Do you think the economy is getting better? or worse?

My company is doing incredibly better than it was 2 years ago (in fact arguably the best it has in a decade or more). We do quarterly meetings to update the whole staff (and give out nice profit sharing checks) and at those meetings our CEO kinda updates us on things. We make components that go into electronics off all kinds (Like the really basic raw materials components).

Also, since I graduated school in 2008 I have been able to find 4 jobs. Two full time, and two part time. I was let go from the first full time after about 2 months (possibly due to concerns on the economy, but I think they just didn’t like me).

I know also that my mother’s business has seen significant increase in business. They had actually cut weekly hours to 30 instead of 40 a week before the 08 election, so as to not have to fire anyone. Now she works as many as 20 hours overtime a week. She works for basically a pharmaceuticals testing company that does a lot of government contracts to test medications and things like that.

My brother is an engineer for Honda, and also so his overtime and even some base hours disappear in 08 and into 09. But he is back up to his normal work schedule, with extra hours and has been traveling all over the country and world for work.

This is like asking whether the weather is getting “better or worse” as it changes from time to time, day to day and season to season.

It depends on perspective and your place in it (the economy or the weather).

I suppose these days that it’s pretty accurate to say that if you’re a “wage slave” as so many are (and choose to remain, whether for ideological reasons or because there’s so much “other stuff” they need to buy), then things are pretty dicey, choppy, unsettled and risky right now. But you could choose to be an investor (which anyone can choose) and learn about that process, and make money whichever way the economy goes.

I’m still in college, so most of the jobs I apply for are entry-level or sometimes even a paid by the hour retail job over christmas break. When I was 16–19 it was REALLY easy to find jobs.

I’ve filled out over 15 applications for seasonal jobs this year and I haven’t heard back from anyone. Other than this, thats all I usually see of the economy that directly effects me.

I suspect that what we are seeing is a permanent or semi-permanent shift in the economy, with some sectors doing very well, while others are virtually moribund.

Better, but it won’t be like 10 years ago for a long time. When the economy was going at lightening fast speed, real estate going up, lots of revenue coming in, comoanies hiring like crazy, too much of that economy was false. Salaries were mot really increasing much, but people were buying more, because of credit. The money was not really there. Back before the great depression, if I remember my history, people owned stocks that wound up being worth nothing, and probably never should have been worth what they were selling for the few years before the crash. Same idea in my mind. Maybe it will take another 70 years for America to figure out how to push a false economy, but for now, I think we have a new normal.

Still, it does seem businesses are hiring mor again. I saw Pres. Clinton on tv and he said there are jobs out there, but people are not trained for them. Also, interest rates are too low in my opinion. I think that needs to change a little to help the system.

It’s the age old cup is half full/half empty dilemma…and depends on which side of the isle you are on.

Things are getting better much much too slowly. Key here is the stock market has been behaving very strongly….not gang busters but 11,000 on the Dow is good. Jobs are no longer hemorrhaging at historic rates and last months job loss was ½ of what it was a year ago. All good signs IMO.

But it is painfully obvious we are no where near where we were 2 years ago economically and on most fronts we are worse off especially we regards to the national deficit. Still have troops deployed in 2 countries fighting wars we should have ended 18 mos ago. Anyway it all depends on how you look at things and either way you look at things it still requires a strong pair of rose colored glasses.

The DOW is one of the best measure we have. It was at 14,000 in Sept 2007 and then dropped to around 7000 during the weeks Bush left office in 2008. It has been steadily climbing since then to above 11,000. So relative to Jan 2009, it is better. Relative to Sept 2007 it is worse.

My gut feeling is that it is better. The 14000 was a bubble that was bound to burst.

Depends where you look in the overall economy. Hip replacement sector is doing really well.
:)

It’s a long ways from where it was…but, having said that, it has a long way to go! Jobs are slowing showing up in my area. Housing is slowly moving again. Today or yesterday, the Feds bought up a lot of bonds to free up money. By the end of 2011, it should be much better.

