And something else Romney and Obama might have discussed:

 Most Americans are financially totally unready for old age.

"Only 58% of us are even saving for retirement in the first place. Of that group, 60% have less than $25,000 put away....Almost half (48%) of workers ages 45 and up have less than $25,000 saved." -- ConvergEx Group

For perspective, Fidelity estimates that a couple retiring this year will need $240,000 just to cover medical bills before they die. If you haven't already, try to get long-term health insurance -- it's significantly cheaper the younger you are, and unlike Medicaid, should that continue to exists, you won't have to be bankrupt to benefit.

ConvergEx also found that "22% of retirees claim they're taking more than they thought they would out of their accounts, depleting their savings even faster than they anticipated," so even that $25,000 is less than it seems.

Having a pension may not protect you, either. Pew Charitable Trusts estimates public pensions are underfunded by $1.38 trillion. Standard & Poor's estimates that S&P 500 companies are $355 billion short of what's needed to cover pension obligations.

"Of the 500 companies, 338 have defined-benefit pension plans, and only 18 are fully funded." -- The New York Times.

You might have wondered why one candidate or the other didn't suggest that pension plans be fully funded as a matter of law.

The government solution is to have us work longer, maybe our entire lives. But that's assuming we'll be able to work 'til we drop dead. Even now, and it's going to get worse as medical science extends our lives, a healthy 25-year-old female can expect to live to nearly 100 years old. Let alone to a nonagenarian, there are few jobs that will be offered to a 55-year-old worker when a stronger, faster and more eager 25-year-old is available. And that's if you're healthy enough to work: dementia, osteoporosis, breathing disorders, heart trouble...there are a lot of diseases waiting in the wings as we grow older that will make any job impossible.

Finally, for a majority of people, Social Security, in the best of circumstances a meager instrument of defense, will be the only thing staving off ruin. And the looming "grand bargain" between Obama and the GOP trolls to balance the federal budget has cuts in that "on the table," too.

Here's something left out of the debates:

The median duration of unemployment is now 18.5 weeks, compared to a 50-year average of 8.2 weeks. The unemployment rate for those aged 16-24 is nearly 16%. According to a Rutgers study, 12% of those who have graduated college since 2006 are either unemployed or can't find full-time work -- and they're the ones with college degrees. In a study of men graduating from college between 1979 and 1989, Yale economist Lisa Kahn found that those entering the labor market during poor economic times earned about 7% less than those who graduated when the economy was strong, and the gap persisted for years: 17 years after graduation, Kahn found that those who began their careers when the economy was in recession were still earning less than those who started their careers when the economy was strong, adjusted for inflation and age. Those who stepped into a world of high unemployment were never able to shake it off. Testifying before Congress in 2010, Til von Wachter of Columbia University offered another startling stat: "The average mature worker losing a stable job at a good employer will see earnings reductions of 20% lasting over 15 to 20 years" when laid off during a recession. The longer unemployment lasts, the harder it is to recover from. We need a massive New Deal-style employment program.

For the record

"For the first time since the Great Depression, median family income has fallen substantially over an entire decade. Income grew slowly through most of the last decade, except at the top of the distribution, before falling sharply when the financial crisis began.

"By last year, family income was 8 percent lower than it had been 11 years earlier, at its peak in 2000, according to inflation-adjusted numbers from the Census Bureau. On average in 11-year periods in the decades just after World War II, inflation-adjusted median income rose by almost 30 percent." -- David Leonhardt (New York Times)

Just the facts, ma'm.

Even allowing for the fact that presidents get too much credit when the economy is good and too much blame when it's bad, these numbers deserve some thought:

The average annual real total stock market return has been greater during Obama's first term -- 29.1% -- than any president since Teddy Roosevelt (for comparison: Gerald Ford is in 2nd place with a return of 16.7%). Average annual real corporate profit growth during Barak Obama's administration -- 77.9% (2nd place: Harding 17.7% -- and the sainted Reagan? 2.3%). If the business community was competent and rational, corporate America would be lining up to reward this administration (but they're as susceptible to the lesser-of-two-evils argument as anyone -- and, of course, many segments of industry are backing Obama or contributing to both sides and expecting to profit no matter which wins).

