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As I've said before, we can celebrate our successes and be happy about the fact that we have persevered through the worst of that period of 08 to the present. I'm merely pointing out the fact that this country has moved on with far less secure employment, a far lesser spread of that celebrated prosperity, and the growing problem of how to deal with that reality. I'm well aware that you are in the camp that sincerely believes the plight of poverty is an individual thing, and therefore separate from our own personal concern. I don't necessarily share that view, and I do think we will face the consequences of this economic marginalization in a way that will most certainly be a cause for concern.
I like your posts jertheber, keep posting here please.
Some individuals are having problems. Some were having problems before the recession. Some would have had problems without a recession. I suppose that could be a matter of perspective.
The overall trends are not. Salaries are increasing. Businesses are doing well. Growth is still slow but unemployment is way down. There are an estimated 5 million jobs where employers cannot find suitable employees.
Our economy has been dead since 2001 and we have been in depression ever since. Of course the Fed has been masking this fact by printing money and fixing markets. No real recovery since 2008, just another bubble created by the Fed.
Global economy is not recovering. The world still has WAY TOO MUCH DEBT it needs to unload (through default) before growth can come around again. All that QE eye candy delayed the process of deflation, but it has not changed anything. A lot more pain ahead to get back to GO.
[quote=jertheber;44174544].......... I'm merely pointing out the fact that this country has moved on with far less secure employment........
I'm well aware that you are in the camp that sincerely believes the plight of poverty is an individual thing........quote]
We have very low unemployment and millions of jobs that employers cannot find employees with suitable skills. That sounds like excellent security to me. I remember the good old days with extremely high unemployment throughout the country regardless of job skills.
You seem to imply that I blame each individual who falls into the poverty category. That could not be further from the truth. The problem seems clear. Poor people do not have skills that employers find valuable. We already have 5 million jobs where employers cannot find suitable employees. Somehow "fixing" the whole economy is viewed as a solution. Others believe the solution is to force employers to pay more for those who work in minimum wage jobs. I doubt either of those will do much if anything. With globalization, automation and robotics, the situation is only going to get worse. If need to start paying serious attention to our broken educational system.
There is no such a thing as a perpetual growth. Inflation and Deflation are equal part of our economy as a whole. If you chose to Inflate then you have to be prepared to deflate. Inflation and Deflation work like day and night, like Husband and Wife. You can't have one without the other.
The Fed is fighting a war against Deflation that can't be won, we lost that war 70+ years ago. Embrace deflation, don't fight it, don't use tricks or gimmicks to mask deflation, deflation is a necessary part of our economy.
Raise rates and allow defaults and bankruptcies to run wild, we need to destroy bad debts that we are desperately protecting since 2001.
Last edited by yellowbelle; 05-24-2016 at 10:54 PM..
Reason: quoted post deleted, C2BP if you want your post removed just let me know.
.......... I'm merely pointing out the fact that this country has moved on with far less secure employment........
I'm well aware that you are in the camp that sincerely believes the plight of poverty is an individual thing........quote]
We have very low unemployment and millions of jobs that employers cannot find employees with suitable skills. That sounds like excellent security to me. I remember the good old days with extremely high unemployment throughout the country regardless of job skills.
You seem to imply that I blame each individual who falls into the poverty category. That could not be further from the truth. The problem seems clear. Poor people do not have skills that employers find valuable. We already have 5 million jobs where employers cannot find suitable employees. Somehow "fixing" the whole economy is viewed as a solution. Others believe the solution is to force employers to pay more for those who work in minimum wage jobs. I doubt either of those will do much if anything. With globalization, automation and robotics, the situation is only going to get worse. If need to start paying serious attention to our broken educational system.
Like me you are retired and doing alright financially, we worked our entire lives and now can reap the rewards of that time we spent tied to a job. Today that would more than likely be a scenario neither of us could duplicate. And that is but one aspect of the economic paradigm shift others are experiencing today. The company I retired from has since stopped it's pension plan and all future retirees will be missing that money. I see plenty of poverty among those who go to work everyday, and that isn't how I remember the fifties sixties, seventies, early eighties, beyond that, the tide had turned and poverty was accepted in the country as a kind of punishing factor for those who hadn't sought out higher education or high paying trade skills. Are we all to become Doctors, Lawyers, or programmers?
I didn't mean to couch you as a curmudgeonly type who hates the poor, I have read most of what you post here and through that reading I've determined that your views do include a certain bias toward the positive aspects of our economy as opposed to all that isn't so rosy in the US. It looks as though you're stating what has become a new found mantra of the quintessential conservative's view of American economics, and that would be the refrain of always having the poor among us, another way of saying that poverty is somehow a "natural outcome" of our economic parameters and solid reasoning. Framing poverty as a thing visited exclusively on the non working, aid dependent, populace has become a common view of poverty, but the working poor and the causes of their poverty is simply another manifestation of an economy terribly out of balance with regard to contribution and compensation.
If we can celebrate the success we should be able to consider the less than successful conditions to be a drag on that success. It should come as no surprise that perspective is often framed in the experiential realm, that's to say that if you are reaping the benefits of something you will see that construct as a positive, and that is how the economy here in the US is often measured with regard to our personal take on it. For those whose lives were disrupted by the credit crisis of 09 onward and who are now marginalized to the point that their benefit is slim or non existent, I'd suppose they may have a far different view of all things economic in America.
