> "Excluding new era investment, the other 89% of real private spending rose by only 1% with no job creation," the strategist wrote.
That isn’t what a recession is
That isn’t what a recession is
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...
No, not any more than "the pandemic started under the Trump administration" implies that they caused the pandemic.
Where had you heard that there was such a "rule"?
(And as others pointed out, it's a private organization, not the government, that has set and evaluates recession criteria.)
In general, people are kind of calling BS on what the definition should be because we are all collectively feeling that things are doing poorly but no one is quite willing to recognize it due to the definitional stuff.
This is most GDP growth across human history until the Industrial Revolution with the exception of maybe a half dozen civilisations.
There was a period of slightly more income equality in the 1930s-1960s as Piketty [0] and Zucman [1] show, but this was also at the expense of racial and gender equality.
The 1970s was probably the most equal period economically speaking as Zucman showed [1].
We should not strive to return to the 1950s - we should strive to be better than anytime previously.
[0] - http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014Fig...
We can have the most growth ever as a civilization and still have the common person lose out.
The Industrial Revolution also famously had a lot of people pushed into impoverished situations while robber barons or the highland clearing lords won out, despite the GDP of those respective countries increasing.
Recession is usually bad for Joe and mainstreat, but the opposite is not implied. It is ignorant to think it is or was defined by the average experience.
If defined rigorously, sure. But the literature is replete with measureas of downturns.
What more commonly comes up in online discussions is some dude with a vibe, which isn't particularly useful for talking about anything larger in scale than that one dude.
Just as it would be silly to define a countries military equipment production capacity by public sentiment, the same is true for purely financial GDP.
There are tons of metrics that can used to articulate how the economy feels for average joe. We have low consumer sentiment, lagging median income, GINI, opinion surveys, ect.
Using the word "recession" adds gravitas by claiming something that isnt true.
The notion that growth can be unequal is not something that has changed. The anomaly was the post-WWII eventide regime.
That doesn't mean there is anything natural about unequal growth. But if we want to return to that previous mode, we have to first understand what it was. And what it was was anomalous.
Someone called out that the common joe was doing worse off, you responded that gdp is higher than ever.
Are you making the claim that this is an acceptable state? Or are you making another claim?
>> Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling
Me: that’s not new. That didn’t change.
> that this is an acceptable state?
If we’re in a Cat 3 hurricane and someone complains about it being Cat 5, pointing out that’s wrong isn’t pro-hurricane.
can you please look at this comment that you replied to at the beginning of this thread, and understand why I might be irate at your response.
I had multiple paragraphs typed out that I have deleted so I could have a real conversation.
Why do you think I responded to you the way I did?
How is the rhethorical-question style working out?
I'm pointing out an ahistorical claim in the top post. You want to broaden the discussion without acknowledging that, and without actually saying anything, which isn't particularly interesting to engage on.
No, this is a ridiculous misreading. They said that "realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling" is "what changed." That is ahistorical. I may realize, today, that the sky is blue, but that's a personal discovery, not a general one. GDP growth amidst widespread poverty has been the default in most of human history; it isn't what changed.
Whether or not GDP is growing was never brought up by anyone except you.
> This is most GDP growth across human history until the Industrial Revolution with the exception of maybe a half dozen civilisations.
And you literally used the phrase “GDP growth” and referenced how high it was so I don’t get why you’d say I was the one who brought it up.
For example, a plague or severe weather might make the average person have a worse standard of living, but if the economy isn’t net affected, it seems wrong to say we are in a recession.
Plagues are a weird example, because I can't think of any situation where a plague would not affect the economy - and it should effect it negatively. I think COVID effected it negatively, we just chose to have a financial long COVID and drag out what should have been a financial disaster without all the government programs. Instead of economic collapse and starvation, we chose to massively spend money knowing it would be paid in time through inflation and also knowing it wouldn't get reallocated in an even way as pre-COVID. (That's my take, I don't know if there's any validity to it but it's just my gut feeling.)
Economists continue to use the same definition as before, despite your attempt to blame Biden.