Lmao…. @Adirondackwannabe yes, hip replacement surgery is on the rise!

Wow has no one watched? US corporations have amassed over 2 trillion dollars in cash reserves over the last two years. Private sector job growth has increased every month over the last nine months. Companies are beating the street estimates as profits soar. BP posted a profit of 1.6 billion dollars last quarter. Gold has tripled, the dollar has stabilized even with the recent Quantitative Easing, which drives the stock market higher so that Multibillion dollar corporations can continue to raise their dividends and the rich get richer.

The only reason the country has not completely turned around is fear. What a brilliant stategy that was sold to the American people over the last 20 months. Even though the programs that have been put into place where necessary to save our economy, help every American individually, and bring control back to reckless financial markets.

So while companies use rhetoric to delay hiring or business development, the citizens of this great country continue to be nothing more than a resource to be exploited. Longer hours, less pay, decreasing benefits and more responsibilty is the reward for those who have the honor of continued employment in this corporate run country. But don’t worry, they are now looking to eliminate the department of education so our electorate can just go back to being stupid…....OH to late!

My company (AT&T) is doing much better.
3 people on my crew lost their houses last year. None did this year, that I know of.
I attend retirement seminars, where they go over economic stats. Things are much better.

I give partial credit to normal economic bounce, and the rest to Obama.

Worse. Rather than look at a bunch of statistics given to us by a lot of people who don’t live in the real world, just look at how many people you know unemployed, or underemployed, how many people you know who can’t make ends meet or much less actually save anything. Look at how taxes have gone up, but services have declined. Who cares how much money IBM or BP makes, or what the DOW is doing. That money belongs to a very few people.

@rts486 what taxes have gone up? Since when? Do you mean on a local level?

@rts486 Not to disagree with you personally, but I think we can look into key areas of our economy that are doing better than they were 2 years ago. I sell to the copper mining industry which is vital to core industrial production and my sales there recently are at record levels where last year they were at record lows. My key resin supplier was in my office yesterday and spoke how material sales to coating manufactures in Detroit were robust that last few months where last year they were simply non-existent. The wheels are turning that are key to an economic recovery albeit slowly. These are the tiny bubbles you look for that do not make the headlines.

@rts486 Actually taxes have gone down, significantly for about 95% of the population. The stimulus bill, for all the grief it gets, was about ⅓ (around 250 billion dollars worth) tax cuts. The only reason you never hear about it is because rather than print a check out with his name on it and send it to you like Bush did, Obama set it up to go into your paychecks over time. Taxes are LITERALLY the lowest they’ve been in over 50 years.

Look up the tax tables for 2008 and 2009, a middle class income like $90k is paying less federal taxes, you can see it in black and white.

@rts486: For me, the grand total of people I know who have lost their jobs and are out of work is 1, and it was his own incompetence that cost him that, rather than the company downsizing.

Does this mean that the economy is practically perfect?

It’s important to separate individual perceptions, local conditions and macro-economic conditions when discussing “the economy”.

The stimulus packages worked, inasmuch as they prevented the economy from completely disappearing down the shitter, but they have really heralded a new type of economy: private profit, socialised loss: “Too big to fail”.... Hmph.

Better. The positive development in Asia and Europe will help North America.

@the100thmonkey, the stimulus package (ARRA) didn’t have anything to do with the “too big to fail” idea. You’re referring to TARP.

Well I’m still in work, luckily!! I’ve never had a pay rise for three years now …. My utility bills are going up year after year. Fuel, e.g. diesel & petrol are climbing up too.. My Council Tax keeps going up etc, etc…… so I’m worse off than I was three years ago but still working and earning a crust :-/
Whoopee……
So, better for some but not for me!! :-/

Things are actually better for me day to day compared to a few years ago. Our income is the same, gas is cheaper and food is cheaper. My property tax went up, because it was scheduled to be reevaluated and it had been very low to the value of my house, so I do not include that because the millage did not change.

