Is the economy improving?

My opinion is the economy seems to be improving but I don't think it will be sustainable. There are to many artificial financial demands placed on individuals and eventually it's going to reach a point that the poor cannot afford health care, insurance for their vehicles, vehicles in general, and basically anything that's now sold. It's already beginning and once it reaches a point of critical mass you'll find people unwilling to continue living in a society that arrests you for being homeless, tickets you for speeding (even though 10 other cars are going the same speed around you) and is basically irrational. Just wait it'll happen near the end of 2012 by 2013 everyone will see a huge change.

 

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Dead cat bounce

If you are talking about the economy of the West, we are in a bit of a dead cat bounce right now. But it's just a blip on the ever increasing downward slope. Western economy is done, toast, finished, history. I think you know that, and this is just a rhetorical tongue-in-cheek question.

The only question remaining is when we move from our current mode of false pretense, to the reality of plunging over the cliff into total free fall economic disintegration.

Here's my timeline, based on the suddenly increasing rate of decline (surge) we have observed over the last few decades.

2012 - 2015 The West is still able to prop up a fantasy of economic stability
2015 - 2020 What is that sucking sound, just over the horizon?
2020 Panic ensues as the realization sets in that no recovery is possible
2025 Major civil unrest as economies disintegrate across the West
2030 After 10 years of anarchy, military power solidifies around centers of wealth/natural resources (totalitarian dictatorships)
2030 - ???? Do not bring a child into this hell on earth

Addendum:

To be completely clear, this is NOT a "conclusion" or a "prediction", it's en estimation, based on my personal observation of recent trends. MAYBE none of this will ever come to pass. MAYBE it will take another 10 years to reach the cliff. But like the OP, I doubt it.

 

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You and Harold Camping have a lot in common and are following in the footsteps of those many doom seers who have preceded you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Camping

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

As for the dead cat bounce, we have been in recovery for three years now - a long period for a dead cat bounce. And where is your empirical support for your conclusion or are you looking into a crystal ball?

 

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Let's see unemployment is over 8 percent and the new numbers, after the Christmas hiring has ended and those hired will be fired, will again spike upward. The housing market is still making thousands of foreclosures daily on existing homes. The dollar grows weaker due to its lower purchasing power. Gas prices are higher than last year at this time and going higher. We import more than export still. Those are just a few examples that show we aren't recovering to well.

 

Unfortunately for you and your fellow "conservatives" none of those are measures of the economy but rather reflective an ignorance common in "conservative" followers. And as for the purchasing power of the dollar, domestic inflation remains tame. And you obviously have not been paying attention to the rise of the dollar on international exchanges.

Let's see, we went through a Great Recession the likes of which have not been seen since the Great Depression when unemployment spiked to 25 plus percent and remained elevated for a decade. And we only have an 8.5 percent unemployment rate which is down from over 10 percent a few years ago.

The question is, is the economy doing better? And much to your chagrin and those like you, the answer is clearly yes.

While gasoline prices may be higher today than they were a year ago, the economy is better than it was a year ago. Additionally, gasoline is still much cheaper, 25% cheaper today than it was in 2008. One more point, the US is now exporting more oil products than we are importing.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/12/05/us-on-pace-to-become-net-fuel-exporter/

By 2017 Goldman Sachs and others have predicted that The United States will become the worlds largest oil producing nation, exceeding the Gulf States and Russia.

http://oilandgas-investments.com/20...ll-be-worlds-largest-producer-of-oil-in-2017/

If you and your fellows were paying attention, you would have noticed natural gas exporting facilities being built in The United States for the first time in our history. And you would have noticed the extraordinary oil boom presently underway in North Dakota (Bakken Shale) and in the North East (Marcellus Shale) and in Texas (Eagle Ford Shale).

Sorry to shatter your "conservative" dreams yet again, but not really."

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Don't get excited, Joe. There's nothing as fancy as a "conclusion" here, it's just an estimation, based on observations of current trends. If it makes you feel better, I am "looking into a crystal ball".

I have never even heard of Harold Camping by the way.

 

Home prices overall are on a downward trend, food wholesale prices are going up , the Christmas earnings report stated it was less than last year for most businesses, new car prices are rising and yet you still say that it is getting better. :shrug:

 

In a certain way the economy is getting better. If your a wealthy person your doing much better due to still paying less taxes or no taxes in many instances. More CEO's are multi millionaires than ever before. The rich have not prospered so much that it makes the mind numb to see the affluence that's being shown by the amount of new millionaires, new mansions and the raping of the middle class that they are now almost wiped out. While more and more people are making less and less the few who are at the top are raking in the profits from others dreams and living large with the money they have received from those who now are broke and in debt.

