The Clinton recession, I guess:
There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.
Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 — and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.
And the net worth of American households — the value of their houses, retirement funds and other assets minus debts — has also declined when adjusted for inflation, compared with sharp gains in every previous decade since data were initially collected in the 1950s.
The facts about net worth may be slightly misleading, as the article points out, since late 1999 was near the top of various investment markets and 2009 was near the bottom of the markets.
But it also strikes me that these figures themselves don’t tell the full story of how bad the decade was economically. As various others have pointed out, the real estate bubble — unlike the tech boom, for example — didn’t generate much in the way of useful new infrastructure of any kind. And, remarkably, this ten years of economic stagnation happened during a time of huge deficits generated by tax cuts that were supposed to stimulate the economy.
What a disaster.
Bubblegum Tate
Don’t forget all that cash we spent blowing stuff up in Iraq! But Bush kept that money off the books, so it doesn’t count. And anyway, the solution to this mess is obvious: Tax cuts!
Nick
how much growth would there have been if we were at 2005 economic status right now?
Another words, how much of this is because of the collapse of 2007-2008 and really not the decade as a whole.
I think this is timing. We began the decade riding on one of the great economic booms in history and ended up crawling out of the biggest bust in seventy years. If the decade was, say, 1997-2007, might have looked differently.
DougJ
how much growth would there have been if we were at 2005 economic status right now?
Almost no median wage growth (which for me is the key figure).
Notorious P.A.T.
Things sucked before then, too. W escaped being the first president to complete a term with no job gains since the Great Depression by about 150,00 jobs. Not per month, total.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
Yeah, that worked out real well.
Fucking bastards.
.
Chat Noir
During the 2004 presidential campaign, a friend of mine heard an interview on NPR of an unemployed woman in Ohio who said she was going to vote for George Bush because he was “against gay marriage.”
We have seen a lot of this where way too many Americans vote against their own economic interests when they vote Republican.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Does anybody who is more plugged in to economic history than I am have any data to compare this with from the 1870s, 80s and 90s? Because my gut hunch is that the economy of the 1990s and 00s is best compared with that era.
They share many features – increasing globalization and financial integration, the rise of large combinations resulting in business interests of previously unimaginable size and power, immigration and opening of labor markets, highly volatile stock and bond markets prone to large bubbles and panics, wealth and income concentration at the top, and too many investment dollars chasing too few good investment opportunities resulting in Ponzi schemes galore. And a political environment that bears comparison with our current era in some ways, including the absence of any significant existential threats (c.f. the end of the US Civil War and Reconstruction with the fall of the Soviet Union), at least of the external variety.
What we don’t have today that they had back then (which lent a sense of urgency to reforming our system) is the threat of red or black social violence from below. Instead we have cable TV and iPods.
Yutsano
@Chat Noir: I refuse to feel sorry for these people anymore. Let them get the government they want that will refuse to serve their economic interests and also fuck them over on the social issues and live with the consequences. Preferably not in my state.
Chat Noir
@JGabriel: And last fall I saw Sarah Palin say in an interview that the way to help create jobs is to cut taxes.
Moron.
Chat Noir
@Yutsano: I’m with you there, Yutsano.
Senyordave
I hope that Obama uses the State of the Union to drive home the point that things have to change in this country regarding the fiscal state of the government. Somehow we have to gte the public to understand that we can’t have a structural deficit of $500 billion.
I don’t know he does it, but this has to happen.
Notorious P.A.T.
We are definitely back in that area. All of the safeguards that put a stop to the frequent crashes of the Gilded Age have been dismantled, and as far as markers like concentration of wealth we might as well be back in 1899.
That would be fine with me if they didn’t have the power to take us down with them.
Senyordave
And last fall I saw Sarah Palin say in an interview that the way to help create jobs is to cut taxes.
@Chat Noir:
When times are good, we have to cut taxes because we can afford it, when times are bad, we have to cut taxes to stimulate the economy.
The lesson is that the only thing that ever works is cutting taxes.
Yutsano
@Senyordave: I agree that Obama needs to address the issue, then he points to to the health care bill saving the country something in the range of $100 billion dollars and calls it a good important step. That might just put the Senate on notice to not fuck this thing up.
