The State of the Economy Thread - “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery”

[Corcaigh]

We’ve been around this mulberry bush several times before. The BLS are professionals who calculate the unemployment numbers using six different models to reflect different assumptions of what to include.

 

Politicians and partisans cherry pick a number from one of the models or decry that a particular model uses the assumptions it does.

 

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

[gbear]

As somebody who works generating the data used for published economic stats, I am reminded what my boss said to me 20 some odd years ago when I started. He said, "tell me what you want to prove, and I can find a stat to support your point."

 

While that is true, I think it ignores what numbers are. Numbers are not real things. They are something we use to describe the world we are experiencing. They are are a short cut in an attempt to make exprience A relatable to experience B. That is the arguement for why stats agencies like BLS use the same methodology time after time.

 

The problem comes when somebody tries to relate experience A to experience 2. This the example of the pre pandemic number versus current. Often what we see in numbers may not do an adequate job conveying a given reality much less the change over time from outlier point 1 to outlier point 2 . Are things better than 2 months ago? For a business, maybe it is. For a family that has to worry about this month's rent and next months rent, they may just be another month closer to homeless. I dont know what numbers accurately how badly I feel we as a nation have squandered our time and resources dealing with this disease. 

[techboy]

1 hour ago, gbear said:

 

While that is true, I think it ignores what numbers are. Numbers are not real things. They are something we use to describe the world we are experiencing. They are are a short cut in an attempt to make exprience A relatable to experience B. 

 

In another setting, that statement might be more controversial than you'd expect. 🧐

 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/

[tshile]

3 hours ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

@tshilesomeone the troll smiley was banned. Im not sure if that is true or not, but I think bcl said it, and it is poor taste anyway so I try to avoid it going forth, just sayin

I’m not trolling you. 

 

I’m laughing at your post. 

[Corcaigh]

1 hour ago, gbear said:

 Numbers are not real things.

 

There's also the very true statement coined by George Box ... "Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful."

 

And I don't think he was talking about Gigi Hadid.

[tshile]

2 hours ago, techboy said:

Also, the headline unemployment rate has always excluded people who have given up looking, for the good reasons @PleaseBlitzmentiobed. The other numbers that incorporate those people have also always been collected, calculated, and publicly available.

 

Generally, the incumbent references one number and the challenger references the other. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which Trump thought was the better measure in 2015.

this is the point. 
 

Most people think unemployment numbers is one thing. There’s a bunch of them. The media generally reports on one. They don’t put the effort in to have a complete conversation about it. Some of it is laziness some of it is partisanship. And some of it is because they know their audience doesn’t have the intellectual ability/desire to sit though a 20 minute explanation on the various unemployment stuff; they want an easy number to throw around and move on. 
 

the point is there’s lots of stats and you can go nuts with them if you’re so inclined. 

Edited September 5, 2020 by tshile

[CousinsCowgirl84]

For the purposes of the conversation we were having it doesn’t matter which type of unemployment you are looking at, unemployment is decreasing from where it was in April. GDP is increasing. The economy is better. You can’t look at an individuals circumstance (eg, they guy that’s two weeks away from being evicted) and point to that as evidence the entire economy isn’t improving.

 

its completely fair to wonder how much of the bounce back is due to the elastic nature of the artificial shock closing and reopening, and what the economy looks in the longer term, which is why I agreed with @PleaseBlitz regarding October... 

 

2021 q2 numbers will be far more important than any of this years numbers i think...

 

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by CousinsCowgirl84

[tshile]

3 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

For the purposes of the conversation we were having it doesn’t matter which type of unemployment you are looking at

The question that sparked the discussion of different levels was about who was/wasn’t excluded in the number being discussed. 
 

it absolutely matters what numbers you’re looking at when asking who’s being counted and who’s not and why. 
 

we get it. After a historic collapse numbers are improving. 
 

(The fact that you don’t even understand the criticism of your posts is, in itself, hilarious)

[CousinsCowgirl84]

Thank you @tshile. That was my point. The employment numbers are improving and they arnt being goosed/cooked/distorted. 

[China]

52% of young adults in the US are living with their parents. That's the highest share since the Great Depression

 

he number of American young adults living with their parents is at or near an all-time high, and the coronavirus pandemic is likely the reason, according to a new analysis.

 

A new report by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of young adults -- 52% -- lived with one or both of their parents in July. Pew's analysis of monthly Census Bureau data notes that this is higher than any previous measurement.

