Hacker News Reader

Comment by xlm1717 | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion, the most frustrating part is that despite our hyperconnectedness, people still believe the propaganda that we're not in a depression or that our leaders got us out of the recession. Future economists will call the decade the "longest depression" not out of 20/20 hindsight, but simply because there will no longer be a need to make things seem rosy.

View on HN

The terms "depression" and "recession" aren't just catch alls, they have actual definitions. And "we" (depending on the country, i'm assuming USA) are not in either.

depression/recession has now been redefined to mean 'economy is not how we want it to be'

No. They haven't been redefined. They are used that way by people who are ignorant of the definitions, careless, or trying to mislead.

Depends. If you look at the bottom 90% and their economy - we are in depression. Or extremely deep recession. The top 10% are both capturing the lion's share of new growth and siphoning wealth from the rest.

No. It doesn't depend. As he said, those words have actual definitions.

Yeah but USA is having two economies right now that are masked as one in statistics.

Put another way: the proposition is that the current definitions of those words might not be as useful as they once were because assumptions implicit in them have changed.

We already have a "long depression" in the history books:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression

unemployment stayed low, very slight deflation persisted, and over the 30 years GDP per capita and GDP of the US grew considerably.

The propaganda is the statement that we are in a depression. We are NOT in a depression, nor a recession and have not been for several years. So, in fact, historians will not at all call this period a depression.

More likely, they will look back and wonder why so many people thought things were bad when, by all objective measurements, things were actually quite good. Low inflation, low commodities prices, decent wage growth, cheap housing, strong stock growth, a huge surplus of investment capital.

Does no one remember how negative everyone was at the height of the boom in 2007? We look back on that period as a time of incredible prosperity, but I remember it was basically the same as today: everyone complaining about everything.

But still too high unemployment. That's why people feel like it's still a recession.

> decent wage growth, cheap housing

These are not the case in California, where the opposite is unfortunately true.

If anything the story of communication has been one of ever greater methods to spread disinformation. Russians are swarmed on social media with paid shills for the government, and it makes it almost impossible to discern a genuine opinion or paid propaganda. I doubt there is a single person who is truly immune to misinformation, except perhaps the Beatles' "Fool on the Hill."

Fortifying myself against propaganda is one of my perpetual personal development projects... the internet is probably the most difficult information media for this task.

> people still believe the propaganda that we're not in a depression

Is there a source for this? Everyone I know believes that we still are in a depression, so it's probably just my social circles. I'd be interested to see the stats behind that.

The housing costs alone in high growth cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and so on should be enough to show that for many people, things are just fine. At least, for them. The longer things work out for you financially, the less of a problem you see around you. That's the difference between seeing a homeless person and thinking "how unfortunate that the vulnerable fall through the cracks in such a rich society and have to fend for themselves to survive" and "get a job, you bum!"

That's what is interesting to me: Most of the people I hear complain about it are in those cities, and they are doing just fine. But someone can be doing OK, and still believe the country is not.

What is the basis for everyone you know believing this? "Depression" has an objective definition that objectively doesn't currently hold. Do they not believe the reported numbers of the GDP, or are they using their own incorrect definition of the term?

Disclaimer: I am not an economist. Some of their discussions go well above my head, so it's possible I'm mis-understanding\mis-interpreting what they say. This is also why I'm curious as to a source.

The one thing I hear a lot is: The statistics we are using to measure this are BS. One example: We don't account for people who are under-employed, which is important to note in long-term depressions such as this one. The other things I typically hear are quite anecdotal: "I have family in Rnowheresville, $some_state, and they have no jobs out there!"

There's room for debate in the different numbers that are used to measure employment rates, and you could argue which measure is most important changes over time. But as I understand it, unemployment is a frequent result of an economic depression and not part of its definition, so whether or not there's a depression does not depend on what number is used. Of course, macro measurements don't put bread on the table and obviously jobs matter, and there not being opportunities available in a particular place/time sucks. I'm not denying that. I'm just advocating that people say what they mean and use the correct words to describe their observations.

The standard head-in-the-sand HN response to pointing out the disastrous LPR is "old people are retiring".

They don't bother looking into the reality that retirements are being delayed and most underemployment or nonparticipation is within the prime working age demographic.

Point this out, and the response is downvoting. HN emphatically does not want to accept the possibility that the economy is anything but amazing, for reasons I cannot understand.

I'm very willing to accept the idea that the economy's performance is uneven, with legitimate hardships in some areas/industries/demographics/etc. If what people observe is that there aren't any jobs near them, I wish they would say that, and not describe any economic trouble as a "depression".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com