Notorious P.A.T.
Sure we can. If that money is spent on worthy projects it’s a perfectly good investment. That way the economy will outgrow our debts and we’ll be fine. Now, if we keep shoveling money to Goldman Sachs with no conditions attached and blowing up Afghanistani weddings, that’s a different story.
Notorious P.A.T.
We need more religion in America! ! ! 1 !
Mike Kay
@Chat Noir:
She’s still doing it. Through out 2009 she said cut taxes and regulations, because thats’ what st. ronnie would have done.
El Cid
We need to get rid of all this restrictive financial regulation and stop fetishizing manufacturing so much so that we can innovate in services and with financial innovation.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Notorious P.A.T.:
One of my favorite We-are-so-fucked political metaphors: The Raft of the Medusa (subtext: you can’t spell Medusa without USA).
Or if you prefer a more domestic metaphor for US politics today: The Donner Party Food Fight.
The Grand Panjandrum
DougJ you’re over thinking this. If Congress would just listen to President McCain and get rid of all the earmarks and cut taxes we would all be millionaires with our very own tire swing! Weeeeeeeeeee ………..
dr. bloor
Even after God decides to clean the slate completely and reboots with Universe 2.0, he’s going to save a special place for Sandy Day O’Connor to continue writhing in pain over Bush v. Gore. Iraq, shitty economy, shredding the constitution and crapping on the rule of law, Roberts and Alito, it’s all on her as far as I’m concerned.
Nick
@DougJ: This is one of those things I’ve been trying to explain to my elders…when they wonder why I can’t afford my own place on $24k a year because they were able to in 1973.
They just don’t get that $24,000 a year in 1973 is not the same as $24,000 a year in 2010. It just does not register and it seems to be a far and wide thing.
“I made it work with only a little”
Except their little would be a lot today.
Linkmeister
From the ASCE (Am. Society of Civil Engineers) infrastructure report card website:
I hope the blockquote works. The overall grade and investment need should be included.
That’s a lot of construction jobs, engineering jobs, green jobs, education jobs that could be created if we spent money on things other than wars and if we taxed people and corporations according to their means.
Roger Moore
@Nick:
But the collapse of 2007-2008 was a result of the growth earlier in the decade being unsustainable. Ignoring the inevitable popping of the bubble may make the numbers look a bit better, but it ignores the fundamental truth that it was a bubble.
DougJ
They just don’t get that $24,000 a year in 1973 is not the same as $24,000 a year in 2010. It just does not register and it seems to be a far and wide thing.
Yes, a lot of older people don’t understand how inflation works.
Nick
@Notorious P.A.T.: yeah I’ve seen that a lot.
I knew of a person who was unemployed, couldn’t afford healthcare and agreed we needed a government run healthcare system, and voted for McCain because he feared Obama would be to easy on terrorists.
Anne Laurie
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Back at the very beginning of the Cheney Regency, “Bush’s Brain” was very explicit about trying to recreate the glory days of the McKinley era.
Since it’s become obvious to even the meanest observer how well that worked out, the “We need to return America to its glory days as a muscular world power, namely the Spanish-American War and our conquest of the Philippines! ! !” theme has been disappeared down the memory hole… along with Rove’s self-proclaimed “Bush’s Brain” nickname.
El Cid
@Nick: According to one calculator, a $24K income then would be a $115K income now, and a $250K house now would have been a $52K house then.
In 1973 that income would have represented about 1/2 the house price, whereas today it would represent less than 1/10th the house price. Differnt.
Nick
@Roger Moore: Isn’t capitalism just generally a series of bubbles?
Mike in NC
Remember now, thou shalt not ever speak ill of Saint Ronald of Reagan!
Wonder which asshole they’ll choose to refute the SOTU address? My money’s riding on Joe Wilson.
Notorious P.A.T.
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Yup, that looks like our future.
Yutsano
@Mike in NC: It would be delicious if they got Grandpa McCain to do it. Then America can be reminded again of the bullet they dodged there by voting in the dark guy.