 

 

"Before 2020, the highest measured value was in the 1940 census at the end of the Great Depression, when 48% of young adults lived with their parents," says the report, published Friday. "The peak may have been higher during the worst of the Great Depression in the 1930s, but there is no data for that period."

Pew defines young adults as 18- to 29-year-olds. The number of young adults living with parents grew to 26.6 million in July, an increase of 2.6 million from February, Pew said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Covid-19 school disruption could effect economies for rest of 21st century, OECD says

 

Global economic output could decline by 1.5 percent over the rest of the century because of disruptions to schooling caused by covid-19, according to a new estimate from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

 

In the United States, that might mean a total economic loss equivalent to $15.3 trillion, the OECD estimated in a report released Tuesday. And it could get worse if disruptions to schooling went on for longer.

 

“These estimates assume that only the cohort currently in school are affected by the closures and that all subsequent cohorts resume normal schooling. If schools are slow to return to prior levels of performance, the growth losses will be proportionately higher,” the OECD said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[EmirOfShmo]

CIO's are becoming lest optimistic about a quick recovery.

 

The tech market should brace for a worsening economy that extends into 2021

 

As if the pandemic hasn't wreaked enough havoc, a new report from Forrester finds US CIOs and their business partners will be dealing with a steadily worsening recession in 2020--with the potential for even more problems in 2021. Overall, US tech budgets will be down by 6% or so from 2019, but budget cuts will be more like 9% to 12% given planned 2020 tech budget increases of 3% to 4%, according to the US Tech Market Outlook for 2020 to 2021 report.

This is Scenario B of three that the Forrester report presents. Scenario A: A sharp, but short drop in tech spending in the US in 2020, followed by a strong recovery starting in the fourth quarter and continuing into 2021 should be "put to bed,'' the report said. The Scenario C forecast predicts a 9% fall in US tech budgets in 2020 and a 5% drop in 2021. The report calls this "a small but real possibility."

"Scenario B, in which the US economic recession is deeper and lasts longer in 2021, is now the most likely prospect for the US tech market with a 70% probability,'' Forrester said. "But the failure of the US to bring the pandemic under control means that Scenario C with a recession that lasts into 2022 now looms as a 20% possibility."

 

...

 

Another finding is that pressure on CIOs to cut tech budgets will increase the longer and deeper the recession is. Yet, cutting too much, too soon has its own risks, the report said. "CIOs will need to have a flexible plan for expanding or reversing their tech budget cuts depending on how the economy performs and the impacts on their firm." 

The report is predicting that all tech categories will suffer in the US tech downturn and that CIOs and their business partners will be cutting spending across all segments of their budgets.

Computers and communications equipment will be the area that is cut the heaviest, the report predicts. Spending on tech consulting and systems integration services will also be slashed. "In the CIO playbook for cutting tech budgets in a downturn, the second step after cutting hardware spending is trimming the new project portfolio. Those actions inevitably reduce demand for consultants and contractors."

 

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-tech-market-should-brace-for-a-worsening-economy-that-extends-into-2021/

 

[mcsluggo]

On 9/5/2020 at 9:01 AM, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

You are factually wrong here. The economy is improving. That’s a fact.  Just as the economy shrunk at the fasted last on record in Q2, it is forecast to increase at the fastest pace on record Q3.

Unemployment is decreasing, there is no need to cook the books. The economy is growing.

 

 

 

there is an actual economics term for this.    Dead cat bounce

[PleaseBlitz]

It can be simultaneously true that (1) the economy is significantly better than it was in April (the end of the worst quarter on record) and (2) the economy is in terrible shape.  

[NoCalMike]

I think everyone can agree it is common sense that as the country gets better at combating Covid, combined with the cities & states who are just going to re-open regardless, yes the jobless numbers will improve, which is the main reason there has been a huge push by Trump to change the standards and reduce testing.  Less positives cases show up on the CDC charts, those numbers go out to the masses, then we can all pretend the pandemic is over and re-open everything just in time for the election.  

 

With that said, I will go ahead and re-iterate that the economy was already slowing down before the pandemic, now I will admit it wasn't slowing down at any kind of huge rate and for all I know, the unemployment rate might have still been a manageable number going into this election to justify Trump trying to run on it.  

 

Then there is the continuing problem and ignoring of the fact that the unemployment rate alone does not paint a complete picture of the economy, and I am specifically referring to those employed.  What are the jobs being filled, what are they paying, what kind of benefits are they providing.  Are people going from solid middle class level jobs to working class service industry jobs.   This over-reliance on indicators such as the stock market and unemployment rate need to stop, and that is regardless of who is president, because some of these issues were around long before Trump.

