US unemployment remains sluggishly above 9%, and would be greater if the statistics also counted potential workers who have quit searching for jobs. Being unemployed is traumatic for workers and their families, and idle human talent is also a national waste, especially when our economy needs an infusion of effort in education, basic research and infrastructure to enhance future competitiveness. As a result, demands that governments "do something" seem justified, but there are few comprehensive proposals from politicians suggesting what "doing something" should entail.

Let's examine the cause of today's unemployment. For three decades the US government and American consumers used debt to purchase goods and services they chose not to pay for currently –for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an expensive federal drug program, risky no-down-payment mortgages, and higher credit card balances – accompanied by massive tax cuts, greatly increasing national and personal debt.

This unsustainable surge of borrowing unleashed spending on goods and services, to meet which more employees were needed, creating a parallel debt-financed burst in jobs (here and abroad), all presumably to be paid back sometime. Not surprisingly, national employment grew from 61.6% of the population age 16 and older in 1976 to 66.2% in 2006. That's 10.5 million more jobs in 2006 than we would have had if the work force had remained at the 1976 percentage of the age 16 and older population. As the bubble broke, the number of unemployed increased by 7.7 million from 2007 to 2010.

Simply stated, we borrowed demand from our future, filled it using jobs borrowed from the future, financed by borrowing money against future earnings. At the time, this Ponzi-like scheme of fiscal miss-management was politically entrancing. Most Americans enjoyed living high on the hog, as did the investors in Bernie Madoff's similarly constructed financial empire. The only real difference was that Madoff knew his actions were deceptive and fraudulent. Now reality has come due.

Personal savings are up, state and local governments are cutting back. The federal government knows it too must cut deficits, but remains hog-tied by partisan ideological differences that trump simple arithmetic. In Washington, agreeing on what to do is as dead-in-the-water as the unchanging national unemployment figures.

Today's reduced demand for goods and services remains below the level needed to employ all who want jobs. Absent demand, no business can responsibly hire more people or invest in added capacity. In fact, the pressure is to improve productivity and lower cost by investing in labor-saving (i.e. job cutting) options. To do otherwise in a slow growth environment would ignore corporate responsibility to produce valued goods and services at minimum cost.

So Purple concludes that absent some unexpected change it will take time to move from where we are to full employment of, say, 5%. What might be a good strategy? Clearly we must reduce government deficits at all levels, cutting spending on ineffective programs and subsidies that have no current purpose, and streamlining entitlement programs. After taking on those politically difficult cuts, Purple believes we must also increase revenues, ideally by simplifying the tax code and making it more equitable, but no doubt also adding to the taxes paid by the most fortunate among us. As we bring our finances toward balance we need to add Americans to our work force first by increasing investments in future competitiveness – education (at all ages), basic research (especially energy and adaptation to climate change), and infrastructure (including broadband), areas shortchanged during the recent decades of excess consumption.

Getting rid of the double curse of unemployment and deficits is the responsibility of those we elected to office, but it is our job, as voters, to see that they do so or forfeit their jobs at the next election. We must insist they think and act rationally as Americans, rather than ideologically as Republicans or Democrats. Adding to our national unemployment by retiring those politicians who cannot adapt would be a small price to pay for saving America's future.