I have lost almost $100k on the value of my house, which really sucks, but I am only talking about paying my bills right now, the month to month. Pretty much I think if someone still has their same job and income things aren’t bad. If you are wealthy it is a time to snatch up cheap property. I keep toying with the idea of buying an investment property in FL again, not that I am wealthy, not close, but I could afford a condo if I wanted to.

@JLeslie

I was thinking along the lines of a property investment myself , Ditto……. :-/

Business is down a little from last year and it was down a little last year from the year before. I live in a remote suburb so gas prices affect the cost of living to a greater extent than communities closer in. That also affects housing prices more than other areas. We’ve lost about 50% of our home value since 2005 (the peak).

When the recession really hit in 2008, we were being told our financial markets were in meltdown. That this was the worse recession since the Great Depression. That mantra was repeated over and over. It really doesn’t matter if it was true, business had to shed jobs to stay afloat. And they shed a lot of them. Businesses deferred spending as did the population in general. Our saving rate increased as the population stuck money away for a rainy day (it appeared to be storming). This of course also slowed the economy even more (it’s the major reason the tax cuts had little or no effect).

Things appear to have stabilized at a new lower level. Inventories have been reduced and production is keeping up with demand. Since then we have been working down our inventories. The reduction in inventories is one of the reasons profits appear to be higher than you would expect.

Currently production is keeping pace with demand but demand is at a lower level than it was two years ago. Business is not going to start hiring until they see an increase in demand and some reason to believe that the demand is more than a temporary glitch. Adding employees is an expensive process and is only done with a long term requirement. For a temporary increase it is much cheaper to it with overtime or a temporary employee.

So, it would seem we’ve stabilized at a lower level than we were. The job growth we seen has been less than our population growth so we aren’t making any real progress. For those that are thinking of investing in real estate, I would offer a warning. If the home interest deduction is eliminated, as has been discussed, housing will go through another bust. I doubt that will happen but it is scary.

Worse.

The U.S.A. economy should start to get better now that we have grid-lock in Congress. I’ve heard that a do-nothing Congress is what what Wall Street investers like as it indicates stability.

@gondwanalon, is that true with 10% unemployment and low demand?

I’d really like people to support this notion that all the economy needs to get better is simply the psychological stability of wealthy businessmen and bankers (which, funnily enough, you can apparently get by electing Republicans…)

@Qingu I support that notion as do 2 Trillion dollars worth of money sitting on the sidelines just waiting for the right leadership to take over this out of control train ride we have been on.

@Qingu Oh those eeevil rich republicans! Well someone has to be the bad guy that stops the spending madness in congress. Our country is broke people! We can’t afford Obama-care and more government bailouts. What’s the best thing to do to fix this monster of an economic mess? It is perhaps beyond fixing now and that is a sad thought. Good health!

Sooo funny! we can’t afford the bailouts, the stimulus failed, Obamacare will bankrupt us, we are taxed enough and other urban legends are brought to you by the peopple who are about to give you the ultimate destruction of the middle class. Your country is broke maybe @gondwanalon My country just had one of the most productive legislative session in our countries history. My government was able over the last two years to stop a major depression.

From reorganizing and bailing out the auto industry, which saved millions of jobs. To bailing out AIG, which saved our entire financial system, To providing women with equal pay for equal work(the lilly leadbettor act), to consumer protection from credit card abuse, to school loan reform, to financial regulation, universal healthcare, first time homebuyers tax credit, energy tax credit, small business tax breaks, middle class tax breaks, cash for clunkers, this administration has shown that time and again when trying to fix this country, they have chosen to focus on the people.

If we compare that to the decisions of the last administration, I would say that Nancy Pelosi was the most successful Speaker of the House in history. The scare tactics of the right do nothing more than continue the suffering of the people. Our economy is part psycological and the right should be proud of the mass hysteria it has fomented at the expense of the ever increasing working poor.

But listen don’t let facts get in the way of this wonderful conversation.

