Why We're Gloomier Than The Economy

[Fountain79]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/17/AR2008061702463.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008061702490

Ask Americans how the economy is doing, and their answer is stark: It is not just bad, it is run-for-the-hills terrible. Consumer confidence is at its lowest level in almost 30 years. Only 12 percent of Americans think the economy is in good shape. On the Internet, comparisons to the Great Depression are widespread.

But the reality is different. According to most broad measures of how the economy is doing, it's not all that grim.

Soft? You betcha. In recession? Quite possibly. And a crisis in the financial markets has rattled nerves for months now. But so far, the economy is holding up better than it did during the last two recessions in 1990 and 2001. Employers haven't shed as many jobs, the unemployment rate is still relatively low, and gross domestic product has kept rising. Things are nowhere near as bad as they were in the Great Depression, or even during the severe recession of 1982-83. The last time consumers were this miserable, in May 1980, the jobless rate was 7.5 percent and inflation was 14.4 percent. Now those numbers are 5.5 percent and 4.2 percent respectively.

[niyad]

1. maybe because we can see the truth, and the admin is lying, keeping the true figures hidden.

[maxsolomon]

2. real wages are shrinking due to increased costs

and the perception/knowledge that the additional $2/gallon at the pump is going to
a. wall street specualting bastards
b. arabs who hate our guts
tends to piss people off.

[Mountainman]

3. Keep repeating, "it's only a dream, it's only a dream, it's only a dream"

Screw that. It is costing more to live today than a few years ago by a large amount, wages haven't kept up, the unemployed are taking a longer time to find a job and like before the ones they find are paying less. Millions of people are losing their homes.

I read and add on craig's list today from someone who wants to rent and is pleading for people to have a heart because their house was foreclosed on and they have a bad credit report but still need a place to live.

it's only a dream, it's only a dream, it's only a dream

[Warpy]

4. My grandmother kept a scrap book of news stories during

the worst of the Depression. She loathed FDR, silly old thing, and the articles are universally the head up the buttocks, happy talking right wing variety telling her the economy was sound even as she had to step over people living on the street on the way to the bank to withdraw enough money for the oatmeal she and my mother were living on three times a day.

The GOP just never changes, folks, and the problems all stem from their flawed basic premise that the economy works from the top down. Undoubtedly, some three quarters of a century from now, we'll be repeating the process yet again as all the people who remembered what their dogma did to us in 2008 are safely dead and buried.

The above article would have been right at home in my granny's scrapbook.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Thankfully in 75 years I will be dead and buried

:-)

So will not have to see this circus AGAIN

[angstlessk]

6. that IS the pendulum is it not? dead and forgotten because Americans

have the attention span of a gnat. It is like history does not exist in America...we just 'look forward' and never look back cause ???? I don't know cause???