Recovery FAIL

What’s so striking about this chart from CBPP is that not only is the current recession bad, but we never even regained the heights of the previous economic peak:

This is basically without precedent in U.S. history. And it’s worth noting that even though the general ups and downs of the economy are largely a global phenomenon, this specific issue isn’t. The UK is now mired in a recession and Labour will almost certainly lose the next election. But during the expansion, inequality declined in Britain and Labour took a huge chunk out of child poverty. Both countries floated up and then down on the strength of a finance bubble, but Britain put its boom years to good use. In the U.S., even the boom was not very favorable to most people.