On the other hand, the average annual real GDP growth per capita under Obama (1.4%) puts him in 11th place between Nixon and Taft (No 1: FDR 8% -- the Depression provided a low starting point and war is good for business; No 3: Johnson 4.3% -- LBJ, not Reagan, Mr. President, is the model every Democratic should follow). When it comes to inflation, the average change in the consumer price index over the past four years is 2.2% (Obama is 12th in this category between Bush II and Roosevelt I; 1st place: Carter 10.1%). Obama is getting a lot of blame for unemployment (and, certainly, the stimulus should have been much, much bigger -- plus "austerity" and "tax cuts" should ever cross his lips), but consider the percentage changes in the unemployment rate under Obama (for all practical purposes 0.0%) and these other chief executives: FDR -32.8%; Clinton -2.9%; Reagan -2.0%; Ike +3.4%; Bush II +3.6%; Hoover 30.6%). So the worst you can say about the high unemployment rate in 2012 is that 1) Obama inherited it from Bush II and 2) he hasn't done enough about it.

Campaign

A lot of important topics have been left out of this campaign. For example, neither presidential candidate will touch the housing crisis, because Obama hasn't made the housing economy better ("Based on five key metrics related to the housing market — average home price, unemployment rate, foreclosure inventory, foreclosure starts and share of distressed sales — the U.S. housing market comes out slightly worse off than it was four years ago" -- RealtyTrac) and Romney proposes to make it worse.

Geography is hard. You have to, like, read maps and stuff.

And yet, according to the mainstream media, Mitt Romney won the debate.

Foreign Policy and Tax Havens

With Monday's presidential debate focusing on foreign policy, it's worth taking a look at a new Citizens for Tax Justice analysis that found 285 of the Fortune 500 companies piled up more than $1.5 trillion in overseas profits by the end of 2011. There is evidence, according to the report, that these profits were artificially shifted out of the United States and other countries where the companies actually do business and into foreign tax havens.

Read the report here.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. The show's about to start.

Bill Clinton succeeded a failed GOP presidency and realized the entire corporatist agenda -- banking reform, telecom reform, welfare reform, free trade, etc. -- that the Republicans were unable to achieve.

Barack Obama followed a criminal GOP presidency and upped the ante on his predecessor's worst policies -- expanding militarism, domestic spying, military adventurism, etc., while coming up with some of his own, like extrajudicial assassination and quasi-legal or more probably illegal and certainly immoral deployment of drones, torture of Bradley Manning, tightening government secrecy and prosecuting whistle-blowers, at the same time allowing the war criminals and financial gangsters of the Bush era to go free.

Why does this happen? The liberals and leftists in Congress, and there are more than a few, will fight tooth and nail against a Republican who pursues such policies; but conservative Democrats like Clinton and Obama, by "triangulating" between the two congressional parties, neutralize and emasculate progressive Democrats in Congress who find it difficult to oppose "our guy."

The differences between Mitt Romney and Obama are in matters of revenue and spending that are largely legislative in nature; in the policies that are in the purview of the executive -- the conduct of the Department of War, the Justice Department, etc. -- there is virtually no disagreement between the candidates or the presidential parties.

The Democrats run for president as the champions of economic justice, but in office they can never seem to get the job done; the Republicans are the upholders of family values and individual rights, yet they leave office with such matters pretty much where they found them.

In the meantime, it is business as usual for capitalists, militarists, the security state. Like Obama's newfound populism, Romney's weird embrace of teapartyism will disappear after the election; if he wins, he will govern from near the center-right inhabited by Obama now -- Romney will move left as president, just as Obama will move right. The game is kept going by bogus political theater in which both sides try to persuade a majority that they are the lesser-of-two-evils. And we fall for it every time.

Why reforming our undemocratic system is nearly impossible:

Less than 2% of the U.S. populace, residing in the 13 least populous states, are all that are needed to block a constitutional amendment, making it very cheap to prevent an amendment affirming that corporations are not persons, say, getting rid of the Electoral College, eliminating the Senate or apportioning senators on the basis of population, or any other attempt to repair our ragged democracy.