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Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

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Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#931

Post by tomrod »

_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

Yeah, stop excluding food, housing, and energy from the CPI basket, they are the largest items people purchase!

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#932

Post by danans »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #904
_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

> The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perception matters, because selective numbers don’t tell the whole story. Well saying "the economy is good" or "the economy is bad" out of context is simply moronic. Good for whom? Bad for whom? It's no secret our entire society is stacked to favor investors and owners rather than workers. The market certainly trea…

> And you'd have to be blind to not notice a minimum wage job is no longer sufficient to afford rent in most major metro areas.

Either blind, or detached enough that you think that it's a good thing, as long as the value of your home also goes up and you have access to relatively cheap service labor.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#933

Post by jimkleiber »

_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

Or they go to the doctor thinking they have a heart attack and it's really a panic attack and despite all the tests for physical ailments, it is an emotional one.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#934

Post by steveBK123 »

US economy is soaring because the old guard (Europe) passed peak and all the new guard (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, BRICS) didn't quite live up to the hype once they reached near wealth parity.

Where would you rather invest today - US or a demographically stagnant, highly regulated Europe? US or rapidly shrinking countries with risk-averse cultures like Japan and Korea? How about China where they might expropriate you / throw you in jail? Or Taiwan which is under the cloud of Chinese invasion?

Etc.

Cleanest dirty shirt and all that.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#935

Post by crazygringo »

massysett wrote: post #787
crazygringo wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really matter if all you're doing is measuring the relative change in GDP though, and the amount of activity that doesn't register on GDP isn't increasing. In other words, if you assume non-GDP activity is constant, then GDP does genuinely and accurately reflect economic growth. Indeed, this is one reason why economists recommend GDP as a useful measure of growth in a country year-over-year, but not for…

> Now, if you think that a massive social transformation is underway of non-GDP-registering activities to GDP-registering activities -- e.g. people used to care for their grandmas, now all those people have gotten jobs to pay for care assistants to do it instead -- then yes GDP will show "false growth" in productivity. But that really doesn't seem to be a major factor. But isn't that the issue? Before: one working-ag…

Sure, if you're measuring since 1850 or 1900.

But has this changed massively over the past 30 or 40 years? Not really.

Frozen dinners have been around since longer than most of us have been alive. Working couples in the 1980's were figuring out what they'd do with grandma. Nursing homes have been around for a looong time. Mail-order delivery of boxes has been a thing since the end of the 1800's -- there were Sears warehouses long before Amazon warehouses.

That's all I'm saying. However, employees genuinely are much more productive than they were in the 1980's, thanks to e-mail and cell phones and the Internet and collaborative online document editing and so much more. You can get things done in an hour that used to take you 2 weeks of back-and-forth.

The productivity growth is real. It's not an illusion based on what GDP doesn't capture.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#936

Post by TulliusCicero »

commandlinefan wrote: post #877
matthewdgreen wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the economy is good. But according to polling, many folks who said the economy was "poor" before the November election now believe it's doing great. All in a very partisan fashion, of course: https://jabberwocking.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/blog_mi...

Not to put words in your mouth, but this comment seems to imply that politicians successfully painted a negative picture of the economy that didn't reflect reality and used that to win the last election. While I wouldn't put that past them, why was it successful this time and not every time? Nobody even tried to pretend the economy was bad when Clinton, Bush or Obama were up for re-election, because it obviously wasn…

When high gas prices are over, they go back down to being relatively low.

When high inflation is over, prices don't go back down, they just increase at a more reasonable rate going forward. But they'll still feel high for at least a few years as people mentally adjust.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#937

Post by gnopgnip »

harimau777 wrote: post #890
ithkuil wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perception can be manipulated in many ways. People get used to things and give for granted things that used to be luxuries a few generations back (see "hedonic treadmill") Combine that with active participants who control the media landscape and have a vested interest in painting a bleak picture so they can be the ones fixing it. And then of course there is the fact that things are of course objectively hard for many…

It feels like the opposite is true. Things that used to be fairly common like owning a home or living in a major city have now become luxuries.

In New York City the homeownership rate has been about the same over the last 25 years, about 32%, about about 1% from pre pandemic. Looking at the national average it is about the same 65.5%, up about 1% from 5 years ago, with small changes over the last 50 years. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#938

Post by TulliusCicero »

dannyobrien wrote: post #908

Just to throw in another opinion, one that I think will be guaranteed to annoy the majority of commenters so far: This piece argues that the US isn't doing that well economically in absolute or historical terms, but only looks like that way because the popular point of comparison, Europe, is doing even worse: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/12/04/us-economy...

But Japan is also doing not great, right?

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#939

Post by TulliusCicero »

lenerdenator wrote: post #808

The American stock market is soaring ahead of its rivals. Stock markets are just an indicator of how surplus value is distributed to shareholders, not a picture of actual economic health.

GDP (per capita) is not the same thing as the stock market, even if they're often roughly correlated.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#940

Post by eitally »

adamc wrote: post #878
Havoc wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s also not a US phenomenon. Hearing the exact same in UK too. The stats say things are ok but people standing at grocery checkout disagree Strong divergence of 1% and rest

As someone doing OK economically, when I go to the grocery I see the same thing they do: Prices are going up on key items much faster than income is rising. I didn't vote based on that, but that doesn't mean they are wrong that it's a problem. It's easy to imagine that if you were barely making it, things are worse now. Rising income isn't a phenomenon that hits everyone equally.

Indeed. The problem is that for most people income doesn't really go up unless they change jobs. Or, at least it goes up so slowly (0-3%/yr) as to be undetectable compared to, for example, the price of a loaf of bread going from $4.99 (2020) to $5.99 (2023) to $6.99 (July 2024) to $7.99 (December, 2024).

I think the "vibecession" concept makes sense when considering CPI of consumables since individuals are far more attuned to price changes than they are for durable goods.

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