is long gone, and the best you might hope for is one extended three-day weekend at some non-expensive hotel in Reno or Orange Beach.
It is a full-blown depression, but they made such a happy event out of it....that you just won’t admit it’s that bad. And the fact that Wal-Mart continues to make profits ought to tell part of the story.