@gondwanalon, why is “stopping spending” a good idea? That’s not even a specific idea, it’s a vague proclamation. Which spending would you like to stop? And why would the particular lack of spending be a good idea?

Also, when you say “we can’t afford Obama-care and more government bailouts,” you are demonstrating a basic ignorance of the policies in question. The health care bill decreases the deficit and TARP (which was put into place by Bush, by the way) was a loan that has since been repaid.

You seem to feel very strongly about the spending issue without being remotely informed about it. Maybe you should educate yourself before taking such a strong stand?

@thekoukoureport IMO you do need to amend your statement to read…
“My country just had one of the most productive legislative AND expensive sessions in our countries history.

@Cruiser, eh. Stimulus bill wasn’t as expensive as Bush’s adventures with Medicare D, Iraq, and tax cuts for billionaires. I’m pretty sure Reagan increased the deficit almost as much, too (in a non-recession). And then there was the Great Depression and World War 2.

@Qingu You are right that I’m no expert on the federal government spending. But I wrote above that it would be a good idea the Congress “stops the spending madness”. I don’t purchase things that I can’t afford so it seems reasonable to expect that that the U.S. Congress do the same. Not so much me for me. I’m old and will not likely be around too much longer. It is the future of the citizens of the U.S.A. that concerns me most.

I’m glad that you are such an educated expert on the federal spending. Of course you must me right.

@thekoukoureport HA! You are so funny! Bless your heart and good luck to you!

@gondwanalon, so you disagree with Nobel prize-winning macroeconomist Paul Krugman that government spending during a recession is necessary to fill slack demand and decrease unemployment?

I can understand the appeal of the analogy here; the US government should tighten its belt because individual Americans have to tighten their belts. But governments are fundamentally different economic entities than individuals. In a recession, I think it’s pretty clear that deficit spending—such as in the stimulus bill (note that TARP is not “spending”)—is a necessary evil to prevent an even greater evil, massive unemployment.

I haven’t really seen any good counterargument or counterevidence to this. Fiscal conservatives assert that large deficits scare investors and the bond market and create inflation… this hasn’t remotely happened.

@Qingu There has been much more going on in the past 2 years than just a stimulus bill….those pesky two wars you refer to he promised to end, a severely bloated health care bill, and middle class tax cuts dwarf any spending efforts in the history of our country. Yep Obama has proven he can spend our money in style…quite lavishly at that. Wait till we get the real tab for this party of his.

@Cruiser The stimulus Bill will not be fully spent until 2018, thats when the last of the tax cuts associated with it will end (tax cuts comprised some 250 billion of the total). The war in Iraq, while not over, has seen its troop totals drop from around 150k to 50k, and in far less dangerous positions. The increase in Afghanistan by the US has only been around 30k. So granted the wars are still going on, but they have set end dates and our involvement has been lowered significantly.

The middle class tax cuts you refer to were part of the stimulus.

The Auto Bailout has been largely paid back, and will likely be entirely paid back and then some when GM makes its shares public in the coming months. Again, the US will likely see a PROFIT from the auto bailout, just as it is going to with TARP.

The healthcare bill, as stated before, will actually cut the annual deficit by about 100 billion dollars. This is because the system we have in place says that the Federal government will pay the bill of anyone who goes to the ER and doesn’t have insurance (so as to keep hospitals solvent and unable to turn away people in need). That is rather expensive when you take into account that almost 1/6 of our population has no insurance at all (let alone not enough insurance). By covering much more of our population, the Fed has to pay less.

and @Qingu Including accrued interest, president Reagan is responsible for about 7 trillion dollars of our total debt (which is almost 14 trillion today). To put that into prospective, thats more than Bush, Obama, and Clinton combined at the moment. There are two principle reasons for this massive increase under Reagan. The first is that he cut the highest tax bracket from around 70% to around 30%, and failed to cut things on the spending end. The second is that he upped our military spending significantly to go “tit-for-tat” with the USSR (though I’m less opposed to this one given the times).

