Posted on 11/01/2007 7:01:20 PM PDT by Travis McGee
Amusing, but the reverse of the facts.
Actually per capita, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan rank the states with most or highest number of foreclosures.
You’re not sure are you? At one time their was no doubt about the standing of our economy. That certainity no longer exists.
You will change your mind about oil when it gets to 150/barrel. There is no other product that touches EVERY part of our economy like oil, nothing. Not just your Ferrari, but its tires, paint, plastic, vinyl, leather processing, aluminum, grease, steel, copper, glass, and yes, even the asphalt or concrete it rolls on. Oops, forgot about the gas.
And how about at home? Lumber, electricity, paint, water, heating, washer & dryer, clothing, dishes, trash hauling, pool heater, lawn mower, tools, etc.
Oh, and the store? Packaging, transportation, flooring, refrigeration, freezers, lighting, ALL types of food processing, etc.
There is nothing, nothing in anyones life that is not touched by petroleum products, whether in manufacturing, distribution or use.
And as to the governments calculation of core inflation? They obviously don’t have to drive to work and feed a family, especially when it comes to the seasonally adjusted bull crap and their swapping of the “basket items”.
You are correct. The cost of energy effects the cost of everything, and it aint pretty
For starters I work at the corporate office for a grocery chain in 18 states and have access to all of our costs & sales of data that we have. Second, you can read the sales reports for all of the big ones for same store sales fairly easily for pretty much any public company. Same store sales for most are 1-5% growth.
For the average worker, the increase in medical insurance and gasoline prices, by themselves, more than wipes out any wage increase. That's why most people don't think the economy is doing as great as those who watch the stock market or corporate profits to determine how well they think the economy is doing. Workers are offsetting this reduction in real income with huge increases in debt, especially credit card debt. The only way this can be sustained is for inflation to increase enough to force wage increases that will allow previous debt to be paid off with devalued dollars. Of course, this cannot be sustained forever and the sine wave will not be denied.
Welcome to my world
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There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some foreign exchange students in the class.
One day while the class was in the lab the professor noticed one of the exchange students kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.
The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government.
In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?”
The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn.
When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence.
They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side.
When the pigs, who are used to (and by now dependent on) the free corn start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The federal government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time.
One should always remember ‘There is no such thing as a free Lunch!’
The reality, which is not being mentioned by the libs’, is that the spending on the war on terror is added into the GDP, and makes the economy look good, even though our standard of living has not substantially increased. But that is a choice that the American public (including the Dems) has made. They would rather be safe than have another chicken in the pot. And I can’t disagree with that choice. If you want to blame someone for the stagnating standard of living, blame the Islamacists who made this necessary.
I blame the “greenies”. We need energy to run this place and there IS a shortage due to China and India and the rest of the evolving world. We have plenty of the stuff but cant get at it because of the “greenies” and we have tied ourselves to the Middle East for fuel.
Then we went and tied our agricultural market to the energy market with ethanol.
Its madness
Looked at ammo prices lately?
Does it cost a dollar to print a dollar? Why does the fed need to make so much money again?
You could have seen higher prices on food and fuel in some places. You could have also seen lower prices on other things. (The former probably stand out in your mind more than the latter.) What I doubt is that you've seen actual evidence that inflation was definitely greater than 0.8%. Above all else, any anecdotal evidence you could have possibly seen in one single quarter, is too small a sample to be of statistical significance. But there are also the problems of confirmation bias and how representative the goods are that you tend to buy.
"Milk was $3.79 and later I saw it for $3.99, therefore inflation couldn't have been only 0.8%." Essentially that's what you're saying, and that is wrong. It is an incorrect argument. Even if you told me in full detail what goods you think you saw get more expensive (in 2007Q3), and by how much, there is nothing you could realistically say that would necessarily contradict the claim that inflation in that quarter was 0.8%.
Are you just whistling past the graveyard?
What "graveyard"?
Or maybe it’s wishful thinking on your part since you want to believe those growth numbers.
I don't "want to believe" those growth numbers. I don't care about those growth numbers. What I care about is shoddy argumentation.
I also grow weary of chicken-littles. We are a nation that can afford to spend $600 on "iPhones", supply each of our teenagers with an "iPod", buy water in bottles because we prefer the taste to tap, spend over $4 for a "latte" (coffee with milk) at Starbuck's, and make Alex Rodriguez a billionaire for hitting a ball with a stick in front of us. Yet for some reason we nevertheless feel this odd compulsion to tell ourselves (using our computers and internet connections, which we all have of course) how bad off we are and that economic disaster and depression is just around the corner. What whiners we are. I think anyone who thinks it's interesting and informative to whine that the government marked inflation at 0.8% instead of 2.8% or 5.8% in 2007Q3, and tries to use that as a launching pad into a discussion of how we have a horrible economy, should be required to travel back in time 75 years and give that same oh so clever speech to a randomly-selected group of Americans. Well, randomly selected - from Oklahoma.
Even if you're right that wouldn't contradict the 0.8% number, which is for 2007Q3 only. Maybe inflation was 14% in the first two quarters and 0.8% last quarter. Bingo, that gets us to 15% on the year.
Fuel prices are not going to go down by any substantial amount when China is using more and more of the world supply every day.
We will continue to see gov’t shills trying to convince us everything is under control when they can’t control a damn thing.
We’ll talk about this in a year and see if you still believe the govt statistics. I don’t have to read about Okies in the depression. My Grandmother participated and I have Aunts still living in California who migrated from Ok. during the depression.
Oh boy. Now we're judging inflation based on tuna. These arguments are getting worse, not better.
While the price PER CAN has increased a relatively modest 25% in price over a two year period, the contents have dropped by at least 50%.
Source? (I don't necessarily doubt you but source would be nice)
There are many anecdotal examples like this
Oh, I'm sure there are. And therefore it's enough just to talk about a can of tuna. Yes, this is a good argument that inflation must be >0.8%. I'm convinced now.
At the end of the day, people, regardless of income levels have a sinking sense "something is not right" They are correct.
What you mean is, you have a "sinking sense that something is not right". I, meanwhile, don't know what you're talking about. If you wanted to convince someone for real, what you'd do is, you'd make an actual argument, backed up by actual data, and stuff like that. You have not done so. till then,
The only way to fix it is to come up with more energy OR drive China over the brink, to were they cant afford it and all they invested in collapses
Please try to follow what I'm actually saying. Please.
I never said I "believe" the 0.8% government statistic. Almost the opposite. Please read the first sentence of my first post this thread.
What I said was that the writer of this article has no argument whatsoever against that statistic. And incidentally, neither do you.
I don’t have to read about Okies in the depression. My Grandmother participated and I have Aunts still living in California who migrated from Ok. during the depression.
Good. Why don't you call your aunts up and whine to them about how horrible the U.S. economy is today, instead of posting here. Better yet, send them an email, on your computer, saying this. I think you deserve their sympathy for living through the roughest, poorest time in American history. Truly, we are all suffering in abject poverty. Poor us!
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