In Italy, they call him a mam­mone: an unem­ployed man in his 20s, 30s or 40s who still lives with mamma.

The preva­lence of the mam­mone has long been thought to be a pre­dom­i­nant­ly Ital­ian phe­nom­e­non, with deep cul­tur­al roots.  It has grown more pro­nounced with the country’s recent eco­nom­ic dis­tress.  Since 2008, a grow­ing per­cent­age of Ital­ian men aged 25–54 have aban­doned the labor force, no longer both­er­ing even to look for work.

Italy’s work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate among men of prime work­ing age is by far Europe’s low­est.  But it is not the low­est in the devel­oped world.  Italy now shares that dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion with the U.S.

That wouldn’t hap­pen if Oba­ma were President.

At least that’s the con­clu­sion you’d draw from read­ing the Eco­nom­ic Report of the Pres­i­dent, released last month by the White House Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers (CEA). The report holds the Pres­i­dent blame­less for a tepid recov­ery and symp­toms of a dodgy econ­o­my that have wors­ened on his watch.  Judg­ing from the report, the world’s most pow­er­ful man is pow­er­less to stand against shift­ing eco­nom­ic tides.

The CEA breaks the news about the Oba­ma-era plunge in male work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion rates on page 36 of its annu­al report, not­ing that the U.S. is, in this respect, “some­thing of an out­lier.”  That is some­thing of an under­state­ment.  The down­ward drift in male work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion that began dur­ing the 1990s has more recent­ly become a pre­cip­i­tous drop, leav­ing the U.S. and Italy as the two devel­oped coun­tries with the high­est per­cent­age of males aged 25–54 nei­ther work­ing nor seek­ing work, accord­ing to OECD sta­tis­tics cit­ed by the President’s economists.

This trend can­not be explained away as the baby boom becom­ing a “retire­ment boom,” as the report at one point sug­gests [p. 36].  Work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion rates among peo­ple 55 and old­er actu­al­ly have risen since Pres­i­dent Oba­ma took office, the only age group to show improve­ment.  The labor force decline hasn’t occurred pri­mar­i­ly among old­er work­ers, but among men of prime work­ing age.

And women as well.  The U.S. is the only OECD coun­try that has seen work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion rates fall for both men and women aged 25–54 [p. 38].  Female par­tic­i­pa­tion rates would improve, the CEA argues, if gov­ern­ment were to require com­pa­nies to offer paid mater­ni­ty leave (pp. 169ff).

Man­dat­ing paid leave is among the clutch of pol­i­cy pro­pos­als that the Pres­i­dent has brand­ed “mid­dle class eco­nom­ics,” a fuzzy for­mu­la­tion born of fuzzy think­ing. The Pres­i­dent and his advis­ers believe that we can cure many of our eco­nom­ic ills by mak­ing the mid­dle class more depen­dent on gov­ern­ment for things their wages used to buy.

And yet the economy’s biggest suc­cess of 2014 came only after Con­gress abrupt­ly cut gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits to the mid­dle class.  In his intro­duc­tion to the CEA report, the Pres­i­dent called 2014 a “break­through year” because “the econ­o­my added more jobs at the fastest pace since the 1990s” [p. 3].  Employ­ment increased as work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion rates at least tem­porar­i­ly sta­bi­lized so “the unem­ploy­ment rate plunged to its low­est point in over six years, far faster than econ­o­mists pre­dict­ed.” [p.3]

Faster than the President’s econ­o­mists had pre­dict­ed any­way.  Last year, the CEA said that mid­dle class eco­nom­ics required that gov­ern­ment extend an expir­ing pro­gram that paid unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits for longer than the cus­tom­ary 26 weeks.  They issued a joint report with the Labor Depart­ment in Decem­ber 2013, warn­ing that let­ting the pro­gram of extend­ed job­less ben­e­fits expire would result in a loss of 240,000 jobs.  Con­gress let the pro­gram expire. The econ­o­my added a month­ly aver­age of 260,000 jobs.

A study pub­lished by the Nation­al Bureau of Eco­nom­ic Research attrib­uted the employ­ment boom large­ly to the cut­off of extend­ed unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits.  While last year’s Eco­nom­ic Report of the Pres­i­dent obsessed on the need to extend unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits (the UI pro­gram was ref­er­enced 46 times), this year’s report doesn’t both­er to men­tion that Con­gress allowed the pro­gram to lapse, though its expi­ra­tion was arguably the year’s most sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy development.

The CEA offers no expla­na­tion for how last year’s report got things so wrong, makes no men­tion of how cut­ting ben­e­fits may have got­ten more peo­ple back to work, and includes no assess­ment of what that might mean for the President’s belief that pros­per­i­ty is achieved by enlarg­ing gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed benefits.

Such learned igno­rance is con­sis­tent with the report’s habit­u­al denial of the eco­nom­ic effects of the President’s poli­cies.  This is, after all, the annu­al eco­nom­ic report of the man who has been Pres­i­dent for more than six years.  His biggest accom­plish­ments are behind him.  Their imple­men­ta­tion has tak­en root.

He has large­ly got­ten his way on fis­cal pol­i­cy: enti­tle­ment spend­ing is up, tax­es on suc­cess­ful indi­vid­u­als are high­er, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has enlarged its con­trol over health care, banks are reg­u­lat­ed more heav­i­ly and large­ly in accor­dance with his pre­scrip­tions, only a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order pre­vents his Admin­is­tra­tion from con­fer­ring legal sta­tus on mil­lions of peo­ple who are liv­ing here unlaw­ful­ly, the inter­net is now a pub­lic util­i­ty sub­ject to polit­i­cal­ly appoint­ed com­mis­sion­ers, envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions have pro­lif­er­at­ed, and fed­er­al debt has mushroomed.

