What will it take for the average American with a job to resume normal economic activity?

[floridasandy]

i don't see any recovery soon. delinquency rates are increasing on all types of loans. Mish's Global Economic Trend AnalysisDelinquency rates on the least-risky mortgages more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier as U.S. efforts to help homeowners failed to keep pace with job losses that pushed more borrowers toward foreclosure.

Prime mortgages 60 days or more past due climbed to 2.9 percent of such loans through March 31 from 1.1 percent at the same point in 2008, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision said today in a report. First-time foreclosure filings on the loans rose 22 percent from the fourth quarter, the report said.

The data shows 5.9 percent of the 21.8 million Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans serviced by national banks or thrifts were at least days 30 days late, in foreclosure or subject to bankruptcy, compared with 3.2 percent a year earlier.

[shiphead]

Originally Posted by Lincolnian

Exactly what event, economic data, confidence statements, evidence will it take for the average American who is gainfully employeed and not in imminent danger of losing his/her job to resume normal activity and spark economic growth?

Nothing will change. This economy has made me into a permanent cheapskate. Never new, never fancy, never eating out more then once a month.

[JMadison]

Originally Posted by Lincolnian

Exactly what event, economic data, confidence statements, evidence will it take for the average American who is gainfully employeed and not in imminent danger of losing his/her job to resume normal activity and spark economic growth?

Umm... so apparently you feel spending by worker bees is the answer to economic growth?

The answer should be clear from what has gone before.

When something makes the worker bees feel like they have money rolling in (like say fake appreciation on the price of their homes or stock market accounts) so that they can "get a piece of the good life same as those richy riches".

People spend freely when they feel they are getting wealthy enough to do so.

Unfortunately, the only way that seems to happen for the 95% is when some "bubble" actually inflates the price of something *they* have rather than what the 5% has.

Of course we've seen repeatedly, that such bubbles burst.

So the other solution, of course, if for those worker bees to somehow make money the same way the rich do. Which of course isn't likely to happen, because the don't have a way to sock away enough money to own the "means of production" or the consumable commodities supplies that are the basis of the wealth of the 5%.

So there ya have it. Figure out how everyone can be rich and then they'll spend like they are, LOL!

But personally I think the underlying premise of your statemenst is preposterous. It essentially reads, "The source of economic growth is spending by the very class that needs most to be saving".

In short a seller side philososphy that asks, "How can we get the underclasses to spend what they are earning" and further... "Spending more than the cost of what it costs to produce (literally) everything."

See we're in a fish bowl... the worker bees work for wages producing what the sellers sell... and yet somehow a profit is supposed to arise from selling to the masses while the upper echelon is taking a cut off of each cycle of the money through the system.

So it seems that without the magic of inflation and of course a 4% or greater unemployment rate (i.e. elasticity in the labor supply so labor can't exert price pressure on the employers) you can't have continous "growth".

And further, if a slice is taken off on each cycle of the money through the system, eventually all the money ends up in the hands of the 5%, at which point everyone else is in poverty. And well, at that point the 95% will revolt, or start it's own barter economy or some such.

It's a finite planet... you can't "grow" forever but through numbers games played with money supply. At some point you hit the edge of the petri dish and can't grow anymore... just die from over population and lack of food.

[Randomdude]

Originally Posted by JMadison

Umm... so apparently you feel spending by worker bees is the answer to economic growth?

The answer should be clear from what has gone before.

When something makes the worker bees feel like they have money rolling in (like say fake appreciation on the price of their homes or stock market accounts) so that they can "get a piece of the good life same as those richy riches".

People spend freely when they feel they are getting wealthy enough to do so.

Unfortunately, the only way that seems to happen for the 95% is when some "bubble" actually inflates the price of something *they* have rather than what the 5% has.

Of course we've seen repeatedly, that such bubbles burst.

So the other solution, of course, if for those worker bees to somehow make money the same way the rich do. Which of course isn't likely to happen, because the don't have a way to sock away enough money to own the "means of production" or the consumable commodities supplies that are the basis of the wealth of the 5%.

So there ya have it. Figure out how everyone can be rich and then they'll spend like they are, LOL!

But personally I think the underlying premise of your statemenst is preposterous. It essentially reads, "The source of economic growth is spending by the very class that needs most to be saving".

In short a seller side philososphy that asks, "How can we get the underclasses to spend what they are earning" and further... "Spending more than the cost of what it costs to produce (literally) everything."

See we're in a fish bowl... the worker bees work for wages producing what the sellers sell... and yet somehow a profit is supposed to arise from selling to the masses while the upper echelon is taking a cut off of each cycle of the money through the system.

So it seems that without the magic of inflation and of course a 4% or greater unemployment rate (i.e. elasticity in the labor supply so labor can't exert price pressure on the employers) you can't have continous "growth".

And further, if a slice is taken off on each cycle of the money through the system, eventually all the money ends up in the hands of the 5%, at which point everyone else is in poverty. And well, at that point the 95% will revolt, or start it's own barter economy or some such.

It's a finite planet... you can't "grow" forever but through numbers games played with money supply. At some point you hit the edge of the petri dish and can't grow anymore... just die from over population and lack of food.

You can relate these truths any amount of times, or any amount of ways, but the hardcore brainwashed American capitalist will never accept it.