It will take 10 million jobs to restore unemployment and labor force participation rates to pre-recession levels.

At current rates of growth, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that will take a decade.

A decade of mass unemployment will be a human tragedy, particularly for young people.

It will also virtually guarantee declining wages and rising inequality.

The European experience with austerity – with unemployment rates soaring – and the community headed back into recession – ought to provide a clear warning to the United States.

Inflicting austerity – tax hikes and spending cuts – on a weak economy will increase misery and very likely result in a return to recession.

These realities should lead American politicians to argue loudly about how to create jobs and put Americans back to work.

But as we head towards the first presidential debate on October 3, this debate is muted.

Republican Mitt Romney has chosen to focus on Obama’s failure, while minimizing attention to his remedy for the economy.

In fact the stew he offers is a reheated version of what conservatives have been peddling for three decades – deep domestic spending cuts, top end tax cuts, deregulation, corporate trade, a war on labor unions.

The result will surely be slow growth at best and increased job loss.

President Obama has chosen to run painting Romney as the “man from Bain.”

At the Democratic convention, he seemed content to argue that his policies simply need more time. He offered a major new jobs program last fall that the Republican Congress blocked.

But he has chosen not to run against their obstruction, nor to lay out a bold strategy to get the economy on course.

In this bizarre election, with jobs and the economy the central preoccupation of voters, the only federal official rousing alarm about unemployment and pushing extraordinary actions to meet it is one who is not up for election – the conservative Republican head of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.

And behind the scenes, hidden from the voters, an even greater folly is being hatched.

Senators of both parties are meeting in secret to cut a “grand bargain” – a mix of tax reform and cuts in basic security programs (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – the health and public pension programs that seniors rely on) to reduce deficits.

Instead of focusing on how to put people to work, the Congress seems ready – after the election – to treat mass unemployment as the new normal, and to turn its attention to getting our books in order.

With Europe headed into recession, China slowing, global trade slowing, the world is headed back towards a global downturn.

For the US to add to this would be utterly irresponsible – and deeply destructive to working families.

Yet, this misbegotten course enjoys broad support across elite opinion.

America and the world will be spared this folly only if working people mobilize and turn over the table where the deals are taking place.

If the election ends up with a repudiation of Romney, the tribune of the 1%, the post-election battle will feature a battle about the Democratic Party, and whether it champions or turns its back on working people.