Jay C
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
You’re pretty much right on in you analogy, IMO, but one major difference between the American economy of the late Nineteeth Century and that of today, was that the (generally manufacturing-based) economic booms of the time tended to boost “immigration and opening of labor markets” here in the US – while modern trends have seen to it that the manufacture and trade of so much in the way of “goods” has been willfully chased offshore (in the classic pursuit of lower costs), leaving the domestic economy to try to build its future prosperity on the much shakier base of a “services” foundation. With all to much of those “services” being in intangible “industries” like
speculative gamblingthe “Financial Industry”, which eats up a great deal of money, and leaves little behind (except for its connected insiders).ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@DougJ:
Pardon my French, but how the fuck does anybody who lived (as an adult) thru the 1970s and early 1980s not know how inflation works? ? ? I have it from no less an authority than Milton Friedman himself that folks back then feared inflation more than communism, the boogeyman and congential herpes combined. Inflation was the only thing the Steelers Steel Curtain defense of the 1970s couldn’t stop.
bayville
W created a whopping 400,000 jobs per year during his eight years.
To put that in perspective, the number of prospective new workers per month was, on average, about 130,000 during the W Years. Meaning job growth was about negative 90,000+ per month over a 96-month stretch during the “NotUs” Decade.
Just fuckin’ brilliant economic policy.
Here’s an old chart via Krugman.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Nick:
Yes. It’s one of the best-kept “secrets” of American history that once we became an industrial/capitalist nation, we had a crash and depression about once a decade. Not a rough patch or a slow spell, but a full-on depression (that’s why they call it the Great Depression, rather than the Depression). In the 1930’s we decided we just couldn’t take it anymore and reined in capitalism’s excesses. From then until recently things went pretty smoothly.
Linkmeister
Nick, DougJ: The house we paid $62,500 for in 1970 is now appraised at $750,000.
Nick, your parents should look at the assessed value of their home on their property tax bills and compare that to what its purchase price was. Unless they live in Prop 13-stifled California, that’s a rough gauge for how inflation has affected purchasing power.
Notorious P.A.T.
I can’t tell if you are joking, but would that be any kind of a surprise?
Notorious P.A.T.
@bayville:
Wow, the top 4 are Democrats and the bottom 6 Republicans. Let’s not draw any conclusions, though ;)
Beauzeaux
They just don’t get that $24,000 a year in 1973 is not the same as $24,000 a year in 2010. It just does not register and it seems to be a far and wide thing.
I’ve spent much of the last two years trying to explain to my parents that although I do generate a fairly good income, it’s not enough for me to buy a place of my own when decent houses/condos in Los Angeles still cost a minimum of half a million dollars.
Anne Laurie
@DougJ:
Define “older”. I got my first full-time job during the Ford Recession, and was powerfully aware that I could barely support myself on approximately the same salary that my father had been able to support a family on ten years early. The economic split between the “front-end” Baby Boomers (born 1944-54) and those of us at the back of the bulge has been a leading indicator of the failure of what’s now called Reaganomics for my entire adult life.
DougJ
Pardon my French, but how the fuck does anybody who lived (as an adult) thru the 1970s and early 1980s not know how inflation works? ? ? I
I think they often think that all inflation is bad the way that the high inflation of the 70s was genuinely bad. They don’t understand that our system is designed to have some amount of inflation.
DougJ
Define “older”.
People 70 and over.
bayville
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Yeah, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. And it’s further proof the Reagan myth was just that – a myth.
Here’s a more detailed chart via that liberal rag, The Wall Street Journal.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Notorious P.A.T.:
And I am really starting to wonder if it is a complete coincidence that the period of time when the social contract here in the US included high marginal tax rates, a large and prosperous middle class, and anti-Depression fiscal and monetary policy so closely overlaps the period of time when we had to take the Red Menace seriously. I’m starting to wonder why it is that the powers-that-be pulled the plug on that particular regime right around the same time as the collapse of the Evil Empire?
demkat620
@JGabriel: Yeah but Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
ppcli
@Chat Noir:
Yep. When I hear people say things like that I’m always reminded of H.L. Menken’s immortal words:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Et Tu Brutus?
To be fair, you have to look at more than just the last decade of Republican stupidity on tax policy- some of the aught’s losses can likely be attributed to policies enacted in the ’90s under Slick Willy’s leadership, particularly the accelerated loss
of the U.S. manufacturing base engendered by NAFTA, among other things…
JenJen
I look at it the same way most people do… personally. Personally, in the 90’s, I felt cash-rich, with a great job and very little debt. By the end of 00’s, that had turned itself right around.
