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Re: Tommy D observations, Accuracy and Crichton the Who fan

Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 06:29:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Oust_the_pretender <bushchoked@xxxxxxxxx>

At an annualized rate. The highest since first-quarter of 1984, BTW, nearly 20 years ago. Pretty good, hey Mark? How 'bout that? Proof

Alan:

Let's be accurate, shall we? It's the quarterly rate, which projected into an annual rate makes it 7.2%.

That's exactly what I said. An annualized rate of 7.2%.

Divided by 4 ("quarterly," you know), it is in actuality a mere 1.8% growth rate.

Right.

I'm not impressed.

You should be, although obviously I can't make you. I can, however, point out that a 1.8% quarterly/7.2% annual growth rate is relatively huge for a mature, industrialized economy. Some countries actually shrink (e.g. North Korea at -3% and Zimbabwe at -6.1%), and others that attain that level of growth (7%-10%) are unindustrialized or relatively small economies so that modest actual increases translate to large percentages. In 2000, the UK grew by 3% for the year, the US grew 5%, and the world average was 4.8%. 7.2% is BIG.

Remember the limping economy we had in 1984? I do.

I think this is the five blind men looking at the elephant. I remember howls of protest at all the money that was being made on Wall Street. Because a Republican was in office, you probably remember the tales of woe more vividly.

Deficit spending tends to inflate the GDP but as I said, rich people getting richer isn't an "economic recovery." When people start getting back the 3.2 million jobs lost (so far) and wages start to return to a decent range...then we'll talk about "recovery."

It's not clear to me that deficit spending makes rich people richer, but even if that were true, where do you think the 3.2 million jobs will come from, if not "the rich people" (who invest their money, buy capital equipment, build factories and create jobs)? Would you rather have the government create the jobs, if only the rich people could be prevented from making any more money? Your caveat that wages have to "start" to return to "a decent level" just means you'll never be satisfied...the wage level is a moving target and is already subject to so much manipulation it's nearly impossible to tell anything about general quality-of-life from a wage-level statistic. Why not just legislate a minimum wage of $20/hour? Would that make you happy? That's pretty decent, isn't it? Or why stop there, wouldn't $50/hour be even decent-er?

Besides, according to these people, we've been in "recovery" for three years already. Where IS it???

If you say so. I haven't been paying attention. But it looks like it's under your nose with this latest announcement.

Cheers,