@Cruiser, I’m not sure how on earth you can blame Obama for the two wars, one of which he has effectively ended, the other of which I think he’s handled incredibly responsibly.

The health care bill is not “bloated” in the sense of cost. It decreases the deficit.

The middle class tax cuts were part of the stimulus bill.

Also what @tedd said. :)

@Qingu I don’t see where you think I blamed Big O for the wars….I just clearly remember he got elected because the Sheeple believed him at his word that he would stop all the fighting over there, empty Guantanamo and all the money that would save us tax payers yada yada yada…

Sheeple sounds like a Tea Party, with the mindless voting in just republicans. How does John McCain, David Vitter,and recycled names like Pat Toomey get elected when they are responsible for the current crises. Why not just come out with the truth? That republicans will say anything to win power, they just won’t govern when they get it.

Blaming democrats for massive spending without recognizing the destruction that was staved because of it is just mind boggling.

I have a theory that nobody actually gives a shit about “spending” (including Democrats who harped on it during the Bush years). Both parties have spent a lot and created deficits (moreso the Republicans). It’s just something people are told by media personalities to care about as a talking point.

What Republicans are really upset about is government spending that benefits poor people, because their religion tells them to have faith in the markets.

As 15 million unemployed Americans grow poorer
As 50 million uninsured Americans grow poorer
As the markets crashed
As the housing bubble burst
As the entire financial sysytem was on the brink of destruction.
As the Secretary of Treasury pleaded on bended knee
As one presidential candidate (actually not born in this country) said “the fundamentals of the economy is strong”.
As companies and banks were failing daily
As short term corporate loans began to disappear
As the automotive industry began to fail
As states teetered on the brink of bankruptcy
As the worlds largest insurer began to cause a worldwide financial meltdown.

One party said NO! and one party actually gave a shit about the people and this country.
Thank you democrats for two great years.

@Qingu Oh please! Paul Krugman? He’s about as liberal as you can get! I remember an column that he wrote in the news paper about dividends claiming it was OK to double tax them as only the rich get them. Well I must be rich. HA! I’m a medical lab tech, my wife is a dietician and we raked in $34K in dividends last year. I sent Mr Krugman an e-mail but he didn’t respond. As far as his Nobel Prize, Obama got one for doing nothing more than being a liberal. I would love to hear a debate between Paul Krugman and Peter Schiff. You must admit that that would be something to see. They are 180% apart.

@Cruiser Well if people thought he was going to end the wars they’re idiots, because he actively campaigned on ramping up the Afghanistan war whilst simultaneously “responsibly removing” troops from Iraq.

Now Guantanamo you have a point. But to be fair the Republicans aren’t making it easy, refusing to allow the inmates to be moved to federal prisons.

Sorry @tedd you are not allowed to be fair, we only get to speak in absolutes. If you keep pointing out the hypocrisies they will just tune you out and go listen to hannitybecklimbaugh. It has almost turned into a religion, With the same chants being spouted by the entire congregation.

@tedd I agree as he clearly campaigned on that exact promise. Right before his inauguration Obama stated clearly how he needed the “assets” in Iraq to be diverted to Afghanistan where he felt a greater need to focus on the al Qaeda and the Taliban over there.

I see it as getting worse.
There seems to be more homeless people around.
That might be indication that more people are out of work than a year ago.

as long as we have 12.5 trillion dollars floating around prices will be high, and as long as we are payed low wages prices will be high, and as long as republicans want to print more money and give it to big business prices will be high and as long as we keep invading countries for oil prices will be high. did i miss anything?

@dealrrr You forgot to mention that ALL our economic problems are all due to George W Bush. Also that our Congress which was under Democrat control since 2006 had NOTHING to do with this mess. And Barney Frank (Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee since 2007) had did a GOOD job in managing Fannie and Freddie. Finally: Democrats are good, Republicans are bad.

There is more I know like Clinton’s NAFTA. That is a good one. HA! Afta the Nafta the shafta!