Where is the US economy headed?

Doesn't that make an assumption that cutting spending does not affect the economic performance and thus it only applies to situations where there is some slack to cut. In the marginal case there is a risk of a downward spiral. The human agent is a factor. Health can be affected.

Economics concerns human activity and not just graphs and tables. Misery is inefficient.

Property John has the problems of lack of portability and being at the mercy of bureaucratic changes and the general economic storms. That's one of the reasons for the gold price being what it is despite the penalty of it being non-income bearing.

To say nothing of the sodding tenants.

I gave up on it. It's stressful. Very.

I also think you need a line into local politics. The movers and shakers also know the two properties are for sale.

It's not unlike poker. Media only covers the winners and maybe the big losers. It's not for the faint of heart or anyone with "principles". Money is a cruel taskmistress.

There are few things more stressful or detrimental to economic activity and human activity than being hopelessly in debt, spendius, at least that seems to be very observable from what I have witnessed in others.

Let us take a household budget that is hopelessly in debt. The first things I would look at would be food costs, am I eating out every day, that is an extremely expensive lifestyle. One can live nicely on beans, potatoes,and things like that, also carry a lunch to work, very inexpensive. Fast food can be very expensive, especially if you order the "meal deals." Then housing cost, rent or mortgage payments, this is a huge area where cuts can often be made with no increased suffering in terms of living comfortably. Take into consideration location of housing compared to work locations, so that transportation costs might also be improved. Then look at utilities and communication costs, many people are spending hundreds of dollars per month on cell phone bills, which is absolutely unnecessary and frivolous. The things I've mentioned would only provide a good start, the potential cuts would be many more, without any terrible consequences to my health or well being.

You mention there are only some cases where there is some slack to cut, but I am willing to wager that every case has some slack to cut. I can bet for sure that the government has tons of slack to cut, in fact I can look around locally and observe nonsensical spending by the federal government. I would bet that almost all Americans could do the same. The Department of Interior is a good example, with dozens of people sitting around pushing paper across a desk, then they hire contractors to run their own campgrounds and stuff like that, it is absolutely nonsensical. In the old days, I can tell you it was not run that way.

Yes okie--but you have started from too high a position. Are you saying that the Government has the equivalent of "eating out" and the other luxuries you mention. I thought that the Government should be more equivalent to the household which lives on beans and potatoes, takes a packed lunch to work, and has reduced its phone bills to the minimum. Stripped down and lean as those you elect are sent to Washington to fix. That's what it's supposed to be operating like. Isn't it? So cutting down on beans and potatoes and the packed lunch does cause a downward spiral.

By saying that there's a lot of slack you are criticising the public's failure to control the cost of themselves being governed. Which can be answered by saying that the cost of governing is directly proportional to the difficulty of governing and that the people get what they deserve as is right and proper in a democracy. The writers of the American Constiution had very much in mind the dangers of too much slack in the costs of governance in Europe. This was the land of the free. Minimum government.

Slack is unconstitutional surely. At least as much as allowing a religious idea to peep round a classroom door.

In the old days there was no TV to cause the difficulties of governing to increase so much. Or as many choices to make. Like the little girl who gets so many wonderful presents on the anniversary of her being delivered into this world that she ends up sobbing because she can't decide which one to play with.

Interesting points. I do think alot of our problem is our mindset, we have simply become too spoiled as a society. I think "slack" or waste is not restricted to a few areas of government, I instead think it permeates the entire structure of government, because we have come to believe we deserve all of this stuff, and that self sufficiency is too old fashioned and perhaps even too austere.

I would like to cite just one example, this being our school system, where any suggestion of cuts is proclaimed as unfair and uncaring of children, etc. In the old days, kids went to school and helped gather wood and coal, stoke the furnace, sweep the floors, and clean the blackboards. If some of these things were suggested now, some parents would be screaming that their kiddies were being abused. I am suggesting we do some innovative thinking here, and start over. There is no reason we need to spend many thousands per child to educate. We could go back to smaller schools, essentially one room community schools, hire one or two good teachers, have the kids do the janitorial work, fire alot of the administrators, eliminate the federal Department of Education, and have enough money left over to buy every kid a computer, and still lower the cost of education. The primary block to being able to do such things are our preconceived notions that bigger is better, and that some federal bureaucracy and the NEA should control the educational system, even if it breaks the country doing it. We should turn it back over to local authorities to fund and to run, and to try some of these ideas that could work, as they surely would. They've worked before, after all this country produced the most educated and technologically advanced population on the face of the earth without the federal Department of Education. We need again the "can do" attitude, the attitude of traditional America from yesteryear, not the woe is me American attitude of "gimme gimme gimme," which is the attitude put forth by the Obama type politicians.

