The real dirty little secret of the American economy is that we are doing OK.

No, we aren't doing ok. The economy is churning along just fine but all the gains are hoovered up by the already wealthy in the form of corporate profits and dividends. That the finance sector has returned to its pre-crash profitability is the biggest scandal no one hears about.

The economy is fine, people are starving, freezing to death, and being thrown out of their homes in droves.

America is not fine, fark the stock market and your 401k.

There is no such thing as "the economy". It's like "society". Is it currently good or bad?

Sure it's okay, if you're filthy stinking rich!

As for the rest, half of us are now officially below the poverty line, according to census data:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/15/census-shows-1-in-2-peopl_1_ n _1150128.html

yeah, macroeconomic indicators generally mean diddly squat to the middle class.

/whoopty doo

TofuTheAlmighty: The real dirty little secret of the American economy is that we are doing OK.
No, we aren't doing ok. The economy is churning along just fine but all the gains are hoovered up by the already wealthy in the form of corporate profits and dividends. That the finance sector has returned to its pre-crash profitability is the biggest scandal no one hears about.

Came here to say this, but you said it better.

The "economy" is doing "better" if you're in a position to take "advantage" of it. If you're a commoner (not invested in a large way in the faux economy that is Wall St) you're still drowning in credit card debt, wishing your house was worth more than you owe, and worrying about a) getting a job or b) getting a job if you lose your job. There's no decent jobs, and any/all spending this Christmas season is the explosion of the zit of pent-up demand, rather than an expression of confidence in the future.

I'm grateful I've got a job, and it's pretty safe, but I'm also slowly digging my way out of debt... the government bailed me out NONE, and the banks refuse to let my government's largesse help me in any way. Fark 'em all - they're liars, cheats and anyone who swallows this swill has rose-colored glasses or a bevy of stock in BOA and Citigroup.

Brainwash: The economy is fine, people are starving, freezing to death, and being thrown out of their homes in droves.

America is not fine, fark the stock market and your 401k.

There has always been a significant portion of our society that is starving/freezing/homeless. Its just recently that society as a whole can reasonably afford to take care of everyone due to increase production efficiencies, but we've collectively decided against doing so.

doubled99: There is no such thing as "the economy". It's like "society". Is it currently good or bad?

Society is always bad and getting worse. At some unspecified point in the past, society was good.

The real dirty little secret is that economics if 20% facts/numbers, and 80% voodoo/opinion/un-proveable theory and you can always find a "Leading Economist" to say whatever you need them to in order to make your particular point.

TV's Vinnie: Sure it's okay, if you're filthy stinking rich!

As for the rest, half of us are now officially below the poverty line, according to census data:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/15/census-shows-1-in-2-peopl_1_ n _1150128.html

That's not what that article actually says.

cameroncrazy1984: Brainwash: The economy is fine, people are starving, freezing to death, and being thrown out of their homes in droves.

America is not fine, fark the stock market and your 401k.

Are you saying that if the economy was doing well, people would never starve, never freeze, and never be thrown out of their homes?

Interesting. Stupid, but interesting.

No, smug self-satisfied Republican douchebag. I'm saying most of these people would have jobs, or family members with jobs who could take care of them.

If you were in this room I'm stomp on your nuts and strangle you to death you piece of shiat.

Subby? When REAL unemployment - counting those out of work, those seeking work, those under-employed and those who have STOPPED looking for a job - is figured an the number is upwards of 14% the economy is
not 'actually doing okay'.

I guess when you get your info from sites like The Daily Beast you'll believe anything.

meat0918: Eddie Adams from Torrance: So Republican obstructionism is working.

Suck it libs.

That's what I expect to hear the closer we get to the general election.

See! Doing nothing is working. Do you really want us to screw that up and do something?

//The 12% congressional approval rating would tell me "Yes, the American people want you to do something"


Ha. I guess Eddie is in that 12%, along with the other idiots who ate paint chips like Ruffles when they were kids...

vpb: This About That: According to BLS:

Productivity rose 2.3 percent in the nonfarm business sector in third quarter 2011; unit labor costs decreased 2.5 percent (seasonally adjusted annual rates). In manufacturing, productivity grew 5.0 percent and unit labor costs fell 5.1 percent.

I think this means that business is making more profit while employing fewer of us. Add the dismal housing market, and you have what most of us live with: getting poorer in a recovering economy. Where will that lead?

If you think about it, one reason that things are going the way they are is that labor has isn't as valuable as it once was. Even cashiers can be replaced by automated checkouts now.


Most recessions since the 1800s have been followed by a large jump in efficiency as businesses re-tool to eliminate waste - especially labor. The years of the great depression were actually one of the biggest technological leaps forward in history, virtually every industry had to modernize on a massive scale to make ends meet.

Eventually, new businesses and models pop up following this time which spurs on new hiring and the cycle repeats...

This is bad news ... FOR OBAMA!

I think it's been okay for quite some time. But when you run into "I just fired 5 people because I hate Obama" retards, you wonder if our problems aren't just a collective hissy fit by wingnuts. Lord knows there's enough of them.

