The title of the article is The sad state of the American worker but what it really underscores is the sad state of economic theory and the economists who come with it. Read the article if you must, but the author has no idea what went wrong. Let us therefore start with the statistical facts he raises:

Start with the jobless rate. Yes, unemployment is down to 5.1 percent officially. Raise your hand if you believe that number is even close to accurate. The real unemployment rate counting labor force quitters and those forced into part-time jobs is, according to Mr. Obama’s own Labor Department: 10.5 percent. That number is actually down from more than 15 percent recently, but these still feel like recession rates. Nearly 90 million Americans over the age of 16 are out of the full-time workforce, and many millions of them are plopped in front of the TV watching “Seinfeld” reruns and living off food stamps or their parents because they have given up looking for a good job.

There is then the fall in household incomes which has occurred in spite of the fact that so many of our children are still living at home with their parents:

The Census Bureau has released the latest data on family income, and it has been analyzed by the statisticians at Sentier Research. Through this past June, the median income family has lost $1,700 in real income since Team Obama took the reins (see chart).

All that is true, and more, but you will look through this article for any suggestion on what went wrong, other than the anti-business environment that businesses have to contend with or the rises in the minimum wage which did not cause the problem and are peripheral at best. Frankly, he sees there is a problem but if you ask me, he has no idea what ought to be done. And the reason for that, in my view, is that economic theory is itself so misguided that economists in general might even be willing to endorse everything Obama has done to try to put the economy back on the rails.