When?

[Stinky The Clown]

Before you read even one word of what I am about to say, I am not looking for quick fixes or any of the cute snarky crap we all see thrown about as easy, "clever" replies to these sorts of questions. This question is intended to elicit serious replies.

When do you think we'll see a return to unemployment rates below 7%? When do you think we'll see a steady climb in incomes? When do you think we'll see a dramatic rise in consumer confidence? When do you think we'll see steadily but appropriately rising home values?

Or maybe the question is better posed by asking if you think we'll ever see any of that again.

[Lochloosa]

1. 7% unemployment? My guess is at least 2-3 years.

I'm in the construction industry in FL. Our company is slowly hiring people back. I believe it's 3 this year so far. We still use temps for some projects instead of hiring permanent employees. Until we have jobs "on the books" we won't be hiring many employees right now.

[JoePhilly]

3. I think 7% will take closer to 4 years from now.

[KeyWester]

2. My 1 cent...

Unemployment below 6.5% means we are building a bubble. We could see 7% in 3 years.

Steady climb in wages, maybe two years when unemployment is around 8% and the workforce begins to thin.

Consumer Confidence is way up from late 2008, although we have recently trended down a bit.

Home value is also climbing nicely from it's late 2008 lows.

Jobs and wages will take a few years. But as we can see from past recessions, jobs is always a lagging factor, after the Bush recession technically ended shortly after he took office jobs kept falling for 2 years. This recession has already technically ended and jobs are already in positive growth.

Seems to me we are on the right track.

[LiberalLoner]

4. I'll be the lone extreme pessimist here. I read a lot of Kunstler's stuff and I think

this is the beginning of the Long Emergency. I think there may be brief periods where the economy recovers (enough to promote sky-high gas prices and prices of other goods) followed by longer periods of increasingly deep recession/depression.

I think nothing is going to be quite the same, now that peak oil is here. I think things will get increasingly bad/desperate as oil available decreases, potable water decreases, arable land decreases, and everything but human flesh on the earth decreases.

[KeyWester]

6. Oh thank god...

I thought we were fucked there for a second. :woohoo:

[The_Commonist]

5. After the Great Culling.

Sorry if that sounds snarky, and I don't think it's the least bit cute.

[LiberalLoner]

8. Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks this, too. :( I wish we were wrong though. n/t

[conscious evolution]

7. It will be another 10-15 years

This answer is based on a comparison of yearly retirement rates and the DJIA.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. When wages are low enough to make it profitable to hire workers.

Wages have been falling at an accelerated rate since the real estate/finance bust. As it is now, it's an employer's dream. More workers for fewer jobs. It isn't so much about "jobs" as it is about wages and benefits.

There will be a steady rise in incomes when the bottom is hit and employment begins to fall. But, they'll be rising from the bottom.

The same with housing, the prices have yet to reach the bottom to start rising from.

Consumer confidence will rise when consumers have enough extra money to start buying again or the banks can make enough money to lend to consumers to start the bubble/burst cycle again.

The mistake is that politicians and economists run the economy when just the reverse is true.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. I think that there will be temporary upswings, but that

we are really in for a long struggle in which the flight of jobs and capital from America will continue. In a major way, this is due to our dependence on an oil economy. We all realize that our conventional energy needs are largely driven by fossil fuels, and it is in the short-term financial interests of the corporations to keep this dependence going as long as they can. But keep in mind all the other things we use oil for. Everything is made of plastic, which starts with crude. Modern agriculture is the process of converting oil into food (pesticides, fertilizers, and farm machinery all depend on fossil fuels), and so on.

Things will not get better in any real sense until we take it upon ourselves to build a new, green infrastructure, and until we accomplish a major value-shift in which we place human quality-of-life issues ahead of the need of a small fraction of our population to accumulate obscene piles of material wealth.

I sometimes think that action at the conventional political level is unlikely to produce more than ephemeral results, and I have come to believe that for long-term, meaningful change to occur there must be a huge and persistent transformation in consciousness. Unregulated capitalism is successful in the same way that a cancer is--it is a process of unchecked cellular growth that occurs at the expense of the rest of the organism. When there is no sense of the greater whole, when there is no concern for the effects of one's actions upon our society, our species, our biosphere, our planet, then death will surely ensue. Capitalism has metastasized and we need to select as leaders those with the vision and fortitude to guide us through a terrible process of radical self-surgery. the Republicans are offering us carcinogens, and Obama is offering us aspirin. Until we gather the courage to look reality in the eye and to look upon our fellow humans with wisdom and compassion, these are the best we can expect from our leaders.