One thing that bothers me is the short-sightedness of many economic policies. The U.S. benefits more when everyone shares in the economic growth and not just the upper income brackets. If the U.S. middle class keeps losing wages who do businesses think they’re going to sell their goods to? The U.S. became the economic powerhouse that it is because they pursued policies to let the middle class thrive, like universal education and civil rights advances.

Another thing this graph shows is that privatizing Social Security would have been a disaster. I’m glad Democrats were able to stop it. I hope the fiscal scolds in the Democratic party will stop demagouging about entitlement reform. A strong safety net seems more important than ever now.

You know what would be interesting – comparing our decade to places in Europe. The Republicans have spent a lot of time telling us that Europe was in terrible shape because of their strong safety net. I wonder how we compare now? Our decade of firing people and sending job overseas doesn’t seem to be benefiting us.