Guns Network Staff
06-05-2011, 01:17 PM
Why won't the talking heads and economists come clean?
Measuring economic health by GDP is a total joke. No-body cares if GDP grows. GDP is an indirect indicator for the average personnel economic health. Historically, GDP growth meant job growth and and wage growth and that is why it was a good proxy for measuring economic health. But that is just not true any more. We see GDP growth due to increased efficiencies of computerization and mechanization that are actually job and wage destroyers, and due to employers who are able to take advantage of high unemployment, free trade, the death of unions, and widespread economic misery to reduce wages and demand longer hours for less pay from those lucky enough to still have jobs.
The truth is that the US economy is not creating nearly enough jobs to even keep up with new workers in the workforce, and wages are lagging behind inflation. Many/most Americans have seen their net worth decline for the past several years as their largest asset has lost more than 30% of its value. Furthermore US stocks - and therefore folks' IRAs and 401Ks - have delivered essentially a net zero APR over the past eleven years.
We are still in an economic recession (and if you don't like that phrase because you insist on clinging to an obsolete definition then just call it an economic repression). We never left it. We have been in that condition for several years now and I am convinced that we will be in that condition for many more years to come - maybe decades.
It is time for the media, economists, and talking head classes to come clean.
Measuring economic health by GDP is a total joke. No-body cares if GDP grows. GDP is an indirect indicator for the average personnel economic health. Historically, GDP growth meant job growth and and wage growth and that is why it was a good proxy for measuring economic health. But that is just not true any more. We see GDP growth due to increased efficiencies of computerization and mechanization that are actually job and wage destroyers, and due to employers who are able to take advantage of high unemployment, free trade, the death of unions, and widespread economic misery to reduce wages and demand longer hours for less pay from those lucky enough to still have jobs.
The truth is that the US economy is not creating nearly enough jobs to even keep up with new workers in the workforce, and wages are lagging behind inflation. Many/most Americans have seen their net worth decline for the past several years as their largest asset has lost more than 30% of its value. Furthermore US stocks - and therefore folks' IRAs and 401Ks - have delivered essentially a net zero APR over the past eleven years.
We are still in an economic recession (and if you don't like that phrase because you insist on clinging to an obsolete definition then just call it an economic repression). We never left it. We have been in that condition for several years now and I am convinced that we will be in that condition for many more years to come - maybe decades.
It is time for the media, economists, and talking head classes to come clean.