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US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

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Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#481

Post by s1artibartfast »

vharuck wrote: post #467
s1artibartfast wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fundamentally don't understand how low unemployment is a counterclaim against economic recession. This is like saying sure you can't buy as much bread, but at least you are working longer. The fact that more people are working to produce less than before describes an economy in decline. What am I missing here?

Low unemployment means there are plenty of jobs available. Those jobs are available because employers believe they can increase revenue by shelling out more money on headcount. So those employers believe there's still money to be made in the market.

That's an interesting take I'll have to give some more thought to. I don't think that it's clear that employers think the economy will grow in a way that yields more abundant and cheaper Goods. Maybe I'm Wrong and we'll see in GDP outpacing inflation from all of the new jobs. Maybe they just haven't had a chance to materialize in real GDP growth

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#482

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #473
rayiner wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conservatives started going crazy long before that. Keep in mind that there was no "The Resistance" before Trump was elected, and Trump being elected is absolutely mind bogglingly crazy. When exactly was that? Republicans ran "Mittens" Romney in 2012 (and John McCain in 2008). Two men whose adherence to institutional norms is irreproachable. Yet, as Vice President, Joe Biden said that Romney would put Black people…

This argument is all over the place. The history of allegations of vote rigging goes back to the 19th century; there were loud, public allegations regarding at least Kennedy, Clinton, Bush, and Obama before Trump. What was notable, of course, about Trump's rigging claims is that they were accompanied by an actual effort to overturn the election, something that has no precedent. That wasn't the "elites"; that was an o…

> The history of allegations of vote rigging goes back to the 19th century; there were loud, public allegations regarding at least Kennedy, Clinton, Bush, and Obama before Trump.

When Terry McAuliffe became chairman of the DNC, he said that "Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Jim Baker, and the Supreme Court ... tampered with the results" of the 2000 election. At the 2004 DNC Convention, he said that Republicans "stole" the 2000 election: https://twitter.com/TeamYoungkin/status/1442488094301822980.

Comparably prominent figures on the Republican side were not saying similar things about Clinton or Obama. Unlike Hilary Clinton said about Trump, McCain and Romney never said Obama was an "illegitimate" President.

> What was notable, of course, about Trump's rigging claims is that they were accompanied by an actual effort to overturn the election, something that has no precedent. That wasn't the "elites"; that was an outsider effort.

Sure. Trump is worse than anything Democrats did from 2000-2018. Certainly individually, possibly in the aggregate.

> Election denialism clearly isn't a reaction to a rejection of institutional norms by elites, unless we're talking about elites during the time of Tilden.

Trump's ability to deny the legitimacy of the election and maintain the support of the same voters who nominated Mittens is absolutely a reaction to elites rejecting institutional norms. For two decades, CNN sanctioned Democrats' election lies instead of condemning them.

Then came 2016, when Democrat-voting federal employees declared war on Trump--the duly elected President--through the "Resistance." If you wanted to convince the American public that the "deep state" exists and that the rules have already been thrown out the window--to make it trivial to draw comparisons between DC and the Capitol from "The Hunger Games"--you could not have picked a better way to do it.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#483

Post by maxerickson »

whatshisface wrote: post #442
InefficientRed wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fit 3 generations in a single family home in an American suburb of a mid-sized city, and half the world's population would either (a) consider that a QoL improvement or at least (b) put up with it for a while to remit back home. For all the doom and gloom in the USA, it's still an incredibly rich country. To be clear: I'm not making a moral statement here. This is a statement of fact, not a statement of ethic…

Can three people working at McDonalds own a single family home in an American suburb?

Houses in towns big enough for a McDonald's are $100,000.

Not suburbs, just towns, but there will be services and a hospital and so on.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#484

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #482
tptacek wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is all over the place. The history of allegations of vote rigging goes back to the 19th century; there were loud, public allegations regarding at least Kennedy, Clinton, Bush, and Obama before Trump. What was notable, of course, about Trump's rigging claims is that they were accompanied by an actual effort to overturn the election, something that has no precedent. That wasn't the "elites"; that was an o…

> The history of allegations of vote rigging goes back to the 19th century; there were loud, public allegations regarding at least Kennedy, Clinton, Bush, and Obama before Trump. When Terry McAuliffe became chairman of the DNC, he said that "Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Jim Baker, and the Supreme Court ... tampered with the results" of the 2000 election. At the 2004 DNC Convention, he said that Republicans "stole" the…

If the best argument you have is that Terry McAuliffe, someone not one Democrat in 10 has even heard of, occupying a role not one Democrat in 10 could coherently describe, claimed that the historically complicated and tendentious 2000 election was stolen, I feel I've made my case well.