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You haven't been paying attention again. Housing is now in a recovery. Things are getting better for the housing industry if you believe those in the industry - you know the people who make a living selling and building homes.

Can you read charts Cosmic? The percent of household income used to purchase food products is at an all time low and lower than anywhere else in the world.

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2890222&postcount=251

Yeah, the wealthy are screwing you and people like you in this country all the way to the bank. And the sad thing is that you and people like you understand something is wrong, but you keep shooting yourselves in the feet. You don't know the enemy and the source of your discontent. So you wind up sleeping the the enemy night after night and getting screwed yet again and again never knowing why.

The bottom line, despite the best efforts of Republicans/conservatives to squash a recovery, the economy is getting better.

 

New homes are selling but there are more being forclosed upon than are being sold. There's thousands of older forclosed homes waiting to be sold by the banks who hold there papers and are being witheld from the market until the prices go up. I guess you don't understand how banks hide their problems as much as the rest of us do.

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Yeah, new homes are selling. But so are existing home sales. Existing home sales have been steadily rising since July of last year. And contrary to your claims, existing home prices are up as well and home inventories have been falling for several months now.

http://www.realestateabc.com/outlook.htm

And just what problems would the banks be hiding? Where is your proof that banks are hiding problems? How is it, "the rest of us" know what the banks are hiding? If "the rest of us" know the banks are hiding their problems, you (AKA "the rest of us") should be able to prove your claim.

Here is the deal. You need to be able to understand what is fact, what is real and what is sheer Republican/conservative fantasy/misinformation meant to deceive "the rest of us" into doing something stupid.

 

Interesting comments here, but I feel personally such an economic system is not sustainable. Wages will not increase for employees while the rest of the costs do increase, eventually it will get to a point filling up your car to goto work is pointless and that's when people think of changing their society forever.

 

A purely capitalist system is not sustainable on the long term without extraordinary measures (i.e. social disruption, tyranny or other extreme measures of social control) because in a purely capitalistic system wealth tends to concentrate in the hands of the few. Wealth begets more wealth and poverty begets more poverty. That is why some degree of socialism or income redistribution is necessary and healthy for an economy. It keeps competition alive and well. And competition is the true driver of wealth and innovation.

Contrary to the preachings of our "conservative" brothers and sisters, unrestrained greed is not good.

 

This idea is not new.

Many have been aware that the current financial system is flawed and unsustainable, yet it has been the most efficient means of accounting from it's inception when compared to the challenges of actually trading in chickens and cabbages....

It is how the wealth gets distributed, by whom and to whom that needs to be re-evaluated, and many are trying to get their heads around the challenges.

For as surely as we are human, there are some who will want more than 'their share' and there are others who will expect that they can be free riders, taking out without putting in... :bugeye:

 

Somebody woke this up - DarksidZz ?
So, what's new?

And it's had a long enough run. We now have the communications technology to keep records and score-cards with no currency at all. Moreover, we could - if we wanted to - do it without a few people becoming bloated with accumulated wealth while the vast majority go without basic necessities.
(At this point, some unimaginative capitalist usually points out that the "poor" of America are rich compared to the poor of some other continent, while failing to acknowledge the cause-and-effect relationship between those statistics.) Economy, whether we like it, is global now. Governments no longer have any control over the movement of capital across their borders - while government and labour are confined within each country. Governments have very little influence on the effects of global capital on their own nations and peoples.

This is how wealth is consolidated. If we wanted it distributed, we would change the way we elect governments.

The free riders at the top are a whole helluvalot heavier to carry than the free riders at the bottom.
The ecology of capitalism: Wealth is sucked upward; blame showers down.

 

I liked Joepistole's post 33 and several times have proven mathemtically that wealth concentrates in the hands of those already wealthy in posts. The essence of the proof is that all have certain necessary cost and even if you assume these cost are 10 times greater for rich* / high income people, they still have not only more left over that they can invest, and it is also a greater percent of their income. I.e. they earn more via investments than the poor do so become even richer every year wrt to poor.

So some form of weath redistribution is ESSENTIAL for economic stability. Progressive income taxes worked reasonable well in US before GWB greatly reduced the tax rate of the wealth. Large inhertance tax can be effective too, but only takes effect after 75 years or so.

* higher cost food, and home, more restaurant meals etc.

 

"If voting made a difference, they wouldn't let us do it" -Mark Twain
To many plutocrats, a electoral collage established to make public vote meaningless, establishment of political parties despite George Washington stating it would be are downfall. The intelligent commit their lives to science, understanding, and knowledge. The cleaver become wealthy, greedy, and powerful - the fool stays the citizen blindly pretending their vote matters. The media chooses sides, bends what should be a steal bar of truth.