Demo Woman
Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich is an excellent book to pass on. If you listen to talk radio you assume that those struggling buy 40 inch tv’s and drive Mercedes.
Notorious P.A.T.
Let’s face it: parents just don’t understand. My dad and stepmom think I could easily find a job (in Michigan!) if I just looked hard enough.
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That’s an interesting possibility and I won’t dismiss it outright, but our country was deathly afraid of the Reds long before the New Deal, and the protections of the 30s had begun being eroded long before the Wall came down.
El Cid
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Wondering these sorts of things will make you an irrational, fringe leftist weirdo.
demkat620
@Notorious P.A.T.: I’d go with Bob McDonnell, newly elected governor of VA.
But them, considering they want to play to the teabaggers, Steve King of IA or Sen Jim Demint.
Probably Demint.
Yutsano
@demkat620: McDonnell got elected trying to sell his bipartisan cred, so I can’t see him doing it. DeMint might be their selection except he has a history of going off the reservation. Whoever it is we should set up a drinking game in advance.
AhabTRuler
I think that there are many people out there who just cannot believe that our system is as broken as it is.
DougJ
of the U.S. manufacturing base engendered by NAFTA, among other things…
I’ve never seen any evidence that NAFTA had that bad of an effect on the economy or on wages.
I certainly do agree that the Rubinites deserve blame for various things that went wrong in the aughts (unregulated CDOs, etc.).
NobodySpecial
A good analogy would be NIU’s run defense in the second half versus the first one. Christ.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Notorious P.A.T.:
But the movement to tame the worst aspects of 19th Cen industrial capitalism really started to get traction at an establishment level around the time of TR, 3 decades before cousin FDR’s administration. And that era was filled with justifiable fear of what the proles might be capable of. And while the demolition job done our middle class social welfare and anti-Depression economic regime began under Reagan, it didn’t really get fully rolling until the 1990s. In the 1980s the US was still trying to retain our manufacturing base, not kill it. We couldn’t afford to shed manufacturing jobs like a sheepdog in summertime while we still thought we might have to meet the Red Army in the Fulda Gap.
Tonal Crow
But, but, but Clinton’s p*nis! Dean’s scream! Saddam’s WMDs! Gay marriage! They’re taking our guns! They’re taking over our churches! Mexicans! They keep coming! Death Panels! Vince Foster! Obama doesn’t take national security seriously! Michael Jackson’s a liberal! They’re taking our FOX!!!!!!!!!!
The Republic of Stupidity
@Anne Laurie:
Personally, I can think of a faaaaaaar more appropriate Bush body part for that nickname…
And no, I’m not suggesting ‘Bush’s Spleen’… or gallballder, or pancreas… or pituitary… or kidney…
Nick
@Linkmeister: My parents are one of the few who saw their standard of living rise dramatically in this decade, from upper middle class in 2000 to downright wealthy now.
Their combined income in 2000 was $78,500, now they both take home more than $200,000 a year. Our home, which they purchased for $70,000 in 1979 is now worth over $540,000, and that comes even as the home’s value has dropped since 2006.
In their own little world, the aughts have been the best decade ever…in their minds, “WTF is everyone else’s problem?”
Corner Stone
@DougJ:
Those are two very different things my friend.
Corner Stone
@Notorious P.A.T.:
It’s the only way we can be sure!
Corner Stone
@Nick:
Dayummmm. One made $50K and one made $28.5K and now they both make over $100K a piece?
ETA – basic freakin math
Linkmeister
@Nick: From the calculator El Cid linked to in #28:
“What cost $70000 in 1979 would cost $205004.58 in 2008.
Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2008 and 1979,
they would cost you $70000 and $22251.28 respectively.”
In other words, their $22K worth of groceries (for example) in 1979 would cost you $70K. And the home is still reflecting some of the housing bubble.
Hell, in 1979 I could spend under $10 and get a 12-pack of Bud and three packs of smokes. Now the three packs of smokes alone at Safeway are $26.
