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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAfter 4 1/2 years of 'recovery', Is this as good as it gets?
US economy may be stuck in slow lane for long run
By JOSH BOAK, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) In the 4½ years since the Great Recession ended, millions of Americans who have gone without jobs or raises have found themselves wondering something about the economic recovery:
Is this as good as it gets?
It increasingly looks that way.
Two straight weak job reports have raised doubts about economists' predictions of breakout growth in 2014. The global economy is showing signs of slowing again. Manufacturing has slumped. Fewer people are signing contracts to buy homes. Global stock markets have sunk as anxiety has gripped developing nations.
Some long-term trends are equally dispiriting.
The Congressional Budget Office foresees growth picking up through 2016, only to weaken starting in 2017. By the CBO's reckoning, the economy will soon slam into a demographic wall: The vast baby boom generation will retire. Their exodus will shrink the share of Americans who are working, which will hamper the economy's ability to accelerate.
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http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/US-economy-may-be-stuck-in-slow-lane-for-long-run-5218792.php
yourout
(7,532 posts)Only way this gets better is average people having more money and the rich having less.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)thats not going to hire lots of people.
Half-Century Man
(5,279 posts)Those jobs have headed overseas. At least the majority of midwestern ones.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)We need new solutions for a 21st century economy, where production is plentiful and jobs are scarce.
You see, unions and a high minimum wage are pretty useless if you can't even find a job...
What Dems need to seriously propose is a basic minimum income, regardless of employment status. The country has the money to do this - of course it has the money! - but does it have the courage to do this, that's the only question.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)A guaranteed income, to ensure decent housing and food, will reduce the need to have a job. Having a job can be tied to wanting extras or pursuing something you're truly passionate about.
In my current field, med lab tech, increasing numbers of tests are able to be run on bedside systems and little cards (like pregnancy tests).
Automation decreased the numbers of techs needed and changed the nature of the job from a scientist doing manual tests to a technician maintaining sophisticated instruments.
Now, advances in testing are decreasing the need for techs to run the sophisticated instruments.
Vinnie From Indy
(10,820 posts)share the bounty of robotic workers and lower labor costs. The money saved by not having human workers is NOT going to somehow be magically distributed to the masses. The 1%'ers are not about to do that without a gun to their heads.
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)I agree. And then once you take the gun away, they'll try to take it back. That's capitalism.
obxhead
(8,434 posts)It's time the minimum wage were replaced with a maximum wage.
Something along the lines of the most well paid employee or contractor can only make 25 times the lowest paid worker. All benefits are calculated in that maximum wage as well, stocks, healthcare, 401k's etc etc etc.
End the greed at the top, replace it with the well being of all.
KurtNYC
(14,549 posts)Even if it is much less than the US minimum it would have a lot of impact here.
Jobs left the USA because of cheap labor abroad and cheap transportation of the finished goods and commodities into to the US. The major player exploit the difference between the low cost of production abroad and the high price US consumer pay for everything. Jobs aren't coming back until that equation changes.
Also I think quality of life is a better measure for the average person than recession vs growth is. The GDP can go up but the average person sees no impact because the system is increasingly good at keep all the growth for itself. Increasingly we own nothing -- because everything breaks and is un-fixable (for example an iPad) you don't really own it in the classic sense. I have a hammer that my grandfather used for 40 years but I will have almost nothing that will last long enough to be a legacy. Increasingly things are sold as EULAs or a kind of treadmill subscription where we buy them over and over.
If people grow their own food or get power from solar panels the GDP does NOT reflect this. The score (GDP) is being kept by those who benefit most from the present system.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglass
None of the parasites have heard anyone that matters say, "Enough!", and so it keeps getting worse, and will keep getting worse until they do.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)That says it perfectly.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)"I freed a thousand slaves, I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.", will/would bring about the change we so desperately need.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)Douglass and Tubman understood implicitly that the first step is changing a person's thought. The great religious figures, Jesus, Buddha were all trying to accomplish the same. Tolstoy, Gandhi, MLK all knew it starts with an idea, that a person cannot loose his chains if he does not know he is a slave.
I keep kicking the idea around that we need a new definition of the "American Dream." But since the whole world over, the 99% is yearning for salvation from austerity and dehumanization, perhaps we need a new definition--a new goal if you will--of what a human should aspire to. I think it is there, in the writings of Native Americans and how their communities were structured. In philosophies before Capitalism that urged people to use their lives to gain virtue and wisdom, to serve the community, to serve the earth. That a human is not judged by her bank account, a contest only the oligarchs can win. It sounds a bit new-agey when I write it like that, but the idea that we're all supposed to fight like starved animals for scraps of consumerism in order to find fleeting moments of shiny happiness is failing us all. I remember when they first started the whole lifestyles of the rich and famous, I thought, won't that make people angry? But instead, it was a long-term plan to get us to buy into a cheap imitation of it, so that we would run ourselves to death on the wheel in order to get our tiny, chrome-plated sliver of their platinum lives.
