The economy is "booming"? Maybe not.

The BBQ Pit
41

It is difficult for people of very low income to save; what about people with middle income? Are they driven by American consumerist ideals and the power of commercial advertising to spend beyond their means?

I’m NOT proposing that advertisements be banned! (I’m an INTP not an INTJ.) But can we acknowledge that the American consumerist spirit has drawbacks?

The savings rate for Germany and Japan is 28%. The U.S. is at 17.5%, behind every other developed country except U.K. It is this low savings rate that is the source of both our huge trade deficit and the impending financial shortfalls from Baby Boomer retirements. (Like a party where the host never runs out of champagne and cocaine the trade deficit fuels a great American boom that will go on and on and on … until suddenly the music stops.)

42

I must have been under a rock. When was Trump impeached?

43

One thing that strikes me in your graphic (thanks for that, btw) is that older people tend to have more savings despite less income.

We have a window of time in which we have to get our finances in order. That window starts to close at around 45-50 years of age. At around that age, we’ve probably maximized our income potential (not all cases certainly, but most). We’re as desirable and ‘hireable’ as we’ll ever be (young enough to be trainable and mature enough to have experience to go with it). And our bodies haven’t begun to break down in noticeable ways just yet. But once you get into your 50s, and preferably before then, you want to be adding to your net worth, not paying off debt. Someone who’s perennially earning minimum wages is going to need help later in life, and that’s true even if they’re careful not to take on a lot of debt.

I don’t know this for fact but I suspect that in a lot of cases, people who have $400 or less in emergency savings could be perennial minimum wage earners, but they may also be technically ‘middle class’ according to IRS income level, but may have taken on large sums of debt. One growing problem these days is the amount of college debt that is being taken on either by 20 and 30 somethings, or by their parents who are nearing retirement. Whether it’s the child or parent paying, it’s unhealthy because it either jeopardizes the graduate’s ability to build wealth, or it jeopardize’s the parents’ wealth that has been accrued. Another growing problem is that Americans just aren’t healthy, and that costs money - lots of it in some cases. Whether we’re talking about obesity or addiction, this is something that’s threatening our future as a healthy economy. And again, consumerism is probably to blame to some degree, though I am also a believer in personal responsibility myself.

44

Student debt, to a degree, is about consumer choice. Yes, sticker prices have become ludicrous. But fewer students are paying sticker price. For whatever reason, there’s some price insensitivity when credit is easy.

There’s no denying even the cheap options have gotten more expensive. But public two-year colleges are still averaging under $4k tuition/fees. Still not effortless if you’re barely scraping by. And if you don’t graduate, that money spent or borrowed isn’t doing much for you. But the stories about tens of thousands of dollars of undergraduate debt are unusual and typically a matter of choice over cheaper options.

45

More graphics here, showing 25/50/75th percentile income by age. Obviously we’re not doomed to follow those traces, but the difference between percentiles stops changing as we approach 40.

46

The money for R&D has to come from somewhere, consumerism is our economic base, it shifts money from the earner class into the investor class. When the economy begins to turn downward it is the smart money that begins to save first, contributing to the downturn, but not as greatly as the next phase when the dumb money consumerists start running out of money.

None of this may matter right now, the situation has changed because of record low unemployment, I think the economic problems are more of a market concern, a bursting bubble will hit the investor class creating a soft recession, unless there’s a lot more fraud and mismanagement than we can see right now.

There are other ways it’s hard to assess this situation. There are plenty of people who only have $400 in savings right now, but not all of them are on the low end of the economic scale doing their best to save $400. There are plenty more who just have high enough income that they can stop wasting money and build up more savings rapidly. Again, the high employment figures change the formula, I don’t see any reason businesses would rapidly shed all the jobs created in the last several years, so far fewer people run out of money as a result of an economic downturn.

Since this is the Pit I feel free to present my own theories, feel free to disregard them if you like, but I think these are all things to consider if you want to prognosticate on the future of the economy.

47

This isn’t a good measure of economic performance, because spending-and-not-saving is deeply embedded in some of American culture. Some people will just spend whatever they earn and not sock away savings. Sure, there are many Americans who can’t afford to save because they are living on a knife’s edge as you speak, but many other Americans earn more than enough to meet their needs and still blow it anyway. The reason they have no savings isn’t necessarily because of a bad economy.

48

So you are equating women’s rights with the fact that more women, particularly married women, are in the work force now than 50 years ago?

That’s a bit of a stretch, IMO.

49

They apparently should be spending more on advertising, because you totally missed the point. Egg Beaters are not “pre-cracked eggs,” they are fortified egg whites. They contain far less cholesterol than shell eggs.

Just Crack an Egg bowls contain no eggs at all; they’re instant breakfasts that you have to add your own egg to.

So those “pre-cracked eggs” are actually reducing our BMI. Nice try, though.

50

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or failed to write what you intended correctly. It’s not what I was saying but, yes, women’s rights successes have lead to there being more women in the with force than 50 years ago. And no, that’s not a stretch.

On the other hand, what I pointed it is that a macroeconomic research organization famous for spitting out Nobel Laureates and Federal Reserve heads equates assortative marriage, in an age when women laborers have successfully climbed the economic ladder, to income inequality across the general population.

51

It’s not a fact in dispute that there are more women in the work force. I’m still not convinced that women’s rights have led to this. I think that it’s because of more single-parent families, or the need for two wage earners. YMMV.

