Does this look like a good economy to you?
Chart taken from the latest edition of Manufacturing and Technology News.
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Most populations that could afford to buy an american car would not be able to pay for the gas that needs to go in it.
A good economy depends on people purchasing goods. With what money?!? People have maxed out their credit. All the cheap loans of the last years are starting to take a toll on Americans owing that money back. The rest of the money is being held by the rich.
I think we are heading for a collapse that has never been seen in the history of mankind. When that happens, the little money you do have will be worthless. And food will be the new gold.
Then we’re gonna need a war to fix everything. WAR WORLD III.
You guys playing video games, get ready to play the real thing.
This is not so much an indictment of our economy as is of the auto industry. For years I bought only domestic cars because I wanted to help our economy. Detroit repaid by loyalty by selling me crap. After flushing literally tens of thousands of dollars down the toilet, I decided to buy only cars with excellent reliability ratings in Consumer Reports. Letting the chips fall where they may, I have since bought only Japanese cars, and have never looked back. The flushing toilet sound referred to in this blog comes from Detroit, not all of America.
Is that a fake chart John? Tech stocks are going up, aren’t they? They are selling real information to fake companies. The real companies are going to sell fake software that helps you find movies over the Internet. The movies may be more real than the actor who is playing a fake you in a movie or running your fake state.
Hell, Hollywood could go broke and the whole shebang could go south. Sometimes they won’t be back from where they are going.
The fake economy is entertaining thoughts of mass suicide. It beats mass genocide, doesn’t it? In politics you want the land to slide. In California you want it to stop. The bigger the hill, the worse the slide. Write your congressman. They thought the Enron rolling blackouts were bad news. Go east young man.
God has a better plan and you have been terminated. I have a job for you in Iraq! No thanks, I think I’ll sell fish bait. I never claimed to be tough or anything. The lure of easy money has a strong appeal. California or bust. I’m betting on bust.
Auto/Trucks/Parts equals the whole US economy? Seems to be a stretch. Take a look at all US Industries: http://www.bls.gov/iag/iaghome.htm
Some are up and some are down.
I’m still of the old school. “The way goes GM, so goes the country.” I’ve seen nothing to refute that.
what do we make here? I recently bought carpet tacks…(rotten experience, none of them were th same size, a few dozen didn’t have any heads…so couldn’t be used, and a lot of them were severely misshapen…no points, bent points, etc.) …turns out we don’t make carpet tacks, or nails, or screws, or pipes…or well, much of ANYTHING in this country anymore.
Go, try and buy ONLY AMERICAN for a week…..I dare you. Just go about your normal life, and buy the necessities, and apart from food, what do we make that’s American MADE anymore?
…..very, very little. Even those “American cars” have the bulk of the parts made somewhere else, and/or assembled somewhere else…..
We are a country awash with cheap imports…and even if the carpet tacks cost a buck…..the poor quality, lack of quality control, and lack of CARE….is an indicator of the future. “Whatever” “Good Enough” “Doesn’t Matter” are the mantra’s.
This thread is pathetic.
How is it that “Conservatives” understand that our society and economy are constantly mutating, progressing, changing,
while “progressives” want the economy to be frozen in time.
It seems like there’s a collective nostalgia for the 50’s, even though hardly any of us were alive then. The left remembers manufacturing workers earning middle-class wages for low-skill work, while the right remembers a kind of repressive, utopian culture that we will never get back.
Well the old economy isn’t coming back, either, because the rest of the World has pulled itself out of the muck. They can stamp sheet metal just as well as pure-blooded Americans, and why shouldn’t they. Looks like people will actually have to go to school and use their brain if they want to be middle class.
GM has been going downhill for 50 years. They’ve been a basket case for 25 years, while the American economy has found new strength after new strength. Update your metrics, John.
Perhaps we could work on solving the real problems we do have, instead of bitch, bitch, bitching about nothing and everything at the same time.
