The US economy, what's happening with it

[Kevin]

I know this thread won't keep spill over out of other threads, and the title will likely keep people from even reading it, and that is fine.

I'm inviting comments on This Article which I have shared elsewhere so some of you may have seen it.

I have some issues with it, and I believe that despite the fact that it is claiming politics free that it is still trying to lead readers to a certain side, but I also think it contradicts that push with some of the information presented. I also thing some of the measures for what is trying to be shown are the wrong measure. But I'm not going to bias it more by talking about that right now.

I want to see what Lurkers think about it.

[FireIceTalon]

I know this thread won't keep spill over out of other threads, and the title will likely keep people from even reading it, and that is fine.

I'm inviting comments on This Article which I have shared elsewhere so some of you may have seen it.

I have some issues with it, and I believe that despite the fact that it is claiming politics free that it is still trying to lead readers to a certain side, but I also think it contradicts that push with some of the information presented. I also thing some of the measures for what is trying to be shown are the wrong measure. But I'm not going to bias it more by talking about that right now.

I want to see what Lurkers think about it.

There is no fixing this system. It must go entirely.

[Jester]

I know this thread won't keep spill over out of other threads, and the title will likely keep people from even reading it, and that is fine.

I'm inviting comments on This Article which I have shared elsewhere so some of you may have seen it.

I have some issues with it, and I believe that despite the fact that it is claiming politics free that it is still trying to lead readers to a certain side, but I also think it contradicts that push with some of the information presented. I also thing some of the measures for what is trying to be shown are the wrong measure. But I'm not going to bias it more by talking about that right now.

I want to see what Lurkers think about it.

Debt owed is a very poor measure, because it does not take into account creditors. If I owe my neighbour $50, and he owes me $50, we have $100 of gross debt. But the net value is zero. The majority of that debt is what Americans owe to Americans. Inequality sucks - but it's not the economic apocalypse.

That "GDP minus debt owed" graph is utter, unredeemable rubbish. It is subtracting a stock from a flow - like subtracting your mortgage from your income every year (not the mortgage PAYMENT, the whole MORTGAGE) to show how poor you've gotten.

There's no redeeming it - you might as well multiply it by the mass of the moon, then index it to the velocity of an unladen swallow. It is worse than wrong. Much worse.

He's right about government expenditures and employees. There isn't a lot of fat to be cut there. It makes a popular whipping boy (who likes "big government," amirite?) but it's simply not the source of the problem, or even an important slice of it.

As for the solution, it divides pretty neatly into two: the short-term, and the long term. In the short term, the key is that graph that shows social program expenditure vs. tax revenue. Turns out, when a worker is turfed from their job, they switch from contributing taxes to absorbing them. So, getting the 8% unemployment down to 4% (or emp/pop back up into the 60%s) is the most urgent thing. That's just wasted labour, and the longer it remains unemployed, the larger effect it will have on skills, on wages, on demand. High unemployment is toxic.

I think the number one outstanding long-run issue is the health care system - not social security. So long as health care costs are double or triple what they are in other countries, and growing, debt will continue to increase. No other country is drowning in health care costs *that* badly, and there's no reason the US is utterly unique, except for its politics. That's an enormous deadweight loss on the country. Fix that, and you fix the long-term budget problem, or at least 75% of it.

-Jester