52

This myth again. Multi-earner households have declined.

53

The post was a projection of a future in which the economy tanked (which is the thread topic).

54

Since when, and by how much? And where? What I am finding is that they sure have increased since the '60s, in America, from 45% of US households to about 65% of households today.

My cite: https://taxfoundation.org/america-has-become-nation-dual-income-working-couples/

55

I have no strong desire to argue with you on this point, since it’s irrelevant to my point what the fundamental cause is of the shrinking wage gap and expanded female workforce, just that those that those two things are true.

But I can explain how the women’s rights movement can directly cause the existence of more single-parent families and the need for two wage earners. And if we remove it and are forced to explain those two things, then I don’t know what to offer as an alternative.

If women feel like they should have a career and can have a career, then they will seek more education and consider their job to be an actual part of their life - not just a hobby that gives them enough money to go shopping every once in a while, while waiting for a husband to come along. There’s no rush to get married because they are self-sufficient and there’s no rush to make babies because, again, they are self-sufficient. Getting a man and locking him into the situation is a lower priority. You can take your time and be choosy and intelligent about when and what makes sense.

And now that we have women working up the ladder and earning money at an uneven distribution to one another - rather than nearly all of them just earning a similar wage for doing basic, menial labor - the high-paid ones can team up with high-paid men, creating a high-powered household. Before your average set of households would look like:

M + F (salary per year)
$2 + $1
$2 + $1
$2 + $1
$4 + $1
$4 + $2
$8 + $1
$8 + $2
$16 + $1

Now it looks like:

$2 + $1
$2 + $2
$2 + $1
$4 + $4
$4 + $3
$8 + $6
$8 + $7
$16 + $10

If you’re an old fashioned guy, making middle-good money, who wants a wife that never advanced higher than earning minimum, you’re competing with guys who are fine with a wife who is also earning middle-good money. The market has adjusted to the new economy. Houses don’t continue costing the same, independently of how much money people make, the most expensive houses become that much more expensive. If Bill Gates could buy the best home in the country for 10 years of his wages, in 1950, for $170. In 2020, he’ll have to pay $260. The market adjusts to meet the buying power of the populace and try to screw over the wealthy.

While it may well be that income inequality has grown since 1950, you can be relatively certain that price inequality has also grown. The cheapest bottle of wine versus the most expensive is almost certainly a significantly greater multiplier than it was in 1950. Price inequality doesn’t completely cover for the issue of income inequality for various reasons that I won’t go into, but once you have a case where some or most households are embracing the existence of high-income women, if you’re not on that boat as well, then you’re going to have a significantly reduced purchasing power compared to others. You need two wage earners, to keep up with the Joneses.

I wouldn’t say that it’s an absolute absolute that income inequality is due entirely, mostly, or at all due to assortative marriage - it hasn’t had the same impact on countries like Norway and such (but that’s likely due to them adjusting and taxing at a high enough rate to render an effect like this moot) - but you would need to offer some alternative that explains everything we see. As it is, you’re pointing at half of the things that we would expect to happen, if women’s rights was effective, and saying that they’re the cause of the other half. But that leaves half of everything unexplained. So between an argument that can explain everything, and which does bear the scrutiny of some damn-good economists, or an explanation that only covers half of everything and comes from a dog typing at the keyboard on a computer connected to the internet (everyone on the internet is actually a typing dog - that’s a common joke, not an insult), I’d go with the idea that seems to explain everything and also obeys economics as we know it.

56

Fair enough…thanks for the detailed explanation. And you’re right…further argument is probably pointless.

I appreciate your thoughtful responses.

57

Sure. A lot of people are terrible with money. People like Elizabeth Holmes, Martin Shkreli, Jeff Skilling, Bernie Madoff…
From what I’ve read, many (most?) experts seem to feel the economy is only booming for the wealthy. I mean it makes sense, at least from my anecdotal observations. The increased usage of automation, outsourcing, offshoring, freelancing, constant restructuring, moving operations to “the cloud” and other cost savings measures doesn’t really help middle or working class workers. They either see their jobs eliminated, outsourced or otherwise experience significant economic pressures that undercuts their wages and erodes what little power and protections they might have had.

All that savings is funneled into the corporate shareholders who represent a much smaller percentage of the population…

Yes, it does create opportunities for new jobs and industries. But most of those jobs are highly technical, require significant and expensive training and often create fewer jobs than they eliminate.
In any case, it’s absurd to have a economy where both parents need to work to cover their costs of living, can be let go from their jobs at a moment’s notice for any reason (or no reason), are at risk of suffering financial disaster in the event of an unexpected illness or injury and may still be paying off massive student loans and then claim “people are bad with money”.

Sage Rat - An interesting theory, but I’d like to see it proven with actual data.

58

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21555381&postcount=35

59

booming
/ˈbuːmɪŋ/
adjective: booming

1.
having a period of great prosperity or rapid economic growth.

It does not matter if many people are poor right now. If they are LESS poor than they were 5 years, 10 years ago, then YES the economy is growing.
And if the rate of improvement is higher than average, then YES the economy is booming.

Learn the correct definition of the word, before using it to air your opinion.

You could have made a very strong statement that the economy is not strong enough yet, or that poverty still exists. Both of those statements are true, or at least can be favorably debated for. But your original statement is false, because you use a word “booming” which seems to have a different meaning to you than to the general populace.