The trade deficit is real, and the dollar is a problem. But when the American economy responds by slowing demand, and we drag the whole world economy down with us into a miasmic slow-down, ask yourself if you are any happier about the situation. Withdrawal (from a derth of reliabable cars and video games) is a bitch.
TC, Yeah, but how does that make the “thread pathetic?”
Hey suckers, go buy fake ads from Google. Sell suckers manure, flyswatters and nails. Big profits off of selling this stuff online with advanced verified computers. I read about a guy who made $40,000 in two weeks with Google Ads just selling nails from China. He is now big a big importer of flyswatters from Hong Kong. There is a book for $30.00 that will tell you all the secrets so you can start an online manure business and use ad words for spreading this opportunity using viral marketing. My upcoming book, How to get rich online off of the dead, will be out in October. I am looking for a publisher for, The Dollar Sucks, That’s why we need tech stocks and software. I’m currently reading, We Wrecked the Place.
I thought this thread was going to make the whole world perfect again. Damn, I guess we’ll have to wait for John to write the magic code that will start a thread that solves all the worlds problems with his blog. Let’s see if we can make this thread go beyond pathetic to pathological. I like the pathetic threads. I guess TC does too, since he is taking the time to comment. Maybe John can start a thread about Kool Aid and we can all beat the hell out of the Kool Aid pitcher guy. I was told that he is gay and slept at Neverland and was spiked and could be showing up for the Jackson trial.
Please try and keep posts short, concise and to the point.
Kudos to TC Moore, some great comments. Progressives are the new conservatives, conservatives are the new progressives. Progressives say “the broke social security system is fine!” and “dictatorships are the form of government 3rd world people choose and like” and “look at how our economy has changed from the 1950’s and we don’t sell that anymore.”
The rest of the world HAS pulled itself out of the muck. Should we wish them back in the muck?
I never wanted to live the easy life because other parts of the world are deprived of opportunity.
Sit back and watch, the rest of the world will make us proud. They never could have got out of the much without our help, guidance and without emulating us and our system.
I’m glad we were able to make a difference.
Progressives want the 3rd world to stay the 3rd world? I thought that in the 1980’s the progressives wanted us to volunteer and help educate and give the disadvantaged parts of the world??
An atheist to the core, yet I cannot deny that the conservatives are the only progressives in the USA at this time. I am increasingly impressed with Bush.
> TC, Yeah, but how does that make the “thread pathetic?”
Because you post a (misleading, narrow) critique of the trade deficit, and everyone starts talking about how the whole economy is a sham, WWIII is around the corner, the sky is falling!
I swear Jim is channeling HST or something.
Fine, you got me. There is a part of me that feels there are a lot of smart people in the world (and on this blog. yes really), and we could solve a lot of our problems if were weren’t all running in 360 directions. Since like most people I suffer from the delusion that my world view is the closest to reality, I feel that if I can move people just slightly towards that view, some progess has been made and can be built upon.
We may not be able to make the whole world perfect, but getting closer to some answers about the trade deficit and jobs going overseas might just make me feel better. Not only are the doomsday scenarios discouraging, but I don’t think they’re accurate, either.
Of course most people on this blog, including the “site admin”, just want to have fun. I can accept that. Just let me be earnest until I start my own blog, or y’all break my spirit.
“I’m still of the old school. “The way goes GM, so goes the country.” I’ve seen nothing to refute that.”
I suppose that all depends on how you measure “so goes the country.” Is it based on the Dow? Is it based on GDP growth? Is it based on the trade deficit? Is it based on the force, tarot cards or weather patterns?
The economic theory supplies most people with at most coffee-pot discussions. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people are extraordinarily poor at considering the long term consequences of economic decisions. For example, why is most clothing made offshore? It is because of greedy clothing companies? No. Simply put, it can be made cheaper offshore. In fact, laws in this country really prevent it from ever being (legally) cheaper to make here than offshore. Things like minimum wage sound happy and shiny in the short term but no one ever considers the long term effects such as companies moving production offshore to cut costs.
Last I checked the GDP was up: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/buzz/archive/buzz050225.htm