Again: that case is that there is nothing new about claims that elections were stolen, but that there is clearly something new about a President literally attempting (in more than one way) to rig an election after losing.

As it happens, I agree with you (or at least, the professors who taught you this at Northwestern) about the 2000 election --- that is, that it was correctly decided. But not only did Terry McAuliffe believe 2000 was wrongly decided, so did almost half the Supreme Court. And despite all that, there was a peaceful transfer of power, and not a whisper from the Democratic party that any of the institutions of government be bent or subverted to "correct" the result.

You haven't provided any evidence to connect obstinate federal employees to Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and so I don't think I need to address that point. I don't agree with you about those obstinate employees (obstinate employees brought Nixon down, after all), but that doesn't matter.

The idea that the Democrats are somehow responsible for Trump's effort to literally rig the 2020 election is a strange hill to die on. I don't think many reasonable people would be sympathetic to the argument.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#485

Post by InefficientRed »

whatshisface wrote: post #454
InefficientRed wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone working low-paid hourly wage work can probably make $20K. A few siblings + their parents = 5 people = $100K. Stagger availability schedules so there's always someone home with the kids, and share vehicles. Suburb of top-tier cities? No. Cheapest suburb of a midwestern city? Absolutely. Again, not saying it's reasonable. Just that it's possible.

So you argument essentially is that economic conditions dictate that within a few decade, there will be no restaurants in major cities.

> economic conditions dictate that within a few decade, there will be no restaurants in major cities.

No. Restaurants will continue to exist. Sit down in particular. In cases where you are paying for an experience; the economics will get worse, but they will continue to exist.

Fast food restaurants will even continue to exist. But the latter only with substantial automation. This has already happened at the front of the house -- kiosks and apps are the "happy path" ordering interfaces at every McD's in a major city. I'm merely projecting that the most cost-sensitive segment of the food services industry will push that automation into the kitchen, the checkout line, and a lot of the administrative work that happens at branches.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#486

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #338
phpisthebest wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not mixed signals, the data we use for signaling is flawed for the modern area Take for example the U-3 unemployment number that you cite, what is missing from that is Workforce Participation, we have a pretty large drop-off in Work force participation which is leading to the false belief that employment is "fine", and the quote "mix signal" of being in a recession while still having lower unemployment. Comp…

> Take for example the U-3 unemployment number that you cite, what is missing from that is Workforce Participation, we have a pretty large drop-off in Work force participation which is leading to the false belief that employment is "fine", and the quote "mix signal" of being in a recession while still having lower unemployment. Everyone is still very desparate for employees, so I don't think Workforce Participation i…

A decent measure is the number of unique individuals with a negative background check showing: violent, financial, or drug charges. The best metric I know of that approximates this is linked below; and it’s woefully undercounting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in...

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#487

Post by InefficientRed »

RspecMAuthortah wrote: post #404
p_j_w wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is part of the problem that the parent comment is referring to - putting all conservatives under the same umbrella. Tea party is different from most Trump voting working class. Conservatism in recent era has taken a very distinct shape and failure to understand this by elites have led to this very phenomenon the comment you replied to is referring to. How do you explain a non-negligible part of middle of America…

> How do you explain a non-negligible part of middle of America who voted for Obama voting for Trump?

The labor movement always had a socially reactionary underbelly. My hypothesis: it wasn't bad economic times that activated Obama-Trump voters. It was, rather, good economic times that triggered those voters to flip from labor-first to identity-first. The tension was always there. This is why the Tea Party fizzled and why Romney couldn't activate the switch -- reactionary blue collar folks knew intuitively that those movements weren't "on their side". But by 2016 a bombastic billionaire (also obviously not on their side) could be excused because the economy was good enough to at last put identity first.

