Where is the US economy headed?

They already fell for it; the conservatives will jump on anything they think will win votes, but they have their priorities ass-backwards, and almost everybody else knows. These are good times for our politics, because conservatives love to make mountains out of holes.

Tell us about that Obama lie? You've been lying on these threads for years.

Pissfart...
Everything your conservatives say is a lie, but you.... living in Cinderella land think that they are always right and never wrong.

Your foolishness has filled pages here on A2K over the years and nobody but conservatives take you seriously.

You wrote,

I've criticized Obama often on a2k; it's not my problem that you have no memory.

Show me? You can cut and paste from any of my thousands of posts - if you can find it.

The Party of NO

The following are 24 statistics to show to anyone who believes that America has a bright economic future....

#1 Inflation is a silent tax that steals wealth from all of us. We continue to shell out increasing amounts of money for the basic things that we need, and yet our incomes are not keeping pace. Just check out the following example. Gasoline prices have been trending higher for several years in a row as one blogger recently noted....

January 2009 $1.65

January 2010 $2.57

January 2011 $3.04

January 2012 $3.29

#2 If you can believe it, the average American household spent approximately $4,155 on gasoline during 2011.

#3 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#4 Health care costs continue to rise at a very alarming pace. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

#5 Getting a college education has also become insanely expensive in America. After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.

#6 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1970 you would have to have more than $116 today.

#7 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1913 you would have to have more than $457 today.

#8 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added more than 30 million extra people to the population since then.

#9 The U.S. economy is bleeding millions of good jobs. Greedy CEOs are systematically shipping them overseas and our politicians are standing around and doing nothing about it. This has gone on year after year after year. The following is from a recent article by Paul Craig Roberts....

In the first decade of the 21st century, Americans lost 5,500,000 manufacturing jobs. US employment in the manufacture of computer and electronic products fell by 40%; in the production of machinery by 30%, in motor vehicles and and parts by 44%, and in the manufacture of clothing by 66%.

#10 Our economic infrastructure is being torn apart right in front of our eyes. In 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day shut down in the United States. Overall, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have shut down since 2001.

We have made it legal for big corporations to send millions of jobs to countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, where the tax burden is much lighter and where there are barely any regulations. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article posted on Economy in Crisis....

Back in the ‘80s, I called my friend Walter in California and asked: “On your next expansion we need a plant in South Carolina.” Walter replied: “We don’t produce anything in the United States. It’s all in China. China furnishes you the plant on a year-to-year basis. If your investment works out, you don’t have to pay any corporate tax; just reinvest it for another plant and more profit. If it doesn’t work out, you can walk away with no legacy costs. I send a quality controller to watch production. I check on it every day. I don’t have any labor, health, safety, or environmental concerns, and have time to play a round of golf.” The bleeding of jobs off-shore started in the ‘80s — now hemorrhages under Bush and Obama. Waiting for the economy to bounce back; calling this “the worst recession” is a bum rap. The reason the economy hasn’t bounced back since 2008 is because the economy is being off-shored.

#11 As a result of our insane economic policies, our trade balances are absolutely exploding. For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#12 As you read this, there are millions of Americans out there wondering why they can't find any jobs. According to Reuters, 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now.

#13 The number of good jobs has been steadily shrinking in America. Since the year 2000, the United States has lost 10% of its middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.

#14 Over the last three decades, the percentage of low income jobs has consistently risen. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#15 The number of middle class neighborhoods also continues to decline. In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods". By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".

#16 A decade ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. By 2010, the United States had fallen to seventh.

#17 Our incomes continue to go down. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.

#18 Unfortunately, middle class Americans have been seeing their incomes decline for a very long time. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

#19 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%. Unfortunately, U.S. consumers have still not learned how to stay out of debt. According to a recent article posted on Financial Armageddon, the rate of personal savings in the United States is rapidly falling right now at the same time that the total amount of consumer credit is absolutely skyrocketing.

#20 The number of children living in poverty in America keeps rising year after year. The percentage of children living in poverty in the United States increased from 16.9 percent in 2006 to nearly 22 percent in 2010.

#21 The number of Americans on food stamps continues to set new all-time records. Just check out the following progression....

October 2008: 30.8 million Americans on food stamps

October 2009: 37.6 million Americans on food stamps

October 2010: 43.2 million Americans on food stamps

October 2011: 46.2 million Americans on food stamps

#22 The U.S. debt problem has gotten completely and totally out of control. Recently, the debt of the federal government surpassed 100% of GDP for the first time ever.

#23 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#24 Barack Obama's proposed 2012 budget projects that the national debt will rise to 26 trillion dollars a decade from now. And his budget numbers are ridiculously optimistic.

Are you starting to get the picture?

All of the long-term economic numbers are progressively getting worse.

Interesting stats that are selective or flat out wrong as usual Spurt

#1 Selective use of facts

who isn't willing/able/interested in doing their own research.

~~~~

Point of fact. Much of what was provided in that unreferenced post was faux-facts, not statistics.

If people don't appreciate the difference between facts and statistics, there is probably no point in trying to explain to them what that group of "statistics" really is.

Yeah but think of the jobs created in the manufacture of Hot Air, Gob Gush and Brain Splatter.

I remember reading of a political big-wig, that's like an ear-wig only with a keener appetite, in the mid 19th century, that he said "let Europe be our workshop". Perhaps that attitude remains. Only now its the world to which we have exported our high-tech wizardry so that it might be operated by cheaper labour than our creative and enlightened citizens can possibly be expected to turn their manicured hands to.

Who ever heard of a man who built a better mousetrap advertising the machine he made it on? What sort of a business man is that?

I am taking Rider Haggard's cue in his fairly penetrating psychological study of a nation gone soft through lack of exposure to evolutionary exigencies, among other things, in Queen Sheba's Ring. The land of the Abati he burns to the ground at the end. Their Queen, known as the Child of Kings, Walda Nagasta, Takla Warda, Bud of the Rose and Maqueda, is portrayed as a randy stunna with views to the right of Margaret Thatcher but unable to get her people to follow them.

The epilogue purports the be a note from this lady. The last word. It begins--



The most interesting part, leaving out the lady lore, is after the Abati find out that their impregnable defences, natural ones, have been breached by their long time enemy the Fung.

A $15 trillion deficit is a mortgage on the future efforts.

ehBeth, Here's a report on gas prices in early 2008.



watertard never knows what he's talking about. NEVER.

What is more interesting about that chart is that "presidents" do not effect gas prices; it's based on supply, demand, and speculation by the world markets.

watertard doesn't understand anything about economics. Even his charts don't reflect the realities of why gas prices varies from one day to the next, one month to the next, and one year to the next.

Overall, the US consumers pays the least for gas; that's a FACT. Something watertard will never understand - even at $4 a gallon.

What's more interesting is that Obama has not yet accepted responsibility for the huge mess that all of his
failed policies have created... the guy owns this shitty economy, but he's not man enough to admit a single mistake.

cicegirl, you must remember to take your meds and a nap today... you know how you get...put some pants on for Christ sake!

nd whats gonna kill the GOP is that they are ignoring the fact that the economy is rebounding. The fact that they are doing so is gonna kill them even worse than their useless candidate parade.

They should be getting on board and saying how they could make the rebound even quicker by doing something more creative (something they havent even dicussed yet).

I think the GOP's entire strategy is to be as obstructionist on the economy. They all sound like spurt (and just as stupid).
Their biggest pile of bullshit was when gingrich spoke that a double dip recession is imminent.

Theyve picked everything wrong about the economy ever since Bushes famous
"The fundamentals of our economy are sound" . As we were sliding into the worst recession since 1932