I have always thought there is a huge gap between economists and numbers’ crunchers versus the reality-based world of workers. But, in the midst of the current economic crisis, it seems to me that the entire way we talk about "recessions" needs to be thrown out the window. It simply does not measure, and obscures, the deep despair throughout the country.
Apparently, we’re in recovery:
The downturn officially ended, and the recovery officially began, in June 2009, according to an announcement Monday by the official arbiter of economic turning points. Since that point, total output — the amount of goods and services produced by the United States — has increased, as have many other measures of economic activity.
I have long been a critic of the focus on an increase in output or rise in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of how the people are fairing in the real world. Those statistics tell us very little about the cost of actually paying ones bills and the distribution of wealth in the country. To some extent, this is the fault of the shallowness and outright ignorance of the media–and you can’t just blame the "right-wing" organs for that. It’s a flaw of the traditional media as a whole.
Let’s start, at a surface level, with the continued discussion in the above news article:
Many forecasters estimate that output needs to grow over the long run by about 2.5 percent to keep the unemployment rate, now at 9.6 percent, constant. The economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, and private forecasts indicate growth will not be much better in the third quarter. (The Business Cycle Dating Committee itself does not engage in forecasting.)
"The amount of unemployment we’ve already got and the slowness of recovery lead to predictions that we could have 9-plus percent unemployment even through the next presidential election," said Robert J. Gordon, an economics professor at Northwestern University and a committee member.[emphasis added]
No. This is nowhere near the problem. One in five Americans–20 percent of our neighbors and family members–does not have full-time, good-paying work in this country. We have too many people who work part-time and would like full-time work. Too many people have just given up looking for work.
And that does not even take into account all the people working full-time for the poverty-level minimum wage. The minimum wage should be at least $10 an hour as a starting point to get where it should be if you take into account how hard people have worked over the past 30 years–I’d put that number at just about $20 an hour.
Last year more than 43 million Americans had income below the federal poverty line. That’s about 14 percent. That’s BELOW THE POVERTY LINE. That does not include all the people who are just above that line–about $22,000 for a family of four–who are deeply mired in debt, cannot pay basic bills and, of course, have no retirement or health care–and perish the thought of being able to afford college education for a child.
Here’s another measure:
With the country in its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, four million additional Americans found themselves in poverty in 2009, with the total reaching 44 million, or one in seven residents. Millions more were surviving only because of expanded unemployment insurance and other assistance.
And the numbers could have climbed higher: One way embattled Americans have gotten by is sharing homes with siblings, parents or even nonrelatives, sometimes resulting in overused couches and frayed nerves but holding down the rise in the national poverty rate, according to the report.
The share of residents in poverty climbed to 14.3 percent in 2009, the highest level recorded since 1994. The rise was steepest for children, with one in five affected, the bureau said. [emphasis added]
Whew. Thank our lucky stars for the proliferation of couches in American homes–otherwise, the poverty numbers would be higher. And in the nation with the most wealth ever in human history, one in five children is mired in poverty. CHILDREN. You know, the little ones that every politician wraps themselves around–if they don’t have a firefighter or 9-11 survivor to hug–as a way of showing how really, truly committed they are to the welfare of the country. One inf five children is on food stamps in America.
I could go on. You get the point.
Add your own data and examples of the deep economic crisis we face in the country.
