The chart above should be the only information you need to make your decision this election year. The time period ranges from 1989 to Jan. 1, 2018.
The thin grey line is the estimated percentage of people of all ages living in poverty in the United States, which is marked by the left scale.

The bold black line is the percentage of people living in poverty under the age of 5. Yes, I said under the age of 5. This is counted by the scale on the right of the chart. The reader will note that despite these two metrics being counted in percentage as well as nominal terms, both trend lines have been well correlated for about thirty years.

It has been estimated, that as of this writing, an additional 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since May of this year. This chart will not be updated until early 2021. But we now have the plain evidence that any time a Republican is elected President, poverty rates rise, dragging the fate of children, toddlers actually, with them. This is not by accident. This is by design. This is due to hard policy.

The most interesting period of the chart is that of the George Bush Jr. presidency. Note that even after two reckless and top-heavy tax cuts, poverty rates tack up.

During this period, there are other indicators showing a slow consistent erosion of the economy. Labor Participation peaked in 2000 and continued to decline throughout the Bush presidency, well after the 2001 recession ended.

The employment to population ratio (EPOP) for age 25-54 swoons, the share of net worth for the bottom 50 percent of the population falls dramatically.

President Bush is practically playing a game of Jenga with the U.S. economy, slowly removing the blocks that support it throughout both terms of his presidency. In 2008, the pile crashes.

Few economists have realized it, and fewer have voiced it, but President Obama wasn’t left with a recession to fight. He was left with two recessions to fight, one, a slow-moving domestic train wreck, the other, a global calamity.

For all the whining about the “slow pace of the recovery,” he set a path set for continued, sustainable employment gains with low inflation. That’s not a failed record, and his successor simply coasted on the momentum of that record, then took all the credit for it, even as he underperformed it!

Then, he destroyed it.

And now, not only do we face another lost decade in front of us, the progress made by the one behind us has been completely obliterated. All because of the utter lack of competence of just one man, and his Party of enablers. A stiff price must be paid.

And it must be costly, ruthless, and indelible. Many of you don’t bother to vote because the results in New York can be quite predictable. This year, we need to bury the GOP six feet deep.

The choice should not be hard. The cancer of the Republican Party, from Washington down to its race-baiting henchmen in state and county Legislatures, must be removed from the body politic of the nation. Vote out every last one and burn the GOP to a cinder. It has nothing to offer the country but impoverishment, social dysfunction and perpetual failure.

Donald Davret

Roslyn