Trump is saying that consumers are rich and spending lots of money. Are you seeing this also?

No, I’m not seeing a lot of economic activity other than normal day-to-day necessities. DJT is lying, of course.

He only considers the extraordinarily wealthy to be worthy of note, and they may be buying stuff.

Seems like everyone and their kids all have the latest gadgets. Where I live people spend a lot and appear to be very well off on the surface but that’s not telling the whole story. “Things” are cheap necessities are not such as healthcare, transportation groceries and housing.

The people around HIM are rich and spending lots of money. Trump’s vulgarity confuses lots of ordinary people into the peculiar belief that he has some affinity with the common man. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Some are, some aren’t. I imagine he talks to billionaires and not to minimum wage employees.

Saying “everyone is rich and spending money” is one of those glittering generalities that is, on the face of it, bullshit. It’s so general it can’t be defined.

He’s never been to my neck of the woods. He doesn’t talk to poor folks. So, how would he know?

Nothing he says has to be true, he only speaks to get people to vote for him, anything he thinks they want to hear. It doesn’t need to be based on facts or evidence.

It can be seen here if the pan handlers and the homeless can be overlooked…

He is putting the local farmers out of business, I have several friends here in North Carolina that are considering selling the farm.
The tariffs are causing a loss of revenue they had Chinese customers; soybean, tobacco and cotton.
He is not in touch with reality.
He also is trying to put a “spin” on his bad job of running the country.

I would say its fairly normal spending here. Not noticing extra from a tax cut though.

Nope. Despite full employment, people around me are not spending on big ticket items.

Some are some aren’t. I live in a bubble where most people are 55 or older, many are retired, so they have savings from saving over many years, and many people have pensions and/or are getting their social security.

I don’t know if most of the people I interact with are rich (how are we defining rich?) but they live a comfortable life and they spend money on travel, eating out, entertainment, and grandchildren. Most people here aren’t spending on very expensive clothes or very expensive meals though. If they are rich they are mostly the millionaire next door types, you wouldn’t realize they were rich unless you started really talking to them about money and expenditures. It wouldn’t be immediately obvious. They don’t constantly shop. Most have inexpensive to moderate cars, and many people own their cars for years. Some couples only have one car and a golf cart to get around. Around 50% own their home outright.

There are people where I live who watch every penny and live on a tight SS income.

I was just talking to a friend of mine who has always been careful with money who in the last couple years is now $20k in credit card debt. She isn’t buying anything. She’s horrified that she has gone through a really difficult financial time recently.

I think some people are doing really well and a lot of people are struggling.

I wonder if consumers are in more debt? Spending isn’t a good barometer if they are in huge debt.

You might notice the trend among the anti-Trumpers is to claim a great recession is coming.

The Russia hoax turned up empty but we are awaiting the Durham and Horowitz reports which might show the origins of it.

When the Russia hoax began to falter, we heard dozens of alternate conspiracies such as Stormy Daniels,” manufactured crisis”, Avanotti, and others which have fallen by the wayside.

Now we hear that there is a nationwide conspiracy of white nationalists wrecking havok on the nation, concentration camps at the border, that Trump has spoken of exterminating Hispanics, etc etc.

The latest is that, during the healthiest economy in decades, we are headed for a recession. Bill Maher of CNN actually hopes for an economic catastrophe if it means the end of Trump. After seeing how far the Feds will go in engineering the Russia conspiracy, I do not doubt that they will try to engineer a recession.

Anyhow, its only the latest.

@Yellowdog it isn’t “ anti-Trumpers” concerned about a recession. It is the market place. The yield curve inverted for the first time in 11 years last week. That is a leading indicator and reflective of the bond market and drives the stock market. That is Wall Street, not the anti Trumpers.

If everyone around me is a indicator they are spending more, but it is on credit since they are fairly confident they will be employed in a year. It isn’t from a increase in wages. Some of those people will be the first to lose their jobs when things start to go downhill and then they start missing credit card payments and things snowball.

Trump’s understanding of economics is not too good. He keeps saying that the Chinese are paying the tariffs. This is obviously false. The tariffs are being paid for either by importers, if they absorb the taxes, or by consumers if the tariffs are passed on to them.

@Yellowdog A lot of people are afraid of a recession, because the market has been going up for a while. There is always some sort of a correction—always. It’s just a matter of when and how big.

Obama has bigger percentage increases than Trump. It just depends how you look at the numbers, and which numbers. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2019/06/12/can-trump-beat-obamas-stock-market-returns/amp/

Back in the late 90’s people were making fortunes in telecom and dotcom stock, and eventually that went kapluee. The “little people” weren’t as aware of the stock downturn, because not everyone was obsessed with watching politics all day yet, and a lot of lower income people don’t own stock. Although, if they were laid off at that time they felt it. Some parts of the country felt it more than others like always.

Now, people who barely own any stock talk about how great the stock market is, like it’s helping them directly. They see the numbers reported and don’t own any stock. They barely have a savings account.

Markets run a lot on confidence, and almost for sure the market will go down in October like almost every year, it’s a pattern, but it can be especially wobbly right before an election. I think most people expect this election to hurt the stock market. I’m just talking about the months leading up to the election.

I have no idea how much stock you own, or if you have owned stock the last 30 years, so I don’t know how much you have felt the ups and downs of the market.

The market partly runs on confidence. If a lot of people start to pull out and cash out it can trigger a down slide. There are people cashing out around me, but not most people. Not yet.

I hear people around me talking who think nothing can go wrong with their investments while Trump is in office. They feel rich, some are rich. Feeling you can’t lose is the crazy talk of a gambler. I’ve seen it over and over again with housing and the stock market.

Right now, it looks like when there is a big slide downwards on a day, investors are coming in quickly to buy at a lower price, which creates a rally back up. If investors stop doing that, because they get nervous too, then we will have a problem.

I just googled. Here is an article on debt. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/771B18E2-92A9-11E9-9D89-429213C87F49

It’s at an all time high, but part of it is student loan debt, which I guess counts, but I personally think of it differently than other debts. Even if you take out student loan debt the indicators aren’t good.

The burgeoning debt is just one more indicator on the accelerating decline of the middle class. The interest on all that debt is as clear a statement on the transfer of wealth that we can experience. That debt is how we disguise our slide toward perdition.

Nothing has changed from this end.

Just remember that to him the average consumer is a millionaire and definitely not what we consider an aveerage consumer.

Actually, most of the economic growth has been blue collar workers blacks, and Hispanics.

To claim Trump’s views on economics as simplistic (as with his views on anything else) is always a case of gross understatement. Regardless of the topic, problem or proposition, the decision from the stable genius will be dependably petty, shallow and always vindictive. Our odds of competent governance would be better served if decisions on that governance were generated by a magic eight ball or a ouija board with a built in mean streak.

During one of trump’s business bankruptcies back in the 80’s the Board of Directors were going to put him on a budget as to what he was allowed to draw for his efforts. They named an amount that I don’t remember and he whined that he couldn’t live on less than $½ million a day. How would he know what the average American can live on

It’s the stable genius giant assed brain. He knows everything.