The method of how unemployment and inflation is tabulated was changed in the Clinton admin, the real unemployment rate being closer to the U-6 numbers the BLS comes out with every month compared to the U-3 numbers. Also the offical number does not take into account underemployment. You have to go beyond the offical numbers and see what is the basis for them and the reality.
The reality is median wages have stagnated, things people need to survive, such as housing, medical, energy and food prices have gone up, hence why consumer confidence numbers have not gone up with the recent reprots on GDP. While the economy has been kept afloat by a record amount of govrenmnet spending and a real estate bubble that has allowed people to use their homes at ATMs, neither of these trends can last forever.
I am 100% convinced that if neither immigration and job outsourcing issues are adressed, the political landscape will change dramatically.
Since when? As far as I remember, median wages rose when productivity rose in the 1990s. They do stagnate when our productivity stagnates. There is nothing wrong with that: why should we get paid more when we don't produce, and therefore not worth, more?
On another note: why is a person as informed about the data as you are speaks about wages in complete disconnect from productivity? You see some kind of conspiracy and data manipulation while disregarding obvious explanands.
things people need to survive, such as housing, medical, energy and food prices have gone up,
Food prices have a very small inflation.
You should stop following the media in thinking that housing prices went up. I doubt you have the data for that and probably confuse the rise in house prices with housing prices. The truth is, housing prices (price per square foot consumed by an individual did NOT go up that much except for the few last years. An average house today is 45% bigger than in 1950s, whereas the family unit is almost twice smaller. Americans consume almost three times as much space than 50 years ago.
Thus, when people pay more for a house they consume a larger quantities of housing, and you confuse that with price of housing. The same is observed in health care: people DEMAND to b e cured at ALL costs, and consumer MORE health care.
The statement about "things needed to survive" is leftist whining unbecoming of a conservative. Since when two rooms per person was needed to survive? We have become a nation of whining, self-centered spoiled brats that no longer remembers what survival is.
hence why consumer confidence numbers have not gone up with the recent reprots on GDP.
Satisfaction of people and their beliefs depend only in part on what they have. Roughly, satisfaction is what is delivered minus what is expected. If the expectations are unreasonably high, people are dissatisfied with what they have, no matter how much they have. It's been observed by sociologist and psychologists, that we do have much, more than even a generation ago but satisfied much, much less. That is completely in line with the observation of self-centeredness in our culture and the feeling of ENTITLEMENT to things that cannot even be achieved.
Your remarks actually illustrate this phenomenon. If you feel that having a three-bedroom house, which your grandparent bought for retirement as a third house in their lifetimes is a basic need for you at 25 (as does an average American of that age), how can you possibly be satisfied? How can you possibly be confident that this will be delivered?
While the economy has been kept afloat by a record amount of govrenmnet spending
Again, for a person so well informed of the data, you are surprisingly one-sided. The economy in the last 25 years has been kept afloat by productivity gains.
and a real estate bubble that has allowed people to use their homes at ATMs, neither of these trends can last forever.
Very silly: there are two sides to the transaction. If you can spend more by borrowing against the now more expensive house, someone had to have paid for that house more. Where did THAT person get the money? Housing bubbles do not sustain the economy; they distort allocations.
I am 100% convinced that if neither immigration and job outsourcing issues are addressed, the political landscape will change dramatically.
With that, I agree completely. When people are frustrated, for whatever reason, they seek changes and often chose those that are detrimental in the long run.
The question is what should address job outsourcing. You appear to imply that it is the government. Socialist measures such as these have indeed solved political problems --- witness the Russian revolution and Hitler's rise to power that kept the masses very happy. But in the long run they have always failed. It is the markets that should solve the problem of job outsourcing, as they have done in the past (you appear to have bought into the MSM garbage that outsourcing is something new).
As for immigration, that is not a purely economic issue and a such MUST be solved by the government (citizenship and culture are public, not private, goods, and such are poorly provided by markets).
I agree 100 percent.
The evidence is already there for all to see in Ohio, as one example. Human Events just analyzed the situation there and finds it exceedingly grim.