Party Polarization vs Party Co-operation: Gridlock and the decline of the USA

Most of my life has been in a climate of political co-operation.  Things were good here in the USA and life was great.  My troubles, if you can call them that, began in about 1990. At this time there was no great political divides like there is today. However, there was trouble brewing in the American Heartland as the manufacturing base began its disintegration.  In our little sector of NE Indiana came the collapse of International Harvester, General Electric, Tokheim, Dana, Weatherhead and a whole myriad of small support companies. I became a victim in this collapse that left our small, medium and large cities full of rotting buildings and rampant unemployment and transient job conditions and a flight of highly trained and educated people to the South.

However, My main reason for this post was to present the chart. I scraped it off of some site I was looking at and found it interesting so I have just wrapped some words around it.