{"id":31543,"date":"2012-08-24T06:41:16","date_gmt":"2012-08-24T10:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31543"},"modified":"2012-08-24T08:35:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-24T12:35:59","slug":"just-in-case-you-wondered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31543","title":{"rendered":"Just In Case You Wondered . . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Some years ago a famous American asked: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”\u00a0 And from what I can gather, lots of folks are asking that same question today.<\/p>\n

Well, now we have the answer to that question.\u00a0 Unless you received a major promotion at work – and maybe not even then – in general, you are not<\/a>.\u00a0 Nor are you better off than you were when the recession “ended” three years ago, either.<\/p>\n

In fact, you’re relatively worse off when today is compared to three years ago than you were comparing three years ago to the beginning of the current recession.<\/p>\n

Here’s the background.\u00a0 The current economic hard times began with an 18-month recession:\u00a0 from Dec 2007 to June 2009.\u00a0 But the “recovery” (yes, in technical terms there has been one, though it’s been essentially a jobless recovery) has actually hit people much harder than did the recession.\u00a0 From the cited article:<\/p>\n

Median household income<\/a> fell 4.8 percent on an inflation- adjusted basis since the recession ended in June 2009, more than the 2.6 percent drop during the 18-month contraction<\/em>, the research firm\u2019s Gordon Green and John Coder wrote in a report today. Household income is 7.2 percent below the December 2007 level, the former Census Bureau economic statisticians wrote. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let that sink in for a minute.\u00a0 During the 18-month recession, in real terms the average household lost 2.6% of of their income.\u00a0 But during the 36-month “recovery” since, in real terms the\u00a0 average household lost 4.8%<\/strong> of their income – close to twice as much<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I’m no economist, so I can’t offer an expert’s perspective on how to fix things.\u00a0 But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that whatever we’re doing today is making things worse vice better; the raw numbers show that very clearly.\u00a0\u00a0 Other recessions in our history have shown a clear economic recovery – well, whenever sane economic policy was used, that is.\u00a0 Here, not so much.<\/p>\n

However, as a layman I’ll offer two observations.\u00a0 First, it seems that if the government is soaking up much of the available capital through deficit spending, that just might be a drag on the economy.\u00a0 If the government is borrowing that much, that same capital isn’t available for businesses to use in creating new jobs.<\/p>\n

And second:\u00a0 I’m pretty sure this isn’t exactly the “change” most people were hoping for in late 2008.\u00a0 I think they wanted things to get better, not worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some years ago a famous American asked: “Are you better off than you were four years … Just In Case You Wondered . . . .<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}