BENGHAZI, please, someone pay attention...oh, oh O-bama Care Socialism....

Pukes just can't get any traction with these "real" issues.

Actually, Mitt KNEW that the economy was coming back after Obama's first term and Mitt wanted that glory of the improved economy to be his.

Friends don't let friends vote Republican - or drive DRUNK.

Those burger flipping jobs keep adding up. and like politicians, the McD sign will read another million sold.

and encouraging businesses to invest to meet rising demand. Slumping gasoline prices are also working their magic, slashing the cost of filling up and allowing Americans to buy other goods and services."

Why are you trying to damper the good news?

adjusted for inflation that is the cheapest gas prices EVER with a Republican was in the White House. MOF , the only time in history it was ever lower was 1998 when Bill Clinton was President!

Thank you President Obama!

but the stimulus provided by the reduction of fuel cost that will filter thru the whole economy will far out weigh the lost of those jobs.... and in turn will provide other better jobs openings for those looking for work.

which comprise the fastest growing group. What a great plan. It will also strip the income of people in Alaska and North Dakota who get payments from state oil resources, places where there are no other jobs to be had.

I know the standard economic lines, but they were developed in a time when people had more disposable income. Since we have dropped an additional 10 million people into poverty in the past 6 years, most of whom will be in poverty the rest of their lives, and added another 30 million to those who are near or live in poverty during some portion of each year, it won't have nearly the same impact that it used to. And while we did that we added another ~10 million people to the population who need jobs too. The facts are that these little adjustments don't bring us nearly the return they used to. It just looks like more since we are so far down.

We may never recover from this...



We will see what it looks like in April.

you are under estimating the amount of disposable income that these fuel saving will pump into the economy.... and the quality of jobs that will return with it...... like you said we will see in time. btw most oil field jobs have always been "boom or bust" jobs, not long term careers.

"you are under estimating the amount of disposable income that these fuel saving will pump into the economy"


You are over estimating the amount because - Well, Errr, Um.., that money was already in the economy.

Then not only do people buy more gas, but the the different in price is spent of other things... The proper phrase should have been "increased economic activity," but you knew what he meant.

buying gas in an economy any different than buying an Iphone?

Buying gas also provides jobs just the same as buying an Iphone. Both are supported by vast industries and manufacturing.

Will this be better for joe blow? Yes

I personally think that lower gas prices will be worse for the economy. Worse in a sense that folks will now take the "savings" and pay down debt. Now to me this is a good thing for the individual, however this does not help the economy.

No one can really say as of now where we are headed with oil prices. What most can say is that at $50 a barrel oil will be laying off a lot of folks in the U.S.....is that also good for the economy and will that lead to "increased economic activity"?

If you use $50 to fill up or the $50 to buy something at the mall, it is the same thing; it is going into the economy. Simply by moving the funds from one place to another does not lead to "increased economic activity".

http://www2.itif.org/2012-american-manufacturing-decline.pdf

And that's just manufacturing. There are tens of millions of other jobs which are never coming back, jobs that supported dozens of people along the line, gone and their buildings shuttered or leveled, leaving only dirt. Tough to pay for national healthy care, or our preoccupation with occupation and war with dirt.

That little chart floating around which shows all the lost income of working people while bank$ters are being made wealthy doesn't mean if it just gets back to where it was it's ok - there are 10 years of losses that those people, our neighbors, and this country cannot afford. Losses that we haven't even begun to try to restore.

Look around at the schools that have cut art programs and music. Doctoral-granting university cut funding for the theater department - makes me think they are not a serious university any more. Basic scientific research is almost not being funded, we aren't educating kids for science like we used to, we are no longer injecting millions of college educated and debt-free veterans into the economy to grow it, no longer doing crap for infrastructure, we have paid to build up much of China and Mexico is now offering free university courses in one town where our jobs were moved to - heck, black folks have a far worse unemployment rate, and part of that is due to the lack of government hiring which is being curtailed to make the deficit look better. Leaving some black folk with no access to one of the few jobs where they could get out of poverty regardless of their skin color. The list of how we used to invest in ourselves was long, and now can be written on the back of a napkin. Not just SS payments, but places where people could go and learn, or be paid to learn, or be paid to create. We used to do this in my lifetime, now people think that future will happen by magic, I guess.

This is biting us in the ass today. Just like one cannot fix some of the problems caused by poor nutrition if not corrected before a kid is 5 or so, we have now put ourselves in a position of not being able to handle future losses. 10,000 people a day are turning 65, and nearly half of them will be completely reliant on the government in just a couple of years because they had to spend their 401k or re-mortage the house to stay alive during this depression - depression for them, anyway. That is a huge amount of money, gone and not replenished, and it never will be.

Will a few people get to pay an entire electric bill or eat every day for the months that this lasts? Sure. But it won't give most people enough to save anything toward a down payment to halt our progress toward a disconnected rental nation.

There are 100 million people who are behind where they were when 2000 got here. Until they are made whole, and THEN allowed to grow, which would likely take trillions of dollars like the ones the bank$ters were given, there is no progress. Unless one wants to ignore them. That's seems very popular these days. Not only are they not talked about, I get called a party-pooper when I do, especially when I suggest we start learning something about finance and running assets so we will know about the weapons of our opponents. Hard to compete with Dancing With The Stars.

