Screw 'Up with People!' - 'Up with the Economy!'

An interesting analysis from the Economic Policy Institute on the numbers behind the jobless recovery (which actually sounds kind of nice if it means I don't need a job to maintain my standard of living):

Economy Up, People Down

A snapshot of the same analysis

Basically the stats all boil down to the conclusion that it's better to be wealthy, and not just standard American upper middle class set for life as long as I keep my job version, but 'f**k you' wealthy, the kind of wealth that makes you really pissed off about the estate tax, without having to be told to be by pundits. Because if you're that wealthy, you're staying there. And if you're not, you'd better start climbing.

Disclaimer: I know the US is technically no longer in its jobless recovery phase, so don't waste your time pointing this out, the President already has:

"President Bush has noted that 2 million jobs were created over the course of 2005 and that we have added 4.6 million jobs since the decline in jobs ended in May 2003. But does that mean the labor market is getting back to normal?

Unfortunately, no. Recent job gains lag far behind historical norms. Last year's 2 million new jobs represented a gain of 1.5%, a sluggish growth rate by historical standards (see chart below). In fact, it is less than half of the average growth rate of 3.5% for the same stage of previous business cycles that lasted as long. At that pace, we would have created 4.6 million jobs last year. If jobs had grown last year at the pace of even the slowest of the prior cycles—2.1% in the 1980s—we would have added 2.8 million jobs. Over the last half century, the only 12-month spans with job growth as low as 1.5% were those that actually included recession months, occurred just before a recession, or were during the "jobless recovery" of 1992 and early 1993."

- www.jobwatch.org