In 1970? Every time Dan Rather (and other professional liberal liars) talks about how “great” this economy is he mentions that “mortgage rates are the lowest in 30 years” or “the lowest unemployment in 30 years” or the “Strongest economic growth in 30 years”. 30 years? What was so great in 1970? I was a bit too young to appreciate economics back then, but I’m old enough now to know this economy is’nt as great as KKKlinton says it is ($2.07 for gas and the taxes I gotta pay! MOTHER FUCK!) I assume you would have to be at least 50+ to really know: economically, what was 1970 like, and, adjusting for inflation & all that jazz, was it better, worse, or the same than what we have now?
1970 wasn’t so hot, but 1969 was. The unemployment rate was averaged 3.5%, the lowest since 1953. The budget was balanced for the first time since 1960 and the last time until the 1990s. The economy entered a recession in Dec. 1969 that lasted until Nov. 1970.
You might want to tone down the language. This isn’t the BBQ Pit.
And then, of course, the economy entered a depression in 1973 with the cancellation of the Bretton Woods agreement which has lasted till this day.
You read too much into statements on the news about the economic statistics. Nobody was saying that 1969 or thereabouts was a perfect time. All they’re saying is that if you take a couple of significant statistics (the rate of inflation and the unemployment rate) and look for the last time they were this low, the most recent year that this was true was about 1969.
Where do you pay $2.07 for gas? I pay about $1.539 for gas usually, although if I look hard enough I can find stations that charge $1.499. Adjusted for inflation gas is about as expensive as it was in 1969. Also, in what sense are your taxes particularly high? Compared to all the past 60 or so years, tax rates in the U.S. are no higher than usual and maybe a little on the low side.
If you don’t want these particular economic statistics used as measures, which ones do you want used? Do you want Dan Rather to say, “Well, inflation and unemployment are at 30-year lows, but the pkbites unhappiness level is at an all-time high, and of course that’s the only really important measure.”
One economic statistic that is bothersome is the relative separation between rich and poor. This started rising at some point in the 1970’s. There has been a consistent tendency for the past 25 or so years for the top 20% of the population’s wages to improve, but the the other 80%'s wages to get no better.
Also, bear in mind that the estimable Mr. Rather, that revered Dean of American Journalism [sarcasm enabled], works in the entertainment industry, for suits who want the news delivered to the American public in crisp, tasty 30-second sound bites. Nobody wants to hear the “well, yeah, but…” ponderous demurrals of serious economists, or from people who know a little bit about the science of statistics (like me!) and who know that you can literally prove anything you want with statistics. If the suits had so desired, Dan Rather could just as easily have stood up and, using the same statistics, announced, “The economy hasn’t been this bad since 1970.” Cut to commercial…
Gas here (Midwest) is back up to $1.79 and rising fast. :mad:
I was going through my expenses last night and got a little upset.
I live in wisconsin, one of the highest taxed states! Property taxes are high, gas taxes are high, the sales tax is 5%, plus every county has it’s own sales tax added to that, plus some cities have it’s own sales tax added to that, plus there is an added sales tax to build the Milwaukee Brewers a new stadium. The State income tax is also high, now add this to the federal and SS tax I pay, and you’ll see I’m over taxed. Make a penny over 40K around here and you’re “rich” and have to be punished.
My car has to take premium gas, and I in fact did pay $2.07 a gallon for it at an Amoco off I-94 yesterday. My wifes car runs on regular, so she “only” pays $1.83 a gallon. A little over a year ago I got gas in Madison for .87! I got spoiled!
But enough whinning. I am merely looking for a reference, which is why I asked for folks who are older than I. Is this really the greatest economy, or has it been better? I don’t just mean having lots of jobs available, but also the purchasing power of my dollars.
At the moment you are reading this message humans in the US in general (and the world by extension) are enjoying the most prosperous and highest quality period of human existence that has ever heretofore existed.
The technological and related societal advances modernity has bestowed on the human race, while a mixed bag in may circumstances, has given the average human a higher quality life in terms of freedom from want, freedom from pain, freedom from oppression etc than ever before.
Now if you are diagnosed with AIDS, scratching out a living in the Balkans between firefights or a dance teacher in
Afghanistan etc. etc. etc. your individual perspective might be somewhat different but these are averages we are talking about. Your citation of the outrage of paying
$ 2.07 a gallon for premium gasoline for your beloved, high performance PBbitesmobile may rate high on your personal misery index but in context it’s a fairly trivial measure especially considering what others in the world pay for gas and other commodities compared to the relatively fat and happy citizens of the United States.
Imagine going into the Radio Shack of 1981 and telling the salesperson you wanted to spend around $ 1,500 and get a set of machines with a high resolution color display that would play music and video, help you balance your books, connect you to an interactive world wide community of souls, produce spell checked, perfectly formatted printed pages and put together interactive multimedia presentations.
You would have been sent out the door with a 4K Color Computer and Spectaculator cartridge.
Imagine going into a doctor in the great economic year of 1969 with a severe coronary disease. The totality of information and effective care available then vs now invites popgun-howitizer comparisons.
As a purchaser your total power to purchase is more totally powerful than anyones purchasing power (in toto) has ever perceived to have been.
Don’t worry. Be happy! Totally Happy!
I sometimes need to be reminded that my standard of living is much higher than my parents was in 1970, even though (adjusted for inflation)they had the same, if not higher, income than me & my wife do. Todays simplist technology like computers or cordless phones would in fact have seemed like science fiction to them back then. I also would like to add that food is also very cheap in this country when you think about it.
But Having to send so much of my money to Uncle Sam, Cousin Tommy, and other government family members seems to take some sparkle off these good times. (And yes, they are rather good.) Have Americans ever been taxed more than now?