It will take a huge change in the fabric of our thought to rebuild. It can be done. I am reading a remarkable book called "The Slave Ship" by Marcus Rediker and he says that a diagram of slaves packed into the hold of a ship for the Middle Passage so horrified Europeans that it sparked the abolition movement. People didn't know and therefore didn't care what was being done to create their goods from the New World. This one image helped them to understand and to see that these were people, human bodies, packed so tightly that a huge percentage died on the journey.
I hope that someday there is an awakening. I fear we are so distracted by our consumer junk and glitzy propaganda, that we might not awaken in time. Orwell described it perfectly.
villager
(26,001 posts)phantom power
(25,966 posts)KG
(28,752 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Do you really think policy would be no better if we retook the House?
jwirr
(39,215 posts)Some of the unrest we see today has to do with the process of change and our trying to adjust to it. Until we start doing something about the need to change we are not going to get better. We have also made some mistakes during the last 30+ years with things like NAFTA and now the TPP which helped to destroy our nation.
We need a comprehensive plan that will take our needed change into consideration and remember out history.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)It's only going to get worse my friends, it's unstoppable.
In 25-50 years most labor will be robotic.
Even the days of the driver are numbered.
You thought it sucked for you....todays "top guns" sit in a metal box in the Nevada desert while "flying" around the world. For the people who could make pilot, I can't think of anything more depressing.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)Whenever someone tells you that they know what is going to happen in the future realize that the person is either a fool or a liar. Right now the US population is getting older very fast. Baby Boomers are retiring and not getting replaced. The ones with the high-status jobs are not retiring because, well, they have high status jobs.
Much of what we consider life is getting automated. Bank tellers are mostly ATMs now. Gas station attendants are replaced by automated pumps. With my fancy rhoomba I don't have the cleaning lady over as much. There are thousands of jobs, mostly on the lower end that are being automated of off-shored.
What are we going to do with all the people who don't have useful skills?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)In fact the same people claiming the past recession was and is the worst drop ever are the same ones thinking it should be fixed so quickly.
Skittles
(153,179 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)nt.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)The 1% and their Mouth Pieces in Washington have this Jobless Recovery SCAM down pat.
They should. They have had plenty of practice since the 80s.
They know Just What to Do to continue the transfer of wealth from the Working Class to the 1%.
THIS Jobless Recovery has a NEW twist.
In the past, they were reluctant to cut Social Programs because the voters back home would toss these assholes out on their ASS if they vote to cut programs that a majority of the people in their districts back home depend on.
So THIS time, "they" invented something called The Sequester.
The Sequester is a brilliant piece of Political Scamsmanship.
NOW....No politician from either Political Party has to face the voters back home and say he voted to CUT the Social Programs the majority of his/her constituents depend upon.
They get to blame it ALL on The SEQUESTER.
"I didn't cut those programs!
The SEQUESTER cut those programs!"
There is that Plausible Deniability again.
Nobody claims they WANTED The Sequester.
America certainly didn't want it,
but HERE it IS!
and Both Parties get to blame the other.
Now that is an awesome piece of Scamsmanship!!!
"They" ALSO know how the help the Working Class.
FDR & LBJ gave us the Blue Print for a REAL recovery that helps everybody.
Back THEN, "they" (Democrats and Republicans alike) RAISED taxes on the RICH,
and started programs that PUT MONEY into the HANDS that would SPEND IT (Working Class & Poor)
through massive JOBS PROGRAMS and direct assistance.
This is NOT "theory".
This is HISTORY.
They KNOW what works.
They just don't want to do it.
You will know them by their WORKS!
1000words
(7,051 posts)Go team!
uponit7771
(90,359 posts)KauaiK
(544 posts)whether it's the Texas Rangers or any other organization in which he has been involved. So that would be...2018.
SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)for a long time to come.
Until we Boomers pass on, there will be a drag on the economy because our feckless/fearless/worthless "leaders" blew through all the extra money we have been paying into SS/FICA for 30+ years, and now our benefits are coming due to us, and they suddenly remembered that we are all (mostly) still here, and are expecting what we were promised (and we PREPAID for).
It sucks to have to be grown up and responsible, but that;s what our country needs to do.
We need to go on a war-diet (as in NO MORE WARS), so we can use that "peace-dividend" to pay benefits to Boomers
We need to raise taxes on the wealthy who can definitely afford it
We could decide that $50K was a reasonable family income, and just not tax ANY of the first $50K, and that alone would unleash a LOT of buying power and would go a ways to creating more demand and jobs along with it.
Stevepol
(4,234 posts)Republicans now only stand for one thing: NO. That's it.
And they are determined not to budge, not MAYBE, not TOMORROW, just NO.