CHART OF THE DAY: Well, We're Finally Back To Where We Were In 2007

[dkf]

Hard to get too excited about this economic accomplishment, but it's certainly better than the alternative.

Thanks to yesterday's solid Q3 GDP report, the U.S. economy is finally back to where it was before it cratered four years ago. (After adjusting for inflation.)
And now for the caveat:

Yesterday's Q3 GDP report was the first of three. The next two will be revisions. And they might be revised downward.

And then there's the bad news: We've regained the lost ground in GDP, but, thanks to corporate downsizing, we're producing that output with about 8 million fewer jobs...


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/well-were-finally-back-to-where-we-were-in-2007-2011-10?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clusterstock+%28ClusterStock%29#ixzz1c9uCITPk

[Fumesucker]

1. Which means of course that we are nowhere near where we were in 2007..

Certainly not in terms of the average person's life, which to be honest was probably even better in 2000 than in 2007.

[dkf]

3. Reading about the gains in productivity is rather scary.

I never appreciated what that number meant until I started reading about the numerous occupations that are being wiped out by productivity. The most shocking realization was what cloud computing will do for IT jobs. All those servers and their crews will be gone. Wow. And we are only in the beginning of the cloud.

I remember reading how the federal government was going in this direction as a cost saving measure. That is a big one right there.

[ixion]

2. lol... yeah, right.

[TBF]

4. Let's be very specific about WHO is back to 2007 - it is NOT we 99% -

it is you and your 1%.

[Cal Carpenter]

6. Exactly

Unless and until unemployment drops significantly and wages increase significantly, this 'recovery' doesn't mean shit to the vast majority of people.

Better than the alternative? Um, the rich continue to get richer at the expense of everyone else regardless. It is the real day-to-day conditions that matter, not some abstract numbers about money making money off of money.

[dkf]

7. Not me. I'm still down from 07.

[lonestarnot]

5. WTF.

:wtf:

[dkf]

8. We've boosted productivity to job killing heights.

That's what this says to me.

[TBF]

9. Marx' Crisis Theory addresses this -

International Socialist Review Issue 32, November–December 2003

Marx's theory of economic crisis

By STUART EASTERLING

CAPITALISM IS an economic system that is inherently crisis-prone. It is driven by forces which cause it to be unstable, anarchic and self-destructive. This is as true today as it was over 150 years ago, when Karl Marx and his collaborator Frederick Engels described capitalism in the Communist Manifesto as "a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."1

Indeed, today’s world of wild stock market booms and slumps, recurring layoffs and long-term unemployment, corporate scandals and power blackouts, seems to fit their description better than ever before. The present economic downturn is no exception. The United States is currently in the middle of the longest period of job losses since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In fact, the U.S. economy today has 2.6 million fewer jobs that it did two years ago. Meanwhile, over two million people have lost health insurance coverage and personal bankruptcies hit a record of over 1.5 million households in 2002.2 In short, economic crises–recessions and depressions–were a part of capitalism at its birth and, despite promises to the contrary, continue to plague the system to this day...

More here - http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/crisis_theory.shtml