 

Well, not everyone feels that way. The Koch brothers are spending a billion dollars next year to influence that vote which you think is so unimportant.

 

No, I never said the vote was unimportant. I simply said that the citizens vote had no real power, however if can be influential. This is not something that never happenes, Al Gore lost to Bush because the vote was changed just recently, even though he got the popular vote.

 

Where your tax dollars go, borken down by government agencies (From: https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/treasBulletin/b2016_1.pdf)
United States Government Statement of Net Cost for the Year Ended September 30, 2015 (In billions of dollars)

The five agency entries (separated by xxx for first and last) are: Gross Cost - Earned Revenue = Subtotal xxxx Assumptions* xxxx Net Cost
* The fourth number (called "assunption" here is some sort of adjustments) and usually just omitted and replaced by "-" (making only 4 numbers)
Likewise in a few cases, when there is no income, a "-" sign is inserted, instead of a zero.
Twice near end of list there is a "-" sign when there is no cost. For example "Farm Credit System Insurance"
I'm too lazy to separate all the data that has run together. Just remember a "-" is a place holder. Counts as one of the five columns.
The last number (net cost) is the most imortant

................................................................................... Net cost ............................................................... Gross cost
Department of Health and Human Services ........... 1,130.9 xxxxx 101.3 xxxxxx 1,029.6 xxxx (0.1) xxxxx 1,029.5
Social Security Administration ..................................... 945.0 0.3 944.7 - 944.7
Department of Defense ................................................ 646.6 45.5 601.1 (27.5) 573.6
Interest on Treasury Securities Held by the Public ...... 250.8 - 250.8 - 250.8
Department of Veterans Affairs .................................... 186.9 4.8 182.1 (13.0) 169.1
Department of Agriculture ............................................ 147.7 9.1 138.6 - 138.6
Department of the Treasury ......................................... 146.0 29.3 116.7 - 116.7
Office of Personnel Management ................................ 104.9 20.3 84.6 17.1 101.7
Department of Transportation ...................................... 76.1 0.8 75.3 - 75.3
Department of Energy .................................................. 76.5 4.6 71.9 - 71.9
Department of Homeland Security ............................... 60.2 12.1 48.1 4.1 52.2
Department of Labor .................................................... 45.8 - 45.8 - 45.8
Department of Education ............................................. 71.3 26.6 44.7 - 44.7
Defense Security Cooperation Agency ........................ 38.8 - 38.8 - 38.8
Department of Housing and Urban Development ........ 32.7 1.5 31.2 - 31.2
Department of Justice .................................................. 32.3 1.7 30.6 - 30.6
Department of State ..................................................... 30.2 4.3 25.9 0.1 26.0
National Aeronautics and Space Administration .......... 19.8 0.2 19.6 - 19.6
Department of the Interior ............................................ 19.2 2.7 16.5 - 16.5
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation ........................ 23.7 8.0 15.7 - 15.7
Railroad Retirement Board .......................................... 16.3 3.4 12.9 - 12.9
U.S. Agency for International Development ................. 12.7 0.1 12.6 - 12.6
Federal Communications Commission ........................ 9.6 0.3 9.3 - 9.3
Department of Commerce............................................ 12.3 3.2 9.1 - 9.1
Environmental Protection Agency ................................ 9.3 0.7 8.6 - 8.6
National Science Foundation ....................................... 7.0 - 7.0 - 7.0
U.S. Postal Service ...................................................... 73.8 67.9 5.9 - 5.9
Millennium Challenge Corporation ............................... 0.8 - 0.8 - 0.8
Smithsonian Institution ................................................. 0.8 - 0.8 - 0.8
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ......................... 1.0 0.8 0.2 - 0.2
Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation................. - 0.2 (0.2) - (0.2)
Overseas Private Investment Corporation ................... (0.1) 0.1 (0.2) - (0.2)
General Services Administration .................................. 0.3 0.6 (0.3) - (0.3)
National Credit Union Administration ........................... - 0.3 (0.3) - (0.3)
Securities and Exchange Commission ........................ 1.5 2.0 (0.5) - (0.5)
Small Business Administration ..................................... (0.5) 0.4 (0.9) - (0.9)
Tennessee Valley Authority ......................................... 9.8 10.9 (1.1) - (1.1)
Export-Import Bank of the United States ..................... (0.6) 1.3 (1.9) - (1.9)
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ....................... (6.5) 8.6 (15.1) - (15.1)
All other entities ........................................................... 20.8 1.7 19.1 - 19.1
Total ............................................................................. 4,253.7 xxxx 375.6 xxxx 3,878.1 xxxx (19.3) xxxxx 3,858.8