These pro­found changes have large­ly been abet­ted by fed­er­al courts stacked with judges favor­ably dis­posed to Admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies and by “uncon­ven­tion­al” mon­e­tary pol­i­cy insti­tut­ed by a Fed­er­al Reserve whose inter­ven­tions have coin­cid­ed almost per­fect­ly with the President’s expressed desires.

This is Obama’s world.   He and his advis­ers are loathe to admit that, since it is not the cheery place he’d promised.  The econ­o­my is under­per­form­ing, inequal­i­ty is increas­ing, mil­lions of peo­ple of prime work­ing age no longer seek work.  Such is the judg­ment, not of the President’s crit­ics, but of his eco­nom­ic counselors.

But instead of hon­est­ly assess­ing the caus­es of these short­com­ings, the CEA devotes its ener­gies to assert­ing that they are not the Pres­i­den­t’s fault.  Our eco­nom­ic prob­lems began around 1973, they argue.  For the quar­ter cen­tu­ry pri­or to that, eco­nom­ic growth was robust, labor force par­tic­i­pa­tion expand­ed, wages and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty grew. [pp. 29–31]. The econ­o­my hasn’t hit on all cylin­ders since, accord­ing to the CEA.  From 1973–1995, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth stalled.  From 1995–2013 (note how the report lumps the Oba­ma econ­o­my with that of his oft-maligned pre­de­ces­sor), pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth has returned, but labor force par­tic­i­pa­tion has declined and wages have lagged.

Those obser­va­tions, while infor­ma­tive, raise more ques­tions.  In 1973, one would like­ly have fore­cast blue skies for the econ­o­my.  The lead­ing edge of the baby boom gen­er­a­tion was enter­ing its prime work­ing years, new oppor­tu­ni­ties were open­ing for women and minori­ties, the Great Soci­ety pro­grams were just gain­ing trac­tion, the Viet­nam War was wind­ing down and – though no one could have known it at the time – near­ly three decades would pass before the U.S. would be embroiled in anoth­er pro­tract­ed war.

And yet, the econ­o­my has dis­ap­point­ed, accord­ing to White House econ­o­mists.  That might have led them to reflect on how changes in gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy over the past four decades may have con­tributed to its underperformance.

The CEA lacks such curios­i­ty.  It does note that the col­lapse of the Bret­ton Woods regime in 1973 con­sti­tut­ed a deci­sive break in mon­e­tary pol­i­cy [p. 31].  But the report doesn’t point out that intro­duc­tion of the new mon­e­tary sys­tem was fol­lowed almost imme­di­ate­ly by one of the coun­try’s worst bouts of infla­tion or that the era has been marked by bub­bles, busts and six reces­sions, includ­ing the worst since the Great Depression.

The report doesn’t stop to pon­der the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­thing could be fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with mon­e­tary pol­i­cy.  Nor does it con­sid­er the effect of equal­ly dra­mat­ic changes in fis­cal and social pol­i­cy that have occurred since 1973.  In that year, fed­er­al trans­fer pay­ments amount­ed to 6 per­cent of GDP; by 2014, they had reached 11 per­cent.  Mil­i­tary spend­ing fell in real terms from 7 per­cent of GDP to 4.4 per­cent. Gross fed­er­al debt amount­ed to 31.5 per­cent of GDP in 1973; last year it exceed­ed 100 per­cent.  Fed­er­al enti­tle­ment pro­grams con­sumed near­ly 70 per­cent of tax rev­enue in 2014, com­pared with just under 50 per­cent in 1973.  Pover­ty has with­stood this onslaught of social spend­ing.  The pover­ty rate stood at 11.1 per­cent in 1973; it has not been that low in any year since. It remained at 15 per­cent or high­er in three suc­ces­sive years (2010–12) for the first time since the War on Poverty’s open­ing salvo.

Cul­tur­al change accom­pa­nied fis­cal change.  Pop­u­la­tion growth was the pre­oc­cu­pa­tion of the cognoscen­ti in 1973, just as cli­mate change is today. They got what they want­ed.  Abor­tions are com­mon­place and birth con­trol is “free.”  The fer­til­i­ty rate has dropped to 12.6 per­cent, low­er than in 1973 (14.8 per­cent) and just more than half the 1960 rate (23.7 per­cent).  This cul­tur­al change has pro­duced an aging pop­u­la­tion with all of the social and eco­nom­ic dis­place­ments that portends.

Cul­tur­al mores favor the appetites of adults over the needs of chil­dren, lead­ing to high­er rates of divorce, an ele­vat­ed inci­dence of births to unmar­ried women, and an evolv­ing rede­f­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage and family.

In short, the Left has got­ten vir­tu­al­ly every­thing it want­ed since 1973, just as the Pres­i­dent has got­ten vir­tu­al­ly every­thing he want­ed since 2009.  That’s not a judg­ment on whether those changes were good or bad.  Each had some­thing to com­mend it.  It is only to say that those who suc­cess­ful­ly advo­cat­ed those changes should face up to their con­se­quences, both good and bad.

The economy’s struc­tur­al prob­lems are at least to some extent attrib­ut­able to the cumu­la­tive weight of the mon­e­tary, fis­cal and social changes that have occurred over the past four decades.  The CEA report does not come to grips with that possibility.

Our future depends in part on our will­ing­ness to rethink the received eco­nom­ic wis­dom of our recent past.

That won’t hap­pen while Oba­ma is President.