Posted on 08/23/2011 6:44:28 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If the notion that we are merely living through the aftereffects of a mere “recession” that ended in 2009 sounds somewhat ridiculous, that’s because it is. If we were being honest with ourselves, we would call this a depression. That would certainly better convey both the severity of our problems, and the fact that those problems have no evident solutions.
The American economy currently has both a short-term problem and a long-term problem. The short-term problem is that the economy is depressed; it is growing more slowly than the population, with the result that per capita income is declining. The high rate of un- and underemployment is a factor, but is itself the product of other factors, having mainly to do with the reluctance of over-indebted consumers (over-indebted in major part because of loss of equity in their houses, the major source of household wealth) to spend, the reluctance of the impaired banking industry to make risky loans, and the reluctance of businesses to invest and to hire, which is due in part to weak consumer spending and in part to profound uncertainty about the nation’s economic future.
The roots of this catastrophic situations lie primarily, I think, in the incompetent economic management of the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve. The persistence of the depression, however, is due in part at least to surprising failures of the Obama administration—poor leadership, poor management, the sponsorship of incomprehensibly complex health care and financial regulation laws that have created widespread uncertainty that has discouraged consumption and investment, and the inability to explain the nature of the economy’s problems to the general public. These failures caused the stimulus enacted in 2009 to be botched in both in its design and its administration, resulting in discrediting of deficit spending as a response to depression.
(Excerpt) Read more at tnr.com ...
The unemployment number should be calculated from those that: have applied for UIC, have fallen off UIC because of limits, are on food stamps, section 8, EBT, AFDC, WICs, SCHIP, EITC, AEITC, etc.... These people do not work historically, are unemployed, or underemployed. Regardless of the definition, they are drain on society’s resources with no value added. We’d see that this new calculation comes to over 50% of us.
That's a nice bumper sticker for the dumbed down masses, but we need someone like a Reagan as POTUS to make that happen - and I repeat: none of our lightweights are up to the task.
Add a third way: inflation. Which decreasing consumer spending ability the same as increased taxes.
Zer0 needs to be sent to a re-education camp.
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