Change you can believe in.

A report from congressional Republicans last week offered data to back up the argument that this recovery – nearly five years along since the end of the recession in June 2009 – has been the slowest and least robust since the end of World War II.

Of all the data points that back that up (and there are plenty), few resonate with me like this one: In December 2007, there were 146 million people working in this country. In February 2014, there were 145 million people working in this country.

That is astonishing. After seven years of population growth and five years of so-called economic recovery, we still haven’t got the active labor force back to the size it was – in raw numbers, mind you – in the seventh year of the Bush presidency.

This is the product of so many bad policies, it’s hard to know where to start. It clearly starts with ObamaCare, which has added to the costs of doing business and provided massive disincentives to companies to hire workers. It also involves the administration’s general hostility toward business, its regulator abuses, its practice of crony capitalism, its refusal to deal with massive deficits and long-term debt, its refusal to fix the tax code, its use of the IRS and other government agencies to attack free-market advocates, its use of the NRLB to tilt the scales in favor of unions . . . the list could go on all day and into next week.

The first priority of the Obama White House is always to expand the power of the federal government, and it uses populist class warfare language to convince voters that this will be in their best interests and at the expense of the evil rich who are the cause of all their problems. This has generally been a political success but a governing failure, and the results show in that shocking number. Fewer people are working today than were working in December 2007.

Last week in Illinois, a group of ministers – who should stick to preaching from the sounds of things – gathered to demand higher taxes on the rich, using the curious logic that since the Bible talks a lot about God's concern for the poor, that must mean low tax rates are evil. In the midst of all this, one of these ministers made the claim that minimum-wage workers are the real job creators!

I kid you not. That kid at the fast food joint who is putting the ketchup on your burger? Give him your resume and see what happens.

If you want to know why so many Americans are still not working, here is all you need to know: People who think like that guy have been making U.S. economic policy for the past five years (and if you want to throw in the time when Nancy Pelosi first became Speaker of the House, make that seven years). They think “spreading the wealth” is what will lift people out of their situations, and they think confiscating the wealth of those who have the means to create jobs is the epitome of fairness and justice.

This is so obvious, the real question is why more people haven’t caught on yet. I know the mainstream media won’t tell you any of this, but you have eyes, don’t you? It’s only a matter of time before the situation becomes so serious that people can’t help but see it for themselves.