First Presidential Debate

[Professor S]

Game, you've asked a lot, so let me take one at a time:

Originally Posted by TheGame

Prof, I guess my question about the participation rates would be... what policies do you think led to it going down like it has?

I actually think Romney did a great job of explaining this. Many of the regulations that were placed on banking after the collapse were very ambiguous. Combine uncertainty with continued low interest rates and banks simply aren't encouraged to risk loans to small businesses or individuals. Higher risk, lower reward.

Do you consider this as bleeding caused by the previous administration that the new one couldn't stop fast enough? Or do you think something passed under the current administration that directly lead to this?

The Obama administration was not in power during the collapse, so I can hardly blame them for the collapse. I don't think anyone has. What I do believe is that they're prescriptions for curing the problem have not helped, and have likely hurt what natural market forces would have been able to accomplish. Our recovery has been pathetic. We should have hit 4% growth a year ago. Instead growth has slowed over the last 2 years.

From every source I've read, it seems like the job situation has gotten better since late 2008. There must be either a lot of people who lost unemployment benefits, or a lot of new one-income households. It's hard to explain how there are so many more people actively working, while there are less people looking for work at the same time.

Population growth. Out economy added 114,000 jobs in September, but needs to add over 200,000 just to keep up with new demand. Also, more and more young people are dropping out of the work force. Very troubling.

The bottom line is this: We need serious economic growth to improve the job situation. We have not had that, and in fact, we're moving in the wrong direction.