Satan Mayo
I really don’t understand why one would think that increased productivity would lead to increased wages or standard of living. Productivity is basically GDP divided by hours worked, right? Doesn’t increased productivity nowadays just mean that lots of people have been fired?
AhabTRuler
@The Republic of Stupidity: I know I always called him Bush’s putz.
PeakVT
Obligatory Onion reference.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Linkmeister:
I believe that economists adjust their inflation calculations to take into account quality of life improvements (i.e. products have gotten better). For example: in the field of Children’s Literature, they might have a point.
bayville
@DougJ:
From a 2003 EPI study:
Link to study and chart here:
Violet
And you could smoke them most places, too. Now you have to go outside, or even off certain properties. You’re penalized via taxes for having a habit that’s frowned upon.
Other things, like a gallon of milk, haven’t gone up quite as much. In 1979 a gallon of milk cost $1.62. Using the calculator it should cost $4.74 in 2008, but that’s higher than an average gallon of milk costs today. As of mid-2009, a gallon of milk cost $3.01.
El Cid
@DougJ: I’ve seen quite a number of studies on NAFTA showing deleterious impacts on jobs and industry-specific wages in the United States, Canada, and most strongly in Mexico itself. Of course, I don’t know what the standard of “that bad” is, and certainly it would be wrong to presume that without it we’d be riding unicorns on cotton candy rainbows, but there are certainly plenty of studies out there, and they aren’t because people fetishize manufacturing or think trade is bad.
Lots of nations have trade agreements, and NAFTA is a particular type of one which advantages some people and disadvantages others, and the pursuit of such a crappy, authoritarian agreement crowded out better models such as other nations have used.
Carnegie released a report just a few weeks ago, The Future of North American Trade Policy: Lessons From NAFTA, and in discussing the policy’s impact on Mexico they outline both positives and negatives. (But, again, it is useful to recall that trade would have exited without NAFTA and under other possible agreements, this isn’t ‘NAFTA or autarky’).
More failures than successes
NAFTA has had positive impacts on Mexico’s economy:
* Mexico’s exports increased 311 percent in real terms between 1993 and 2007, and non-oil exports increased 283 percent.
* FDI, mostly coming from the United States, more than tripled between 1992 and 2006. Gallagher argued that NAFTA basically “crowded out” domestic investment as FDI began to increase rapidly.
* Inflation was brought down below 5 percent, from a high of above 80 percent in 1980s.
* Rising competition forced Mexican firms to be more efficient, leading to an approximately 80 percent increase in productivity in the manufacturing sector.
However, there are profound shortcomings of the ‘NAFTA model’:
* Annual GDP per capita growth rate was just 1.6 percent between 1992 and 2007. This is low by Mexico’s own standards: average real per capita growth rate was 3.5 percent between 1960 and 1979.
* Despite high FDI, domestic investment has receded, resulting in total investment levels (foreign plus domestic) of below 20 percent. The Growth Commission, an independent commission launched in April 2006 to better understand the policies and strategies that underlie rapid and sustained economic growth and poverty reduction, advises that 25 percent total investment levels are needed to achieve dynamic growth.
* Macroeconomic vulnerability has increased as the country remains heavily dependent on oil exports for government revenues. Tax revenues amount to less than 15 percent of GDP.
* Limited employment gains in manufacturing and services sectors have been offset by large employment losses in agriculture sector, which lost more than 2.3 million jobs between 1990 and 2008. Wise suggested that protective provisions, like the special safeguard mechanism (SSM) of the World Trade Organization, could have countered some of these heavy losses.
* NAFTA contributed to growing geographical inequality between Mexico’s southern and northern states. States along the U.S. border and those with good infrastructure had higher growth. The southern states languished behind.
* Commitment to environmental protection in the post-NAFTA period has not been strong.
“The collapse in employment in agriculture, coupled with a fall in producers and real prices of staple foods, mainly corn, due to import competition is partially feeding migration out of Mexico,” said Zepeda.
It should be recalled that much of what is nowadays called “trade” are, as Krugman discussed in his February 2008 paper (PDF here), “intra-corporate transfers”, meaning they’re not “trade” — it’s one U.S. corporation basically sending out part of its manufacturing process to other, cheaper labor nations.
