Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

impeach!

http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/14/20957509-china-state-media-blasts-us-shutdown-calls-for-a-de-americanized-world?lite

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/yep-being-a-young-american-adult-is-a-financial-nightmare/281214/

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/Young_adults_reuters.jpg

lol young adults can't even afford shirts these days

No money left over for health insurance after you get all those tattoos.

heh, i feel guilty for criticizing people struggling w/ money, but he probably doesn't need have to have the fancy undies either

or that microwave. heat it up over a campfire like the oldtimers do. or those paper towels - put things outside and evaporate them! or those sugar/flour jars back there - just spread the granules out in the backyard, you'll never need a jar again!

i don't think they actually live there, those are probably just the props for the demonstration unit in the building they can't get rental approval for

fancy undies

were a birthday gift from his grandmother

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/chinascentral-bank-announces-job-creation-program-for-the-united-states

onion thread surely?

bad news is QE is going to be turned off. good news is zero % interest rates for the rest of our lives!

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-federal-reserve-ben-bernanke-taper-stimulus-forecast-economy-20131218,0,2330244.story#axzz2nreq63hR

eternal bubbles for all!

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52f3e70e6bb3f750586ea831-800-/cotd-120.jpg

"Disability Queens" just doesn't have the snap, crackle and pop we have all come to expect from the GOP phrasemakers.

number of people in america

record high!

Do these charts not suggest that The Job Creators have been failing miserably at creating jobs with all that cash the fed has been pouring into their pockets?

i can't read the Y-axis on the right-hand chart, but it appears to be saying that the rate of growth in the total number of people collecting welfare has slowed considerably since 2009. which seems good, right? given that there were 16 million more americans in 2013 than there were in 2010, i would expect the total number to increase by some number, regardless of the country's economic fortunes.

as for the graph on the left, i don't know what it's correlated with, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with politics.

the one in the middle is more interesting. i would bet that some of the movement has to do with how difficult congress makes it for poor people to receive food stamps. sometimes congress feels miserly and vindictive, sometimes it doesn't. but i don't know. the number falls gradually during the reagan years, shoots up during the bush years, falls fairly dramatically during the clinton years and then rises pretty consistently ever since 2000 when the first mini-recession hit.

not sure what you're trying to say by posting this graph, dandy don? business insider is a weird publication. i can never figure out where they're coming from.

that's it, cut the capital gains tax again

these are the chronically unemployed who have fallen out of the work force and now are on disability and welfare for the rest of their lives?

Btw if you multiply that max food stamps number by 200 it about equals the number of yearly fossil fuel subsidies!

It would really be cool if gas companies defended their own pipelines in the middle east but yeah i guess we got to foot the bill for them, that's billions and billions every year for people not to work, just imagine the private armies we are denying and the jobs we are killing by nationally taking on this burden.

the bush/cheney housing crash will cost the US over $24 trillion

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/congressional-budget-office-increases-estimate-of-the-cost-of-housing-bubble-collapse

LOL @ GOP

$80,000 per american. but let's cut food stamps, cuz the GOP says

not sure what you're trying to say by posting this graph, dandy don? business insider is a weird publication. i can never figure out where they're coming from.

Business Insider is a link bait publication, but some of their stuff is worth reading. Assuming you can get over the hysterical headlines that they usually post.

I posted the jpg because I found it interesting--each of those graphs shows growth in programs that easily outpace the rate of population growth.

FWIW, those charts I posted comes from here, which is a very interesting read if you have some time to kill.
http://www.gluskinsheff.com/Assets/Documents/Musings%20and%20Special%20Reports/Breakfast_with_Dave_2014_02_05_Free(Website).pdf

and actually, if you just skim through that PDF for the graphs, it's got some interesting tidbits

each of those graphs shows growth in programs that easily outpace the rate of population growth.

if that's true, then it's hard to come to any conclusion other than that the fruits of our ever-increasing prosperity since the 1970s have not been shared equally. if each year a bigger proportion of americans have to rely on government assistance, it just proves that productivity gains are being gobbled up by a lucky few. it's not as though the means-testing for food stamp and welfare benefits have gotten more generous in that time.

a rising tide lifts all yachts

Not sure if prosperity can be shared "equally" but certainly the widely recognized problem of chronic unemployment is something that economists have studied a lot recently. It's a pretty complicated problem with a lot of variables.

But if more people are on government assistance, and that pace is escalating, I don't see how that can be a good thing.

I don't think anyone sees it as a "good thing." The divide seems to be more among people who see it as symptom vs cause

But if more people are on government assistance, and that pace is escalating, I don't see how that can be a good thing.

Certainly a good thing for Wal Mart and other big corporations who encourage that kind of thing in order to keep wages down.

I don't see how that can be a good thing.

It could not "be a good thing", if what you want to compare it to is a situation where jobs are freely available to those who can accomplish them, thereby allowing every able person to earn a living wage and contribute to social wealth by creating a prosperous household.