With a 22 trillion dollar cash enema and negative real interest rates, it should be doing a little better than "just fine".

Except for the fact that every news site is carrying the story on the Census data showing that half of all Americans are classified as Poor or Low income.

Link (new window)

Bullshait!!

The economy is recovering. But it's recovering along very traditional lines, which aren't the simple boom, bust, boom cycle that they teach you in econ 101. The recession was precipitated by a financial crisis, a particularly severe one. Always after such a recession there is a period of deleveraging that occurs before the traditional economic indicators (unemployment, GDP growth) begin to significantly recover.

Given the particular severity of the crisis, the data suggests about 4-5 years of deleveraging are required. So we should see "real" recovery beginning late 2012 to mid 2013.

Unfortunately, deleveraging appears to be a critical step in recovery. Japan's lost decade is what you get when you pretend it's not.

The author runs a venture capital company, so there's no possible way he could be biased or, you know, twisting the facts or anything like that. I think I'll stick with the real experts are saying and go with what I'm seeing all around me: small businesses failing, more houses going into foreclosure, people losing their jobs and food prices steadily climbing. Because the truth is, overall, the economy has improved considerably in the last four years. But only a few people are benefiting from this. We're in the third jobless economic recovery since 2000.

Brainwash: If you were in this room I'm stomp on your nuts and strangle you to death you piece of shiat.

It's not a good thread until at least one death threat is made.

*snert* No, article writer and moron. The economy is not doing "rather well". It may be doing relatively well compared to the last couple of years but that doesn't mean it's doing "rather well".

Devils Advocate 668: Except for the fact that every news site is carrying the story on the Census data showing that half of all Americans are classified as Poor or Low income.

The article says the economy is doing fine, not that people are doing fine. Sheesh.

vpb: This About That: According to BLS:

Productivity rose 2.3 percent in the nonfarm business sector in third quarter 2011; unit labor costs decreased 2.5 percent (seasonally adjusted annual rates). In manufacturing, productivity grew 5.0 percent and unit labor costs fell 5.1 percent.

I think this means that business is making more profit while employing fewer of us. Add the dismal housing market, and you have what most of us live with: getting poorer in a recovering economy. Where will that lead?

If you think about it, one reason that things are going the way they are is that labor has isn't as valuable as it once was. Even cashiers can be replaced by automated checkouts now.

(Tl:dr version: the labor force is farked no matter what happens in the economy)

This is what few people are really talking about. It's not so much that the economy is going up or down as that it's changing dramatically and we aren't handling it well, especially the labor class

Traditional manufacturing is dying. The idea that you can get out of high school and get a decent job attaching a steering column to a truck on an assembly line is gone. It's fracturing into two pieces- the part that's easily automatable, which will be done by a robot, and the skilled machinery work like running CNC machines that can't (yet). There are jobs available in the latter, but there are a lot fewer of them and they require training, thought and a willingness to keep up with the current state of the art.

This split is happening everywhere- there are vastly fewer secretaries these days. Cars are both vastly more reliable and far more complex to troubleshoot than before. Flight crews for jets used to be 3 people, now they are 2 since you don't need a flight engineer anymore-you can keep going with examples here. For a while the housing bubble propped up the manual labor pool, but that's gone now and probably won't be coming back anytime soon.

The result of all this is an unemployment rate of >13% for high school dropouts, and almost 9% for high school grads (new window) Meanwhile, folks with college degrees and higher are doing basically fine- 4.4% unemployment, and if we're not getting raises, we're at least employed.

This shift won't be undone, ever. How we handle it is still somewhat of a mystery- there are a ton of folks out there who simply aren't cut out for modern high-skill jobs, and relegating them all to saying "Do you want fries with that" is a really terrible option for many, many reasons.

Glockenspiel Hero: folks with college degrees and higher are doing basically fine- 4.4% unemployment,

Yep. It's a very very bad time to be old and undereducated

Better is not the same as good. But right now I'll take what I can get.

Smoke and mirrors, baby!

vote republican....

This About That: According to BLS:

Productivity rose 2.3 percent in the nonfarm business sector in third quarter 2011; unit labor costs decreased 2.5 percent (seasonally adjusted annual rates). In manufacturing, productivity grew 5.0 percent and unit labor costs fell 5.1 percent.

I think this means that business is making more profit while employing fewer of us. Add the dismal housing market, and you have what most of us live with: getting poorer in a recovering economy. Where will that lead?

Socialism, it's a natural progression. The main threat to capitalism is capitalists.

People in a coma on life support are also doing "okay."

SharkTrager: TV's Vinnie: Sure it's okay, if you're filthy stinking rich!

As for the rest, half of us are now officially below the poverty line, according to census data:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/15/census-shows-1-in-2-peopl_1_ n _1150128.html

That's not what that article actually says.


U.S. Poverty: Census Finds Nearly Half Of Americans Are Poor Or Low-Income

Seems to me that it does.