Or, in Dean Baker’s words,
.
geg6
If you didn’t see it when it first ran, the History Channel had a special a few weeks ago called “The People Speak.”. I didn’t see it in the original, but OnDemand is running the different selections as stand alones. I’ve been watching them a few at a time (as inspirational moments, since I don’t have or want religion). This morning, I watched one from a woman about the GM strike in the 1930s, one by Sojourner Truth called “Ain’t I a Woman,” and one from an activist in the 1890s about how Wall Street runs America. I highly recommend watching them. Amazing how things have not changed at all. Really, not at all. Personally, I have been falling gurther and further behind economically. My parents were so proud of my BA and MEd because they believed that put me into an economic category in which I’d be safe from the vagaries of the ups and downs they lived through during their youths in the late 1920-30s. They’d be horrified to see that I’m barely getting by, even with having gotten a dream job at one of the largest and most well-known universities in the country. And I’m a lucky person compared to many. This country is fucked up beyond repair when people with graduate degrees cannot find meaningful work. We are no longer a prosperous country. It started under goddam fucking Ronnie, Bush I and Clinton chipped away a little further at the edges, and went full bore with squeezing everyone to prop up the rich and kill the middle class under Chimpy. IMHO, this was a feature, not a bug.
Linkmeister
@Violet: That milk price doesn’t take into account regional factors. I see $3.89 as an approximate average price for a half-gallon of milk out here in lovely Hawai’i, where nearly all of our consumer goods are brought in via container ship. Our last dairy went out of business about two years ago, I think.
The Republic of Stupidity
AhabTRuler
Well… that is getting CLOSER to the part I had in mind…
The Republic of Stupidity
@Tonal Crow:
You forgot one…
Nick
@Linkmeister:
Yes, it is. I mentioned this to my dad when he was crying that the worth of our home dropped to $450k (and how this was the fault of Obama because he’s bailing out irresponsible people who buy mortgages they can’t afford, which, of course, he isn’t) I said our home should cost something like $250k and he looked at me like I was some crazy Communist wanting to drain him of the fortune he works four or five long hours a day for sometimes as many as 40 weeks a year to earn.
AhabTRuler
Fixeteth.
Violet
@Linkmeister:
Yeah, that number was just an average. YMMV and all. Hawaiian food is really expensive! Well, not local stuff, but anything that has to be imported is for sure.
And I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess that the average is for regular milk, not organic. We try to buy organic and local for health purposes and also because it’s better for the environment. And the bonus is it tastes better. Downside – way more expensive.
Chuck Butcher
Does anybody remember that in the 60s being a carpenter was a respected trade? That a person could do that trade and support a family in a fairly comfortable blue collar way? Funny how things go isn’t it?
Somebody must have done well in the last half century.
Nick
@Corner Stone:
No, most of it comes from my dad.
This is pre-taxes btw.
In 2000, my dad made $54,000 a year and my mom made $24,500.
Now, my dad makes $135,000 or therearounds and my mom makes about $80k-$90k.
Jon H
Hell, I make less than I made in 1999, before even considering inflation.
Nick
@Jon H: I was in high school in 1999, but I have gradually, progressively, made more money in every job I had since I graduated college in 2005
BUT
I’m still barely making $24k a year before taxes.
When I first graduated, my first job…I was making below the poverty level, with a fucking Bachelor of Arts.
Which brings me to another argument my “elders” enjoy making; “College is useless, you should’ve just went to work after high school like we did (in 1969)
The Republic of Stupidity
@Nick:
Dear Nick…
Clearly, you’re a Commie, kid… whether a Stalinist or Maoist, I can’t tell. I’d need a bigger sample to work w/. At the very least, I’d say it’s a good bet that some Mr. Smartypants just got himself written out of the will…
Nick
@The Republic of Stupidity: I’m the only child and executor of the will…and they have already been told that a good portion of their fortunes are going to minorities and poor people they grew up around, utilized to their benefit, and then pissed on once more zeros were added to the paychecks.
Oh, and gay people too.
Thoughtcrime
What’s the best cure from the serious hangover of a decade-long bender? Hair of the dog?:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1809-The-Mainstream-Media-Wakes-Up-HAMP.html
The Republic of Stupidity
@Nick:
Good Lord… I’m surprised your father hasn’t ALREADY died from a stroke…
Et Tu Brutus?