One of the keys to turning this ship around is to start de-centralizing the government. Education is but one example, but we could eliminate the Federal Department of Education, thats for sure, and we could trust the local people to administer a far better educational system at less cost.

Spoiled as in lazy, with poor values and an even worse education. Nothing hard times will not solve. We have earned it.

Europe 2010: A Glimpse of America’s Economic Future?

And H2OMAN, as the old saying goes, the bigger they are the harder they fall. Its amazing how stupid our politicians are, and how stupid some of the voters are to vote for them, that got us into this mess and that are continuing it this very day. And can you spell "Big Spenders" DEMOCRATS? I think so without a doubt, since the New Deal to this very day. To clarify, Republicans are not without guilt, but the Dems are mostly to blame, there is no doubt about that.

The writing was on the wall for all to see... Obama and his ilk ignored
the warning signs and took the Bush spending spree to obscene levels.

How can anything logical be based on human nature?!

Here is the explanation, pom, as it relates to the Laffer Curve. If people have to pay to the government everything they made in wages, in other words if the tax rate was 100% of their paycheck, people would quit working. Humans will not work if there is no benefit to doing it. It isn't much different than animals, if a bear never finds food in a dumpster, they will quit raiding dumpsters. If they find a tiny bit of food there, they might raid the dumpster once in a great while, but if they found alot everytime, perhaps they would raid it every single day.

We are seeing a microcosm of that effect in regard to humans right now, because the unemployment benefits have been lengthened, people are slower to look for work and slower to go back to work, that is human nature, in other words why work if you can sit around and collect a check.

In summary, it is human nature to either work harder or work less hard, based upon the relative rewards of the work. So human nature tells us that as tax rates rise to a certain point from 0% tax rate, tax revenues may also rise, but as tax rates rise, the tax burden and penalty of working yet harder begins to overtake the human nature to work harder because the increase in rewards subsides to the point of destroying the incentive to work harder or even work at all, thus the Laffer Curve accurately predicts productivity to fall, as human nature says it will, humans will slow down their work and productivity, until such time they totally quit working if they receive nothing in return. Nobody has ever established where the peak of the Laffer Curve is, only that there is obviously a peak, as obviously predicted by math, the economy, and human nature. I suspect it is around 50% tax rate, and if you add all the taxation we have now, we are somewhere around that figure.

So, to make one point very clear, the free market, supply and demand, and many other things relative to the economy are in fact based upon or determined by principles inherent in human nature. Human nature is highly interested in its self interest, and self interest plays a big part in almost everything we do, our jobs, our properties, our buying habits, and everything else we do. I would recommend to you a very basic book, I think called "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell, and you will learn all of these basics that would help you understand alot more than you apparently do now.

I have heard the same thing said about the Laffer Curve for years and years. Stick your fingers in your ears because this will be followed by a rambling discourse on Communists and Nazis that will be typed so furiously that the clicking of the keys can be heard around the world. And, guess what, none of it will make any sense no will any of it have anything to do with reality.

Changes in technology always present problems. In general, the right (pretends to) love(s) technology . . . especially technology that they think saves labor but which really destroys the environment. Of course, these prophets of personal responsibility never do any research into the damage they are doing to the planet and to their own children and grandchildren. When they are told about such damage, they deny that it is happening. Denying reality totally erases personal responsibility.

The left, on the other hand (no pun intended) understands that changes in technology bring about changes in social structure and demand changes in law. The left also uses technology more wisely.

Actually, when the cost of domicile was skyrocketing in MA, I was doing a great deal of volunteer work at a music venue in Harvard Square and talking to people who were just beginning their adult lives. How far from their jobs they could afford to live . . . not just in terms of fuel consumption but in terms of time spent commuting . . . was a constant subject for consideration.

That depends on your definition of misery.

at the end of the day America has neither done what is required to stay a global technology leader, nor made much of any effort to deal with the dislocation with-in American society that technology causes. Neither party has said much more than a peep about either problem, and they have both done even less.

this is not a partisan issue, everyone has failed.

If jobs continue to be created in at the same rate that they have been for the last 4 months, then more jobs will have been created in 2010 than the entire Bush administration.

Cycloptichorn

your job chart goes for towards explaining why the bottom has dropped out of the idea to import a lot of Mexican workers. The growing hostility towards illegal "immigration" is reasonable, the American people should be congratulated for knowing what time of the day it is.

I believe this is an excellent example of the type of shallow analysis which I recently accused you of engaging in, Hawkeye.

Cycloptichorn

To all those who see Nazis under every liberal's bed in America as well as for those who are sick and tired of reading posts in which people who do not know what they are talking about rant about Nazis under every liberal's bed:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/05/13/lewis_black_glenn_beck_nazis/index.html

This takes five minutes but it is very funny and well worth the time spent.