Posted on 03/13/2010 6:47:45 AM PST by tje
Are we finally in a recovery? Who’s “we,” kemosabe? Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better. As to the rest of us – small businesses along Main Streets, and middle and lower-income Americans – forget it.
Business cheerleaders naturally want to emphasize the positive. They assume the economy runs on optimism and that if average consumers think the economy is getting better, they’ll empty their wallets more readily and – presto! – the economy will get better. The cheerleaders fail to understand that regardless of how people feel, they won’t spend if they don’t have the money.
The US economy grew at a 5.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. That sounds good until you realize GDP figures are badly distorted by structural changes in the economy. For example, part of the increase is due to rising health care costs. When WellPoint ratchets up premiums, that enlarges the GDP. But you’d have to be out of your mind to consider this evidence of a recovery.
(Excerpt) Read more at robertreich.org ...
Food for thought.
From the mouths of babes...
Interesting article by Robert Reich. Thanks for posting.
As usual, he leaves out that the "recovery" also helped Big Government.
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Well said, comrade. You are fully in lockstep with the Left's assault on insurance companies. However, GDP would not rise until WellPoint collected those premiums. Proposed rate increases don't help. Also, if I skipped buying a new TV to pay those premiuims, the net effect on GDP would be zero. Guess the truth really does need a bodyguard of lies.
"The Body Guard of Lies" was the book that made me a history student. Back in 1976. Anthony Brown did a great job on that one.
“The Bodyguard of Lies” >
You omit the primary force involved. Inflation will provide the $$ you need to buy both the insurance and the TV
Thanks for the post.
Other than supporting the assault on insurance companies, I found his analysis as pretty accruate.
The question it raises, how can anyone thoughtful and intelligent be a Leftist?
Does not compute.
Leftists built nothing, only confiscate and destroy things others build. Most damaging they destroy the human will.
Freedom, Truth and Honesty are the Left’s enemy. And they are the friends of a free people.
Defiance to tyrannts is obediance to God.
No, the big unknown hanging over the U.S. economy is how much of the job-killing Dem agenda will end up getting passed. Until that agenda is killed off, small businesses won't expand even if they have access to credit.
(None of this, by the way, is stopping supply-side fanatics from arguing government needs to cut taxes on big corporations in order to spur the recovery. Their argument is absurd on its face. Big companies don’t know what to do with all their cash they have as it is. They aren’t investing it in new plant and equipment and new jobs. So why should the government cut their taxes and enlarge their cash hoards even more?)
Ah, that's the Robert B. Richhhhhhhhha that I remember.
This is where I also depart from Robert B. RiCCHCHHHCHHC on this issue. If taxes are cut across the board it not only cuts the taxes of the wealthy and large corporations it also cuts the taxers of the middle class and the working poor. Particularly if they cut the payroll taxes.
If the Congress had decided to eliminate the SS and Medicare taxes for nine months last year instead of giving trillion dollar payoff to their Democrat friends, the economy would already be advancing by leaps and bounds. The reason they would never do it is that people would find out how much government actually costs.
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