In his State of the Union address, the president struck a tone of optimism, as befits a president who has seen the unemployment rate fall from 9 percent to 8.5 percent since this last such speech to Congress. But the decline is mostly illusion, brought on largely by a drop in those actively looking for work. The true picture is dismal: Between 13 million and 14 million Americans are regularly seeking a job; between 1 million and 3 million have given up looking; another 8.5 million would like full-time employment, but can only find part-time work.

Noting that the job picture is worse in the U.S. than Europe, the Financial Times wrote, “According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 per cent.”

The political narrative for the Democrats is that the president inherited a mess and staved off another Great Depression with his $830 billion stimulus bill. The GOP version is that he inherited a mess -- but made it worse and made it last longer. The bracing truth of the matter is probably that the nation’s economic problems are more systemic than either political party wants to acknowledge.

In the 1930s, Ford Motor Co. employed 100,000 workers at its vast River Rouge facility in Michigan. That’s more than twice the number that Apple employs worldwide today, and few of Apple’s jobs -- and none of its manufacturing ones -- are done in the United States anyway. MIT economist David Autor describes an U.S. economy with jobs at the top rung and the bottom, but too few in a growing sector he calls “the missing middle.”

-- Carl M. Cannon

Introduction

Federal Debt, Deficit, Budget

Crime

Environment

Military, Alliances and U.S. Image Abroad