Where is the US economy headed?

Be nice, now, Cice and Hawk. This thread suffers enough from too many people hurling around cheap insults.
The graph of per capita debt is indeed scary looking but should probably include GDP per capita - inflation adjusted or not. I'll work on that, perhaps, tomorrow.
It's my bedtime, but I'll close with some final thoughts on retailing. A giant shopping center just opened. It is an architectural disaster with the idea of a town center. Popular, I guess, on the west coast. All of the stores are regional or national chains. It could be anywhere. I guess they did it for financing reasons.
Up and down I-81 are cookie cutter SCs 40 miles apart. Identical tenants. Target etc.
I also note a trend in grocery stores, Food Lion for canned goods (staples), Wegmans for fresh meat and fish and baked goods, Trader Joes. Each has a relatively small footprint. Kroger/Ralphs etc will probably be the example of the losers.

Also,

we (live in Lacey) just lost a huge Albertson's and a regional called Top foods. a few years back Walmart massively expanded into food and two years ago we got the regional low priced Winnco.....everyone else is sucking wind now. I am almost certain that we will end up losing one of our three Safeway's. more empty big buildings to litter our town, great!

edit: i have heard that the entire regional QfC is in big trouble, and so we might lose them as well though our store seems to have good traffic.

edit2: when the KMart was closed the landlords were saying in the paper that the property would get reused fast no problem. it just sits there. small is where it is at, for instance the old Blockbuster sat for less than a year. it will be a dentists office now.

When I google QfC, I see it is a part of Kroger. They operate under that name in the east.
It's a cut-throat business. The little things are incredibly important. I recently went to MY Kroger after a three month absence due to my stroke. I was struck by the number of clerks up through the store manager who took the time to welcome me back. Impressive. And such an inexpensive way to keep a customer. I am certainly not their biggest customer. But I know a lot of people.

I caught up on some reading including a Paul Krugman op-ed piece from the Times on Sunday: Time To End The Deficit Fixation. Or Dwindling Deficit Disorder. His claim is that the deficit has been steadily falling and the deficits we are experiencing are necessary in preventing the Great Recession from turning into the Great Depression. He argues that the optimum deficit is around $460Bn. It is sort of like full employment is achieved when the unemployment rate (U-3) is around 6%. Kind of hard to grasp.
The comments section is well worth reading also. Some disagreement with Krugman's logic.
I've about worn out my welcome to the Times for the month. I found the column on Real Clear Politics for Sunday.

Is America’s economic future hopelessly lost?

What Krugman says about "deficit fixation" is also the problem in the Euro countries and the US which are demanding austerity programs for countries that are drowning in debt. More austerity only means more jobs lost - which translates into less consumer spending and less tax revenues. They're creating a bigger problem than are solving them. The GOP in this country is out to do the same, but it's worse for us because they will not allow for any tax increases. We need a balance between cutting "wasteful" spending and tax increases. We're all fighting a battle that only exacerbates our problems.

Krugman essentually gets it wrong because budget policy is not the major problem so it can not be the solution. The problem is that the people do not have faith in the people who are running the economy. Only radical change and displays of competence will work.

The health care system in the US is the most wasteful in this world; our doctors are "trained" to do everything possible that will increase their revenue over the interest of the patient's health. It's been proven by studies that many of the procedures that doctors recommend and perform are not necessary, and hasn't proven to be effective in helping patients. Most have an adversarial effect, and they tend to die faster. Cost savings in this area can save the Medicare program, but nobody is even suggestion these solutions to save the program.

Our government is defunct.

So is Wall Street and so is every other director of the economy. The people are not going to buy into happy talk and small changes, we need major change and we need some indication that the bosses care about us and also that they have comptetence and control. Krugman sounds to me like just another technocrat who is lost in his numbers, I don't sense that he "gets it".

To me, Krugman has it more right than wrong, and I agree with his opinions most of the time.

Had Veblen known that his strictures on conspicuous consumption would become applicable in less than a century to 80% of the population perhaps he would have been less amused than he allowed himself to be.

Mr Krugman is like a shrimp caught up in a giant wave which is rolling towards the beach with nothing to stop it.

We need to organize an economy that supports our values and happiness on far less consumption than we currently engage in.....one does not get the sense that any of the elite understand this, which is just one of many reasons why it is impossible to have faith in them or our current economy. Krugman is guilty of small thinking and he sounds like a guy who has failed to learn on our current mistakes.

A zero vote on this post is indicative of what is wrong with A2K these days...my post was thoughtful and presents an argument that is heard on the edges only but is resisted by the mainstream...it is the kind of post that the old A2K would have embraced.

Obamacare went and made the health care system much, much
worse and it's having a negative effect on our economy.

All of Obamacare needs to go away if we want any chance at recovery.

Interesting. So all countries with a mandatory health insurance would do better as well, isn't it?

Idiocracy. So you think all countries with mandatory health insurance have anything in common with Obamacare, really?

squirt says Obamacare is having a negative effect on our economy? LOL; the stock market keeps rising after Obama took office over four years ago, and it's at its historic highs.

squirt lives in a cave where he has no "light" or media to inform him that he's living in the dark ages.

No surprise, but for anyone to continue to make a fool of himself repeatedly must take a special kind of dead brain cells.

Sorry. Not the countries. My bad.
I meant their (mandatory) health insurances.

Speaking about "idioacracy": how good is your knowledge in how many foreign languages?