Jobs worth having are not only not coming back, as we go forward more will be replaced by technology as they are now. That whole edifice we built by blowing up the world and rebuilding it is over, and we really need to figure out what prosperity and safety will look like and what it will cost us in the future. We haven't even started trying to address it. Too bad, because left on our current path it's an easy guess to see islands of wealth surrounded by seas of poverty and climate-ravaged refugees scattered across the country within another 30 years or so. In comparison to the lived past those under 30 today are gonna have a far less secure future. Broken and broke adults can't raise anything but broken children.

But Spring is near...

here a lot, I am more of an "economics focused person" and find it interesting/I try to stay up on and educate myself on how it really works (both locally and globally). The reason I do not post very often is because we have a lot of folks that really do not know how the economy works.

With all of this said I will say that I enjoyed your post and will make an attempt to read your responses if I see your name come up while doing my daily browsing.

We've had a lot of folks "bury their heads in the sand" when it comes to our new economy and I really can't fault them for their ignorance. I do feel if most would look at the economy without their political talking points then they may just learn something.

So with other topics I pretty much stay quiet. Sure I can voice an opinion about Ferguson, NYPD, ACA, etc and while my opinion is based on facts I will admit that I am not as educated on the subjects so I tend to be quiet. It sure would go a long way around here if some simply kept quiet when they are ignorant about some things.

God post. You will be labeled I am sure, but keep preaching it as you at least have one person listening.

... And maybe we're starting to see an uptick in wage growth.

Lower fuel prices have a better chance to trickle down than would continuing to give Exxon and Monsanto an extra $20 billion in tax-free profits to park offshore. And I HATE jobs, no matter HOW well they pay, that exist only due to fracking, which will end up costing us an unimaginably staggering sum in infrastructure repair and health care down the line. Better that the big companies that park their profits offshore bring them home, pay their few billions in taxes, and then have federal and state governments spend the money on infrastructure repair and building up energy renewables.

OOps.

Yes, there are still structural inequality problems, but that is due more to Americans unwillingness to organize into unions.

kidding right? I think you forgot the sarcasm tag.

How is printing money hand over fist to bail out bankers and prop up the market to create an illusion of prosperity a "miracle"?

I am very interested in your logic and look forward to your reply as I am always open for new views and ideas. Please explain this "miracle" to me.

And with gas prices falling, there's even less fear of inflation. That's the miracle right there.

"We have low interest rates with no inflation."

Low interest rates are good? Ask your parents or grandparents what happened to the value of their savings in Cd's, or savings accounts?

20 years ago a retired couple with $200k in Cd's could have earned maybe $16K a year in interest to help supplement their retirement. Today that same $200K invested the same may get them $4k a year due to low interest rates. That extra money due to low interest rates has gone to the banks. And at this rate does not even keep up with inflation.

"No Inflation"

We are trying to maintain 2% a year. That does not equal "no inflation". To keep up everyone in the U.S that works should be making at least 12% more at their job then they did in 2008. What we see is that actual wages have gone down vs 2008.

Sure, we should have had massive public spending on infrastructure to jump start the economy, but too many Americans vote against their best economic interests to make that happen.

So, yes, low interest rates hurt savers, but it helps everyone else in the economy who need to earn a living.

"What we see is that actual wages have gone down vs 2008."

Again, that's due to Americans unwillingness to form unions or at the very least vote for politicians that will raise the min. wage.

so where did that fiscal stimulus go? Did it go to you and me and every other joe blow? No that fiscal stimulus went to the banks and businesses. The banks used it to bail their ass out, they businesses used it in the forms of loans to buy back stock to produce record profits.

Just think if that trillion dollar a year deficit would have went even half into propping up the little guy. This is trickle down at it's worse. I thought Reagan was the king of that but over the past 6 years it has been the main theory of our President.....pump money into banks and the wealthy and hope it trickles down.

You said:


"Again, that's due to Americans unwillingness to form unions or at the very least vote for politicians that will raise the min. wage."

You are right, it appears that our choices over the past 6 years were completely wrong, but boy did they talk a mean game.

This time was supposed to be different, a "new age" where things were done differently. Someone to fight for the little guy and yet they doubled down on Trickle.

Would you like fries with your trickle?

IN 1999 the population of the U.S was around 279 million. Today the population is around 330 million. We'd need at least 600K jobs created in the same time period for it to be equal to 1999, so we have failed miserably and your piece points that out in the numbers.

By your article we are still short 20% in jobs compared to the same time period in 1999, if we want to use a comparable vs a propaganda piece.

Hell why not compare the job creation today to the year 1850 to make it look real good?

Aren't you forgetting that between 1999 and today, there are more retired people? So, wouldn't that have an impact on the number of new jobs needed?

There were 77 million boomers and 82 million "Millennials". The Millennials are a larger group. + some of the boomers have already died off. Plus the baby boomer generation got an extra 2 years on their era vs the others, now we pretty much judge in 20 year increments where the baby boomers got 22 years. So if we add 2 more years onto the millenials for "shits and giggles" then their numbers would be nearly 90 million.

The "baby boom" was big for the time but not so much today.

And we'd actually need more jobs as most of them are still working.

Edit:

I believe in calling myself out when I am wrong or apply the wrong numbers....the baby boom generation was only 18 years. I will not go back up and edit the original content as I believe in leaving it so others will see my mistake. There is nothing wrong in being honest that you messed up and point it out. So basically my correction would pretty much show that the millenials and boomers generation are about the same size in pure numbers.

did not mean to respond to original op with this post so I deleted the content.