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Most of my friends are convinced we are in a deep economic recession or a out right depression. I wonder what they are drinking. Obviously most people disagree because every where I went on a recent business trip showed America is still booming.
I visited three different America Cities and was just shocked how busy it was every where I went. The shopping malls are jammed, restaurants full of customers, cars jamming the freeway, airports full and flights overbooked, and people are spending money like there is no tommorrow. Why the huge disconnect between what we hear on TV and what I see with my eyes?
Most of my friends are convinced we are in a deep economic recession or a out right depression. I wonder what they are drinking. Obviously most people disagree because every where I went on a recent business trip showed America is still booming.
I visited three different America Cities and was just shocked how busy it was every where I went. The shopping malls are jammed, restaurants full of customers, cars jamming the freeway, airports full and flights overbooked, and people are spending money like there is no tommorrow. Why the huge disconnect between what we hear on TV and what I see with my eyes?
Just b/c somebody is shopping doesn't mean that they actually have any money. Of course, these folks who are paying for their latte's with their credit cards will tell you that they pay them off each and every month.
For me it's seems to be a personal thing. What may be hard times for your neighbor could be the best you've ever had it. I just started a job 6 months ago with a 15% increase in my salary and my company is booming (let's hope for my sake it stays that way). But in other industries I hear of very very hard times and I hear of individual stories of finacial hardship. And I've heard stories of folks who haven't changed a thing. They're still going on vacations, still eating out, still shopping.
I'll probably trim the fat a little this holiday season mainly due to personal financial choices I've made lately but it's really got nothing to do with the tanking economy.
Refugee56, I suggest on your next trip, print out some of the Doom and Gloom posted here and hand them out to everyone like flyers. Hopefully they too can become depressed. Make sure you include the crying faces on the posts. That has a good effect.
There will always be people doing well and people doing badly. That's the way it works. You happened to be in the place where people doing well would congregate. You just don't see the ones doing badly.
Remember, even high unemployment of 10% means there are 90% employed.
Well, I live in Hawaii and the hotel room occupancy rate in Waikiki is as low as it was after 9/11. Heck, we haven't seen the worst yet, we're expecting it to get much, much worse during the holiday season and next year.
Unless there's a total collapse, I don't think you'll be seeing an awful lot of a difference by just looking at stores and airports.
Say, 10 million people nationwide lose their jobs (losses this years times dozen). That's a huge number, but that's just 7% of the work force. If we're to discount government unemployement stats which, according to many, are flawed, and assume that the real unemployement today is about 12% (an estimate that gets thrown around by more conservative sources), we still get an unemployement of less that one fifth of the work-force if ten million people lose their jobs. Which means that the overhelming majority of the population would be hanging in there alright.
Now if such a thing were to happen, can you even imagine the news? If less than a million job losses bring up words like "meltdown" and "depression"? It will be impossible to open a newspaper or turn the TV on without getting thoroughly depressed! I think that to really keep things in perspective, one needs to get FACTS out of news, not fear mongering that they use to sell their products.
Life is not ending. It's getting more difficult for quite a few of us, but it basically goes on like it used to...
You would think the news about the upcoming economic depression would scare people into not going out and spending their money. I know I have cut my spending to the bone in anticipation of the upcoming economic conditions.
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