DougJ: from the WIKI ( which by no means implies that these statements equal facts)
NAFTA’s opponents attribute much of the displacement caused in the US labor market to the United States’ growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada. According to the EPI, the widening of the deficit has caused the dislocation of domestic production to other countries with cheaper labor and supported the loss of 879,280 US jobs.[8] Critics see the argument of the proponents of NAFTA as being one-sided because they only take into consideration export-oriented job impact instead of looking at the trade balance in aggregate. They argue that increases in imports ultimately displaced the production of goods that would have been made domestically by workers within the United States.[8]
The export-oriented argument is also critiqued because of the discrepancy between domestically-produced exports and exports produced in foreign countries. For example, many US exports are simply being shipped to Mexican maquiladores where they are assembled, and then shipped back to the U.S. as final products.[8] These are not products destined for consumption by Mexicans, yet they made up 61% of exports in 2002. However, only domestically-produced exports are the ones that support U.S. labor. Therefore, the measure of net impact of trade should be calculated using only domestically-produced exports as an indicator of job creation.
78% of the net job losses under NAFTA, 686,700 jobs, were relatively-high paying manufacturing jobs.[8] Certain states with heavy emphasis on manufacturing industries like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and California were significantly affected by these job losses. For example, in Ohio, TAA and NAFTA-TAA identified 14,653 jobs directly lost due to NAFTA-related reasons like relocation of U.S. firms to Mexico.[9] Similarly, in Pennsylvania, Keystone Research Center attributed 150,000 job losses in the state to the rising U.S. trade deficit.[10] Since 1993, 38,325 of those job losses are directly related to trade with Mexico and Canada. Opponents point out the fact that although most of these jobs were reallocated to other sectors, the majority of workers were relocated to the service industry, where average wages are 4/5 to that of the manufacturing sector.[8]
mcc
It seems like a more interesting thing to compare, if there’s some way to get such data, is instead of comparing “decades to decades” comparing ten year periods, i.e., how does the period 1999-2009 look when compared to 1983-1993 or 1976-1986. That might help us get away from “coincidences” arising from how we place extra importance on years ending in 0.
AhabTRuler
@Chuck Butcher: John Prine even wrote a song, Grandpa Was A Carpenter, that began “Grandpa wore his suit to dinner/nearly ever day…”
Lex
@Linkmeister:
Freakin’ communist.
mcd410x
Burkeans Bells? No. Kittehs? Yes.
Sly
I blame [email protected]DougJ:
And that’s the problem. It is abnormal for a recession and high inflation to occur at the same time. A fact that should be obvious considering the word for it, stagflation, wasn’t coined until the 1960s. Nor do they recognize the fact that, if anything, the Fed is in the best possible position to combat unhealthy levels of inflation when they occur.
Corner Stone
@Nick: I’m sniffing a large donation to a cat charity foundation in the some term future.
They’re going to give it to Mr. Wiggles before you ever sniff a penny of it.
ETA – goes without saying we all hope that’s a long term insult, and not any time soon.
AhabTRuler
Waste of good blow, if y’ask me.
tootiredoftheright
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
These are the same old people who think that leaving a quarter behind for a meal costing ten dollars or more is being genourous. A quarter for a tip is a cup of coffee and nothing else at a greasy spoon.
Sly
@Sly:
Whoops. Shitty edit.
Corner Stone
@AhabTRuler: That’s because you haven’t seen the hookers that go with it.
Corner Stone
@Sly: It seemed apropos, least if you ask me. Which you didn’t.
tootiredoftheright
@Demo Woman:
Rent to own 40 inch tvs in a trailer but that is actually more white people then black people. By the time they actually own the tv that tv which cost perhaps 700 dollars costs 4000 dollars or more.
Anne Laurie
@Notorious P.A.T.:
This has gotta fall into the category of Magickal Thinking — “If we just BELIEVE hard enough, it will come TRUE! ! !” My first barely-sustainable ‘pink collar’ full-time job was in Michigan, in 1976, and I was damn glad to get it. The Not-Yet-Spousal-Unit and I fled his home state at the end of the 1980s, by which time it had become abundantly obvious that both of us would never have a job at the same time if we stayed in Michigan. Of course we showed up in New England at the start of its last great housing/job crash, but we’re still way better off than most of our friends & families back in the Mitten… as in, we’ve each been unemployed at various points, but we could almost survive on my salary alone & we’ve been doing okay, knock wood, now that S.U.’s employed but I’m not.
bob h
There was a huge increase in corporate profits, however. So who got it? The answer is the CEO/Senior Executive overclass.
