"With the US trapped in depression"

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard article in the Telegraph, With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932:

The US workforce shrank by 652,000 in June, one of the sharpest contractions ever. The rate of hourly earnings fell 0.1pc. Wages are flirting with deflation.
...
Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high.

Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP.

The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost.

The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s.

"Legions of individuals have been left with stale skills, and little prospect of finding meaningful work, and benefits that are being exhausted. By our math the crop of people who are unemployed but not receiving a check amounts to 9.2m."

Republicans on Capitol Hill are filibustering a bill to extend the dole for up to 1.2m jobless facing an imminent cut-off. Dean Heller from Vermont called them "hobos". This really is starting to feel like 1932.

Washington's fiscal stimulus is draining away. It peaked in the first quarter, yet even then the economy eked out a growth rate of just 2.7pc. This compares with 5.1pc, 9.3pc, 8.1pc and 8.5pc in the four quarters coming off recession in the early 1980s.

I disagree with Evans-Pritchard. This is not a "depression." It's a permanent change. We've lived on borrowed time and money for decades to fund profligate government spending and now the bill is due. I don't have the solution because I'm not an economist or high-financier just a small businessman but I do know that we will have to tighten our belts for a while until we adjust to reality.

"Entitlements" aka government handouts must be reduced to the bare minimum and made difficult to get. The West's welfare serfs are wealthier than the rest of the world's working poor.

There are plenty of jobs: picking lettuce, washing dishes, cleaning streets etc - you know, the "jobs that Americans won't do" and which are done by illegal aliens.

It is illegal to work in the USA if you are not a citizen or a legal alien with a work-permit aka "Green Card." That law needs to be enforced and all those on welfare who are not disabled can do the "jobs that Americans won't do."

The same applies to the unemployed. If there are no jobs in your "field" then work in a lettuce field or wash dishes. I have done many menial jobs to tide me over in lean times.

If necessary the unemployed need to move to where the jobs are. Don't just hang around waiting (like our local white trash welfare bums) in areas where there are no jobs.

Eventually we'll adjust to reality and hopefully this time we'll become wealthy through hard work instead of easy credit.

The working-classes in the West have been living on private credit and government subsidies (funded by deficits or looted from social security in a Ponzi scheme) for decades in an artificial attempt at creating a "higher standard of living for the workers." As Margaret Thatcher said about socialism: "Eventually you run out of other peoples' money."