Where’s the Recovery?

[marmar]

from truthdig:



Where’s the Recovery?

Posted on May 17, 2010
By Bill Boyarsky


As President Barack Obama, speaking last week in Buffalo, N.Y., was assuring the country that “our economy is growing again,” the usual large number of unemployed lined up at a community aid center in Los Angeles for food, clothing, advice and help finding a job. “For us, it is getting worse,” said Jan Maseda, who runs the center, one of several founded by Lutheran churches. Her clientele has doubled to 300 a day in the past year and a half of the recession.

The confident-looking, eloquent Obama, who spoke Thursday, stood in sharp contrast to the chronically unemployed at the community care center in a struggling section of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. Most of them had been out of work for months or years. “We are exploding,” said Maseda. “We’re now seeing white-collar families, people living in their cars.”

I visited the LSS (Lutheran Social Services) Community Center to learn more about the long-term unemployed after reading a report—“No End in Sight: The Agony of Prolonged Unemployment”—just released by the John S. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development of Rutgers University.

The report said, “Despite positive signs of economic growth and a rising stock market, millions of unemployed Americans see no end to the Great Recession that wrecked their finances and threw their lives into turmoil … the vast majority of jobless Americans have not found new jobs. When they did find work, all but a few took pay cuts and lost benefits. Among those still searching for work— many for more than a year—are millions who have never been without a job and who have at least a college education.”

Debbie Borie-Holtz, Carl Van Horn and Cliff Zukin surveyed 1,202 men and women who were unemployed in August 2009, and the three researchers were able to reconnect with 908 of these people in March 2010. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/wheres_the_recovery_20100517/

[dmallind]

1. Well .....

Here...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/may/15/new-solar/


and here...

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/feb/06/500-jobs-added-near-volkswagen-plant/


and here...

http://bizblog.projo.com/2010/01/electric-boat-t.html


and here...

http://larson.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1062&Itemid=84


Four anecdotes of how horrible things are. Four cites for the creation of hundreds of new jobs in each case. Why is one set more meaningful about whether a recovery is in effect or not?

Of course in reality neither are meaningful to taht question, which can only be answered by aggregate data not individual stories of doom or celebration.

But why do I get the feeling it's seen as meaningful to post doom anecdotes while individual stories of job gains will be scoffed at? Oh yeah. Confirmation bias.

[Donnachaidh]

4. hundreds of jobs for MILLIONS of unemployed -- some recovery

But hey -- it makes GREAT PR :eyes:

[dmallind]

5. Oh great now we can talk statistics instead of anecdotes right?

Well recoveries always start from the lowest point right? And economic recoveries are never instantaneous, right?

So any improvement then is properly considered and ongoing recovery, right?

GDP? Improving

Job creation? Improving

Manufacturing orders? Improving

Consumer confidence and spending? Improving.


So - not getting worse and not staying the same = recovery.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[dmallind]

7. I need to provide links for things discussed ad nauseam with known provenance?

You missed the 290K jobs report? You need a link to find the BLS? The ISM surveys? Consumer spending? GDP? How clueless about such things do you need to be to require links to basic data that is the currency of informed discussion on the economy?

Face it pally you could be personally introduced to all 290,000 and you'd still say it's spin because you are emotionally invested in bad news and no amount of actual data will convince you.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

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[marmar]

11. Hopefully you don't believe your own bullshit.

nt

[ixion]

2. There has never been a 'recovery'

We've been DOA since 2007, and are still in denial, trying (rather desperately) to pretend that we're going to "recover" to the Days of the Bubble, and that just ain't gonna happen.

[Demeter]

3. What Recovery?

[CLANG]

8. I got your recovery right here:

[tom_paine]

9. Now, now - the top 0.1% are recovering nicely

THAT'S what Corporate M$M mean when they say "recovery". They are NOT speaking of we peasants.

Although we are footing the bill for the Rich Man's Recovery.

[JohnWxy]

12. yeah, how come Obama can't replace the 2.6 million jobs lost in the Deregulation Disaster in 1 year?

Maybe if we cut taxes some more for the top 10% of the population (bush tax cuts 50% went to top 10%) we'd do better!

Professional economists know that you can't repair the massive damage of the Deregulation Disaster in one year. To talk like that is possible is of course, Corporate Lobbyist Party horse-shit. This was the biggest ecoonomic catastrophe since the Great Depression. This is why even on M$M they are referring to this event as "the Great Recession".

Perhaps we would be seeing a quicker recovery if during the first decade of the 21st century we had not seen the incomes of average working people (the largest portion of the population) go DOWN. Thanks to GOP policies of deregulation and easing the tax burden on the wealthiest in the country and increasing it on the working people (the greatest proportion of the population) the first decade of the 21st century saw median income go DOWN. Net household wealth went down also AND THERE WAS ZERO NET JOB GROWTH!:


Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers - WaPo



For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different.

The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth.

~~
~~

There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 -- and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.
(more)
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Of course, it hasn't helped that the Democrats converted one third of the stimulus package from stimulus to tax cuts .. in an effort to 'buy' Republican support(note: tax cuts at a time when people are afraid of losing their jobs will NOT result in increased spending (stimulus)). In the end, of course, not one of the fucking Corporate Lobbyist Partiers voted for the stimulus. They never intended to!


Al Kaida? Who needs them when you've got the GOP. THe Corporate Lobbyist party has done far more damage to America than Al Kaida could have dreamed of doing!