Here are some graphs of how well President Barack Obama’s regulations and economic policies have been working since he exploded our national debt with his “Stimulus” package in 2009. The graphs come from Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business’ Maguire Energy Institute.

First, the sad classic graph of how the Obama Recovery compares with past recession recoveries. It speaks for itself.

This graph shows the total number of Americans still unemployed—the flip side of the number of Americans who actually have jobs.

Like the classic above, things are improving—hence “recovery”—but unemployment still is at historic highs when we consider the number of Americans that make up the unemployed 6.3%. This is because our population is growing faster than the number of jobs available.

This graph shows that the length of time Americans are unemployed isn’t improving very much at all. See the bit about jobs not being created fast enough, above, for a major contributor to this failure. This is a problem that tends to be self-perpetuating, too. The longer folks are out of a job, the more of their skills they lose; if they were in a high-skill, and/or information intensive job (engineering comes to mind), the more obsolete they become, too, as they aren’t as able to keep up with the new data in their field as are those still employed—or even the newly graduated.

And one more:

Productivity growth, output per hour by an employee, or what he produces in his hour of working, isn’t very much at all. Most of the jobs that are being created in this pseudo-recovery are service jobs. There are only so many tables a waitress can handle in an hour, only so many disgruntled customers a Customer Service Representative can handle in an hour, only so many investors a brokerage’s Investment Advisor can handle in an hour.

This…recovery…is, to use the Institute’s term, anemic. But we knew that from last week’s GDP growth number. And all of you still looking for work, or who’ve given up on that, have known this for some time.

Here‘s a part (certainly not all) of the Left’s rationale for the $15/hour minimum wage just passed in Seattle. It’s from FoxNews‘ cite of David Goldstein, of whom they refer as a “Seattle blogger.”

If some jobs are lost, but we lift tens of thousands of low-wage workers out of poverty, that’s a net plus in the long run[.]

Which it would be, were this accurate. During the creative destruction that goes on all the time in a free market economy, jobs are lost and many more created—not only for low-wage workers, but for all workers. But the jobs that are lost due to government mandated minimum wage laws are exactly those of low-wage workers, who are priced out of the job market. There won’t be tens of thousands of low-wage workers lifted out of poverty by this law, these low-wage workers now will be trapped in no-wage poverty because they can no longer get jobs.

The simple fact is, the jobs are low-wage (notice that: the jobs are low-wage, not the workers in those jobs) because the value of the work—not of the worker—is so low.

And the Left adds this bit of rank cynicism:

It may very well be unfair, but unfair regulations are not illegal. The government distinguishes between different types of businesses and different types of industries all the time.

Because, you know, shut up.