Little Dreamer
@JGabriel:
Republican economic products never perform as they claim they will.
Take “trickle down”, the way it works is actually to “gush up”. Republicans are Orwellian masters of finance.
Little Dreamer
@Nick:
It sounds like you lost the count on a decade of ownership somewhere. Basic rule of thumb (and it may not apply right now, but I’m sure your relative believes it still should) is that real estate is supposed to double every ten years. How long have they owned the home, and did you miscalculate this formula? While we had a housing bubble, the reality for your old man may be that formula, not facts on the ground.
Nick
@Little Dreamer: Well if using that formula, he’s about right.
$75,000 in 1979, $150,000 in 1989, $300,000 in 1999, $600,000 in 2009.
Unless you mean add the worth of the house whn bought every ten years, then it’s $150,000 in 1989, $225,000 in 1999 and $300,000 in 2009.
Kyle
During the 2004 presidential campaign, a friend of mine heard an interview on NPR of an unemployed woman in Ohio who said she was going to vote for George Bush because he was “against gay marriage.”
People talk about the ‘deserving poor’ (deserving of charity and assistance) and the ‘undeserving poor’. Here you’ve found a Repig who deserves to be unemployed.
Which brings me to another argument my “elders” enjoy making; “College is useless, you should’ve just went to work after high school like we did (in 1969)”.
Fuck fuckity fuck, few things piss me off more than the older generations who burned down the house bitching about the ashes on their nice clean clothes. Or taking an axe to the ladder once they’ve climbed it, to use another analogy. How many of these people would give a chance to a bright high school grad for a technical or white collar job when they can have their pick of underemployed college grads today?
Reminds me of my grandfather bitching about government in general and specifically ‘affordable housing’ mandates because “we need to keep the scum out of town”. I helpfully pointed out that he was a mail carrier and his wife a kindergarten teacher (both government jobs with generous pensions they were currently enjoying), and with three kids they would have been several decades ago the moderate-income ‘scum’ he wants to keep out now. Dem policies raise the middle class, then many of them turn into Repig assholes the minute they get some money.
Little Dreamer
@Nick:
This is the correct formula. The value of the property doubles every ten years.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t. ;)
tootiredoftheright
@Little Dreamer:
I never understood why they would use the words trickle down. A trickle isn’t something you want to drop on you since the liquid variety is often smelly and yellow.
Elie
I read the comments here and I am just so sore in my heart.
I know that so much more contraction and “adjustment’ of expectations will be necessary — especially for those 35 and under in terms of their financial goals. I shudder at the pain and conflict ahead and how that will be managed in our current environment of completely incompetent and exploitative media and self serving politics…
I am hoping that we, the left progressives will re-unite over protecting the people — the number one objective no matter who is in “power”.
I live in a semi rural area not too far from a good sized college town and equidistant, sortoff between two big cities a couple of hours away. Our frail seniors either have to drive or stay home and get people to provide paid services if they dont have family.
We all hold independence and self reliance dearly, but when does independence become isolation? If you have ever tried to manage a variety of ala carte services for someone in independent for an acute, one time event, think of doing that every day for a long time: meals, medications, therapy, doctor’s visits and let us not forget, companionship..
Our country was sold a bill of lies about what we are and should be. Independence is all well and good but you need people and community to keep stuff from slipping through the cracks — the important things like noticing whether you have been heard from in a while and someone who cares about you to spend some time — not someone PAID to do that, for the most part. You cant pay what that is worth. We destroyed our communities without knowing their value just like we disappeared salmon and much of our natural wonder and wealth. Its just gone.
I saw Up in the Air, which to me explored the lies of our modern corporate culture compared to reality. I think we all know its a big lie, but just like the movie, we are left with not knowing yet what to do about all of it.
I am always doggedly optimistic. We will find a way back to each other.