I grew up in a suburb that flipped and my wife is from a mid-sized non-metro city that also flipped. Obama Trump voters are substantially all of our social circle.

A lot happened, but honestly, "youtube's algorithm and super effective conservative media" is probably the best explanation in over 1/2 of the roughly 3 dozen anecdotal cases. It's just pure identity.

Some blame Obama for outsourcing and the GFC, but that's mostly noise. First of all, the major factory that closed wasn't outsourced. It closed because the company was wildly mismanaged, and was not replaced with a foreign factory. Also, this happened five years before the GFC and Obama's election. Most of the folks in our circles remained employed throughout that GFC and all of them did very well from 2010 on-wards.

They're currently all doing very well financially; far better than the late 20s/early 30s city dwellers whose conversations I overhear in the coffee shop. Red America can afford single family homes with big yards, saves for retirement, and just generally lives a very comfortable life unimaginable in blue cities. With jobs in law enforcement, trucking, and in hospitals which don't require even an associate's degree. It's really the American dream -- graduate from high school, six weeks of training, and you're making enough to afford a house and kids and retirement within a couple years.

The resentment and utter hatred of liberals is visceral and real. Pretending it's economic is bullshit cover. Tell someone sharing a bedroom in NYC that their counterpart with less education, who works fewer hours, and lives in a SFH with a pool hates them because of the unfair economic spoils of the former.

Also, the economy was doing extremely well in 2016. Economics is now top-of-mind, but it didn't even come close to motivating them to vote for Trump in 2016. That was pure identity politics.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#488

Post by 8note »

smsm42 wrote: post #427
partiallypro wrote: post #237

I personally think we're in recession and the reason is datapoints outside of this GDP print, what companies are saying, and the fact I know people that have been laid off already. What I find pathetic is that saying we are in a recession is now a political stance. I think we all know that if a Republican were President the entire narrative would shift, with most of the press saying we're in recession while Fox, etc…

That's why it is important to have some verifiable agreed upon definitions. "Two quarters of negative growth" is something that anybody can understand and validate. Too simplistic? OK, make it more complex formula, whatever - but make it a formula, and make it fixed, so people can be sure neither Rs nor Ds can game it (at least not easily). Instead what we're getting is "holistic criteria" which means pundits can arg…

I'm not clear that "in a recession" is a particularly useful state to anyone.

Even with a complex formula, you're still dropping the useful details.

Even with a predictable complicated formula, you still have the question to debate: "does it matter?"

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#489

Post by 8note »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #362
partiallypro wrote: post #237

I personally think we're in recession and the reason is datapoints outside of this GDP print, what companies are saying, and the fact I know people that have been laid off already. What I find pathetic is that saying we are in a recession is now a political stance. I think we all know that if a Republican were President the entire narrative would shift, with most of the press saying we're in recession while Fox, etc…

I fundamentally don't understand how low unemployment is a counterclaim against economic recession. This is like saying sure you can't buy as much bread, but at least you are working longer. The fact that more people are working to produce less than before describes an economy in decline. What am I missing here?

GDP is an averaging function, that doesn't show the underlying distribution.

Poor people can be doing better while rich people are doing worse. Since economic activity is mostly about how the ultrawealthy are doing, there's always a recession when they're doing badly

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#490

Post by rayiner »

tptacek wrote: post #478
rayiner wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What distinguishes Americans, in my mind, is that they're rule followers. As long as the rules are followed, they will accept decisions that they disagree with, or even think are quite unjust. Folks on the subcontinent typically think in terms of right and wrong, or even lower than that, in terms of tribalism such as Hindus versus Muslims. I see Americans devolving into both those lesser forms of politics.

It's understandable that someone would reach that conclusion if all they observed was the J6 committee hearing videos. But on a day-to-day basis, people are behaving essentially the way they always have. People still call in zoning violations expecting issues to get resolved, and they still jaywalk. Nobody's asking for a bribe to install the cable.

We’re not there yet, but we are well on the way to becoming a third world country politically. Trump is a politician fit for a third world country. But we also had members of Congress recently abandon their institutional roles and get themselves arrested at protests. I think even Sanders had more dignity than that.
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