If we buy into the notion that business is somehow a more deserving contributor than the individual worker, if we think of business as a manifestation of a "right" and it's contribution to poverty as a "natural" thing, then we've reduced the human to a position below that of business. Business has no innate "right" to exist. But I'd think that in a democracy the human would. I'm saying that we should be looking at the plight of those who are not reaping the rewards of their work, and I'll add to that those whose job seeking has yielded little positive results, the complexities are enormous here, the American economy has taken a new direction, and in doing so has created a class of people who contribute to the overall benefit, but don't enjoy any comparable benefit in return.
On jobs: Your claim of the poor having no valuable skills seems to miss the point that employers DO find value in the work done by the poor, but that value is considered to be the stuff of profits and those profits aren't being shared on a basis consistent with the workers contribution. Those five million jobs? I'm not sure where they are but I'm going to take a guess and say that those jobs require a fair amount of technical education, another thing we have seen sliding away in this new economy.
Poor schools and a broken educational system are a result of an out of balance economy every bit as much as they are a cause of a less than desirable workforce readiness. Taxes are now a dirty word, and that view of a public contribution to the greater good has permeated the thinking relative to anything in the public realm, it's not the greater good that concerns most of America, most are only concerned with themselves and that's led to a break in what was once considered the backbone of American prosperity.
On "forcing" employers: I owned and operated a business throughout the sixties and seventies, I was "forced" to do many things in conjunction with ecological standards, tax rules, labor standards, L&I provisions, etc, all those regulatory requirements I met in order to remain in business, and the majority of them were non existent at one time. Was America a better place then? Probably not, so, force is sometimes the leavening agent utilized by democracies where the greater good is prized, and the greater spread of benefit is seen as a good thing, and that is the result of looking at prosperity as it relates to the least regarded of a nations citizens. I'm not attempting to assign blame, we all share some of that burden of living in a less than desirable society.
I think we need to change the definition of recession.
That definition is a hangover from the days when economic growth was even across the board. So when the GDP went back up, so did the jobs. Basically, the entire society benefited across the board. Linking the definition of recession to GDP performance worked in the past. It doesn't work anymore.
Anyway, I friend just commented how great the economy was doing. He has more than doubled his net worth under this administration.
Here are the quick numbers I shared with him.
More data....you got me curious so here are some numbers. As of Jan. 2016.
Growth of Stock Market from bottom..........200%. The one percent crowd
did real well.
Growth of GDP from bottom.........................27%. Over seven years.
This is why Main Street is mad.
Growth of Employment..................................MINUS 3% from the
peak. This is why Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are doing so well.
All numbers adjusted for inflation and population growth where appropriate.
So if we change the definition of recession to one that reflects most Americans it would be the jobs numbers. By that definition we are still in recession.
Suggesting we change the definition of recession in economics is like suggesting we change the definition of gravity in science. You don't change the definition of a field term simply because something around it has changed. There are other words in the field of economics for job growth.
There is no such a thing as a perpetual growth. Inflation and Deflation are equal part of our economy as a whole. If you chose to Inflate then you have to be prepared to deflate. Inflation and Deflation work like day and night, like Husband and Wife. You can't have one without the other.
It has been my observation that both husbands and wives tend to mainly inflate with any deflation periods being minor and fleeting. Cumulative lifetime gains, at least in America, tend to be substantial for most of the sample.
Suggesting we change the definition of recession in economics is like suggesting we change the definition of gravity in science. You don't change the definition of a field term simply because something around it has changed. There are other words in the field of economics for job growth.
I disagree.
You SHOULD change the definition "because something around it has changed".
The President is running around touting the great economic recovery due to the economic statistics. The American people are so scared that they are on the verge of a political revolution. The disconnect is directly linked to the economic definitions and reporting. He has no clue except the statistics.
This "jobs recession" is the third one since 1990. Each time the GDP numbers have bounced back fairly quickly, but the jobs have lagged behind. This time we are EIGHT years and still have not recovered to the previous level of employment (adjusted for population growth). THAT is a serious problem.
Words and definitions do matter. IF we redefined recession to focus on jobs instead of GDP the discussion today would be different. Particularly, for the elite who are out of touch with everyday America.
The current definition of recession fails to identify the poor condition of the economy. It needs to be changed.
You SHOULD change the definition "because something around it has changed".
The President is running around touting the great economic recovery due to the economic statistics. The American people are so scared that they are on the verge of a political revolution. The disconnect is directly linked to the economic definitions and reporting. He has no clue except the statistics.
This "jobs recession" is the third one since 1990. Each time the GDP numbers have bounced back fairly quickly, but the jobs have lagged behind. This time we are EIGHT years and still have not recovered to the previous level of employment (adjusted for population growth). THAT is a serious problem.
Words and definitions do matter. IF we redefined recession to focus on jobs instead of GDP the discussion today would be different. Particularly, for the elite who are out of touch with everyday America.
The current definition of recession fails to identify the poor condition of the economy. It needs to be changed.
So let's call it "purple".
I do high tech for a living. The language I use has very precise meaning. Anyone I speak with professionally has the same vocabulary and the words all need to have the same meaning or we can't communicate. Economics is no different. Recession has a very precise definition. "Jobs recession" is something you just made up that has no precise meaning.
Per-capita GDP continues to grow:
The United States has a glut of unskilled and semi-skilled labor. If you don't have the job skills, you're largely condemned to the low wage service sector. If you're one of those, you likely put yourself there. Did you pay attention in school? Do you have a strong work ethic? Do you take on extra responsibility in your workplace? Can you do high quality work without supervision? If you can't say "yes" to all of those, you're likely on the outside looking in wondering how the world passed you by.
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