Unemployment rates are severely under tracked.

[NJ5]

binary solo said:

And you don't think those things you identify are fundamentally part of the economic system? Sure as hell they are. The current economic system basically rewards / encourages short term greed at the expense of long term sustainability / economic stability.

And because the current political system is a captive of the current economic systems there not only needs to be a fundamental economic change but the political systems in ALL countries needs to be transformed; not just tinkery reforms like campaign finance reform, but establishing an entirely new democratic model. When you have campaigning in a system which necessarily costs money, you're going to have monied interests calling the shots, and playing both sides. So it's not campaign finance reform that's needed, you basically need to eliminate campaigning. Trouble is people lack the intellectual capacity to envisage a democratic structure without campaigning (people have totally swallowed the fallacy that democracy requires campaigning (and political parties) to work well, when the exact opposite is in fact the case). And they are blind to democratic systems that are working without campaigning or partisanship. And of course there is no incentive on the part of the politcal and economic establishment to change things, because it's working for them.

So if the people who hold all the cards are happy with the economic and political status quo, and the most recent GFC has done nothing to really briung about change, what is it that will, in the end, acheive real political and economic transformation?

I don't think banks and "consumers" leveraging 20:1 and beyond is a necessary part of the economic system, no. It only happened because of stupid deregulation.

Have you heard of the Glass–Steagall Act? It was created during the Great Depression in the 1930s to forbid crazy leverage at banks. The economy  worked fine without it for many decades until it was repealed in 1999. Without it, you can see the result...