The economy in 1970 was actually on its way down from its highs in the “go-go '60s”. At the start of the 1960s, Europe and Japan were still recovering from World War II, and our basic industries, like steel making and automobile production, were world leaders. By the end of the decade, the Japanese in particular had started to surpass the U.S. in some key areas. (At the time, some people actually complained that Japan and Europe had an unfair advantage, because their industries had been flattened in WW2, thus they had newer plants than the U.S.)
Added to this was the effect of the Vietnam War. Up through the Korean War, the U.S. had curtailed consumer production during wartime. However, President Johnson decided not to cut back spending to finance the Vietnam War, resulting in what was called the “guns and butter” economy, funded by high deficit spending. This in turn boosted the economy, but also helped spur inflation, which took decades to remove from the economy.
adjusting for inflation the bottom 80% of americans make less than they did in 1970, the top 20% make more, and the top 1% make way way more. You can see this if you look around you. Pay cuts, benefit cuts, and lay offs for regular people with massive raises for CEOs.
Much of the “good economy” talk surrounds the low unemployment rate and the booming stock market. People are counted as employed if they have ANY job. A part time job at walmart with no benefits makes you employed. And about 50% of the american population has NO stock investments, not even in a 401k style retirement account.
michael
I can’t find anywhere online a history of tax rates in the U.S. I don’t think current rates are particularly high, but I can’t say for sure since I don’t have the exact figures. Can someone find these numbers and post them? In any case, surely tax rates are only one of the things that affect you. Suppose, for instance, you were told that all tax rates would be cut in half. Suppose further that you were told that this would mean that the unemployment rate would immediately double and the price of everything would increase by 20%. Would that be an acceptable trade-off? (I’m not saying that would happen. I’m saying that you don’t know how all these things interact.)
If you want a truly detailed study of how the unemployment rates, wage rates, inflation rates, interest rates, and tax rates have changed and have influenced each other over the past few decades, go take a college course on economics. Some things are too complicated to explain in a single thread.
Our ‘good economy’ also is mainly based on the Gross Domestic Product while completely ignoring standard of life issues like healthcare, the working poor, retirement funds, polution levels, distribution of wealth, lifespan, infant mortality, crime, etc…
Economists are masters of non-think. Things that are good for the economy doesn’t at all mean they’re good for you, an oil spill is great for the economy because of the increased amounts of money it’ll cost to clean it up compared to just reifining it and selling it as petroleum products, or getting into a car accident because of the added revenues (repair, lawsuits, etc.) it brings.
This economy also has the biggest personal debt ever, but the interest everyone is paying is ‘good’ for the economy too.
As to the ‘liberal’ media, well the media does its best to defend and mainstain the status quo, especially when regarding the corporations that owns them. Its the picture of conservatism, though employing liberal-esque jargon to further their ways is not above them.
With all due respect someone else is mastering “non-think” as well and I’ll give you hint … it’s not Allen Greenspan. For most normal humans “Good” as a descriptive statement as in “Overall American economic performance has been good lately” is obviously a relative measure compared to other possible states of economic being usually based on a background of historical possibilites.
Of your cited evils of the “good” economy which of these is
worse or less subject to amelioration in “good” economic times than in “not so good” economic times… or are you measuring “good” economic times against “perfect” economic times?
healthcare
the working poor
retirement funds
pollution levels
distribution of wealth
lifespan
infant mortality
crime
Simply put, when the press talks about the “great” economy that doesn’t necessarily mean that is good for most people as the distribution of wealth favors the richest twenty percent. If you want to take a strict statistacal analysis thats fine, but its completely open to interpretation.
Considering that current estimates of GDP don’t include personal debt or distribution of wealth and the media and politicians often use the state of the economy for their own reasons I think its appropriate to consider that fact of how people live in that economy. Not to mention the inflated fixed dollar of 20-30 years ago was worth a lot more, interest rates were lower, and with the constant redefining of what poor and poverty mean the economy isn’t as hot as they’d like us to believe.
astro asks about:
> healthcare
> the working poor
> retirement funds
> pollution levels
> distribution of wealth
> lifespan
> infant mortality
> crime
as compared with 1970.
O.K., let’s go through them one by one. Crime rates are back down to about what they were in 1970. Average lifespan has continued to grow at just about the same rate as it has for about a century. (Well, to be exact, the average lifespan increased by about .4 of a year for every year from about 1900 to about 1950 and has increased by about .2 of a year since 1950. That’s why the average lifespan is about 30 years longer than it was in 1900.) The amount of pollution has decreased since 1970. The amount of infant mortality has decreased since 1970.
I don’t have the statistics for retirement funds, and I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I don’t know precisely what you’re asking about for the working poor. It would be interesting to know about the amounts of health care and the percentage of people covered, but I don’t have those statistics.
As I said before, the really interesting statistics are related to distribution of wealth. Since sometime in the '70’s, there has been a consistent trend toward the bottom 80% having no improvement (and indeed having lost a little bit) in their average incomes while the top 20% gained quite a bit.
[ul]1913: 7%
1918: 77%
1929: 24%
WWII high: 94%
before “Kennedy” tax cut: 91%
after “Kennedy” tax cut: 70%
after Johnson surtax enacted (1968): 77%
before Reagan tax cuts: 70%
after first Reagan tax cut: 50%
after second Reagan tax cut: 28%
after Bush budget deal: 31%
today: 39.6%[/ul]Note: The Kennedy tax cut was proposed by Kennedy but not passed until after his death. It was passed into law by Johnson.
References:
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/whtwrks1.htm
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-192.html
http://www.empower.org/html/policy/tax/lower.htm
Universal Almanac, 1992
I should have meade clear that the rates I posted above are the marginal rates for the highest tax brackets only. Most Americans would have paid considerably lower rates.