But the situation described in those graphs can be a very good thing, if you compare it to a situation where there is no possibility of the disabled or unemployed getting jobs or earning an income, because employers will not or cannot employ them, causing them to fall into dire poverty with no income whatsoever. That would be amazingly shitty.

everyone is on government assistance in some way shape or form. oil subsidies, 0.75% interest the government charges to lend to big banks, etc.

not bill o'reilly.

Aimless OTM.

The American economy added 113,000 jobs in January, a disappointing showing that is likely to spur fears that the labor market is poised for yet another slowdown.

But after an extraordinarily weak showing for hiring in December, some experts are concerned that weakness is carrying into 2014 and signaling a broader loss of momentum in the economy.

Still, in the fall there had been enough pickup in hiring to persuade the Federal Reserve in December to gradually begin scaling back its stimulus efforts. With the January report substantially weaker than expected, that call is looking increasingly premature.

You know what creates jobs? Consumer demand for goods. You know how to boost consumer demand? Make sure people have money to buy things. You know how to do that for people who are out of work? Give them money.

But no, let's definitely cut the top tax rates again. In fact, let's get from five brackets down to two - people who make more than $500,000 a year will pay nothing, everyone else will pay 45%. That should fix it.

There's some handwringing that the ACA will cost the US jobs, not due to cuts, but because some people will no longer take jobs just for the sake of insurance. But if those same people do not feel compelled to work, I doubt it's because they're freeloaders. They've just found a way to make things work, or found that it's better or more financially/emotionally rewarding to stay at home with the kids while a spouse works, or whatever.

they don't want to be indentured anymore. good for them. let people retire and others cut back on their hours, so people who are out of work can take those jobs

i feel like i have seen dandydonweiner post intelligently about economics in the past? am i wrong?

But if more people are on government assistance, and that pace is escalating, I don't see how that can be a good thing.

in the img you posted only one of the program is increasing at an accelerating rate, food stamp recipients. welfare recipients looks like its decelerating, and disabilities looks like it's been increasing at constant rate for at least a decade

Not sure if prosperity can be shared "equally" but certainly the widely recognized problem of chronic unemployment is something that economists have studied a lot recently.

unemployment is only one part of this. income inequality since the 70's has mostly been driven by wage inequality

It's a pretty complicated problem with a lot of variables.

saying this but not explaining how it's complicated is a dick move

Maybe he doesn't have time to explain in detail how it's complicated, or maybe he doesn't know.

But let's see: we have less union membership which previously allowed some folks to make a living; we have a lower capital gains tax rate and low effective corporate income tax rate that benefits the upper classes; we have more manufacturing jobs that have shifted overseas, hence more unemployed people living on food stamps

an abiding question for mature adult americans -- what's worse: idiot apologists or asshole apologists for supply-side economics? it's hard to say!

just saying that

"It's complicated ;-)" - An Economist

is a big part of what got us into this problem. it's true that things are complicated but when u consider that "unemployment during recessions is voluntary" has been considered a legitimate opinion among macroeconomists for the past 20 years i don't think we should let economists' claim to authority on complex things with lots of variables shut down discussions

Silver lining of the chronically unemployed is the unemployment rate is 6.6% now!

less drain on resources too!

It's a pretty complicated problem with a lot of variables.

saying this but not explaining how it's complicated is a dick move

A dick move? If so, it was unintentional. Curmudgeon was right--the global economy is a massive ecosystem and the people who study it (economists, both academic and otherwise) regard it as very complex. I'm not dodging the issue to note that it's complex, I'm noting it because its complexity is what makes it a hard problem to solve,

i apologize if it wasn't intentional but this does look to me like waving away tracer's point & i don't see what the point of invoking complexity is if you're not gonna, like, say anything except as a silencing manoeuvre

if that's true, then it's hard to come to any conclusion other than that the fruits of our ever-increasing prosperity since the 1970s have not been shared equally. if each year a bigger proportion of americans have to rely on government assistance, it just proves that productivity gains are being gobbled up by a lucky few. it's not as though the means-testing for food stamp and welfare benefits have gotten more generous in that time.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, February 6, 2014 8:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not sure if prosperity can be shared "equally" but certainly the widely recognized problem of chronic unemployment is something that economists have studied a lot recently. It's a pretty complicated problem with a lot of variables.

― Pale Smiley Face (dandydonweiner), Thursday, February 6, 2014 9:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Heard an economist on the radio the other week defend the US tax code as essentially equitable, stressing that where this country falls very far short of its western peers is when it comes to actual distribution of tax income. I suppose that's basically along the lines of ... giving gratuitous incentives to huge companies with little clear return on the investment vs. spending more on the unemployed/uneducated/great unwashed? I mean, I know someone who just recently spent some time in Spain, which of course has unemployment numbers a magnitude higher than those here. And yet traveling around, you never see as much abject poverty and economic distress as you do here, even in the best of times.

To hear the conservatives tell it, abject poverty and economic distress are what made this country the Greatest Nation on Earth.