[Larry]

5 minutes ago, NoCalMike said:

With that said, I will go ahead and re-iterate that the economy was already slowing down before the pandemic, now I will admit it wasn't slowing down at any kind of huge rate and for all I know, the unemployment rate might have still been a manageable number going into this election to justify Trump trying to run on it.  

 

Oh, yeah.  

 

Without COVID, Trump is: 

• The most corrupt President in our history. 
• A pathological liar. 
• A narcisistic sociopath. 
• A lover of Nazis, racists, and dictators. 
• AND a sitting President with a good economy. (being propped up with deficit spending).  

[NoCalMike]

5 minutes ago, Larry said:

 

Oh, yeah.  

 

Without COVID, Trump is: 

• The most corrupt President in our history. 
• A pathological liar. 
• A narcisistic sociopath. 
• A lover of Nazis, racists, and dictators. 
• AND a sitting President with a good economy. (being propped up with deficit spending).  

 

Ha. I am most definitely not disputing any of that for sure. 

[China]

Millennials and retirement: How bad is it?

 

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over the retirement prospects of young Americans, and the huge millennial generation in particular. Is all that worry misplaced? POLITICO asked Alicia Munnell of Boston College, a veteran of the Treasury Department, the Council of Economic Advisers and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and perhaps the leading researcher of American retirement, to crunch the numbers, give us a definitive answer to the scope of the problem—and offer a look forward.

 

Concern about the financial health of America’s younger generations is growing—especially millennials, a demographic boom that came of age in an environment of unstable work and record levels of student debt. Experts worry that millennials are falling so far behind previous generations that their retirement may be at risk.

 

My research suggests that those concerns are real, and millennials really are building wealth more slowly than the other working generations. But they are not insurmountable—as long as millennials are willing and able to work longer than their parents and grandparents did.

 

A comparison of millennials (adults currently ages 25 to 35) with earlier cohorts (Gen-Xers and late baby boomers) when they were the same age shows that even though a higher percentage of both millennial men and women have college degrees, they are behind in almost every economic dimension.

 

One reason is that millennials entered the labor market during tough times. Most turned 21 between 2002 and 2012, which meant that they were graduating from college during a period that included both the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the Great Recession. This experience appears to have been particularly hard on millennial men, who have labor-force participation rates below earlier cohorts.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[mcsluggo]

i stayed in school forever... and did't save ANYTHING until i was almost 40....

and then i started saving about half of what i made. (if you include saving for my kids college accounts)

 

on the other hand most (early) baby boomers were settled into careers, buying houses and popping out kids by their early to mid 20s.   the trajectories are going to look different, for this generation... but it probably won;t be monotonic.  (..... but yeah.. millennials (and I) are losing out on a lot of the magic of compounding!)

[LD0506]

[TheGreatBuzz]

Once again doing my part to support the economy. 

e880c7_892d71516af845ee98c00169737a08b5_mv2.webp e880c7_ab7f85caaf424faab2b76ce4ec75e8d5_mv2.webp

 

Don’t know why the pictures aren’t showing.  Anyone got an idea?

 

Seems to work from IPad but not phone.

Edited September 12, 2020 by TheGreatBuzz

[PleaseBlitz]

6 hours ago, mcsluggo said:

i stayed in school forever... and did't save ANYTHING until i was almost 40....

and then i started saving about half of what i made. (if you include saving for my kids college accounts)

 

on the other hand most (early) baby boomers were settled into careers, buying houses and popping out kids by their early to mid 20s.   the trajectories are going to look different, for this generation... but it probably won;t be monotonic.  (..... but yeah.. millennials (and I) are losing out on a lot of the magic of compounding!)

Same. Hoping Congress floats a bill next year to suspend social security for 5 years to punish boomers for existing. 

[skinsmarydu]

6 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

Same. Hoping Congress floats a bill next year to suspend social security for 5 years to punish boomers for existing. 

Shut your whore mouth. 😉 Joe wants to bring it down by a few years. I need that. 

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

Trump's $300 unemployment benefit expiring with 30 million Americans jobless
https://apple.news/A8a_kKxiXSB2F3ChpW2gKhg

 

Ran out of money before it ever got started in most states.

Edited September 12, 2020 by Sacks 'n' Stuff

[Cooked Crack]