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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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A recession, not a depression. And yes half the country has been struggling for 20 years now.
Recession isn't about what people feel though. Its about the productivity of the country. People can feel bad, but if the country continues to produce more stuff, then we're economically booming.
I feel like a lot of these issues is that the public is just ignorant to what a "recession" or "depression" really means. Employment (ie: how many jobs are available) indicate booming economies (aka: us making more stuff) because it means that companies are trying to make more stuff and need more workers.
A recession is the opposite. When our means of production get shut-off for whatever reason. When this happens, people start getting laid off from jobs leading to unemployment.
We did have a brief COVID19 recession as theme parks, hotels, restaurants, and cruises closed down. As the hospitality sector closed, they laid off workers, unemployment grew, etc. etc. etc. This cascaded to other sectors: tourism declines, air-travel declined. Gasoline usage dropped and oil producers cut off production. It was starting to get out of control until policymakers took swift action with new loans (PPP loans, and other programs) to get the economy somewhat-artifically churning again, but it did work and the job boom kinda-sorta hampered the COVID19 recession.
Uh no. The country is not booming just because production is up. The country is it's people, not it's corporations.
It's not that people just don't understand the terms. We don't agree that the economy should be described in a way that matters only to the country's wealthy. The working class is in a recession. They are exactly where they are whenever the wealthy say it's a recession. So for them it is very much a recession, no matter how much money the wealthy are making and no matter what official description the wealthy care to use.
If the people in charge insist on ignoring the working class then we'll simply have a repeat of the great depression thanks to a demand crisis. No matter what terms you care to use, we are in a cost of living crisis for half the country right now. When that gets ignored it spirals into a demand crisis, which triggers all the bad stuff at the same time. With half the country not buying things companies go under; banks stop lending as they have to deal with lost assets; then more people have trouble buying stuff because they got laid off and the cycle turns again. The only way out is the one thing that seems to be anathema to our dear leaders, giving money directly to the people so they can spend it.
And because it bears repeating, jobs numbers don't mean shit if you can't pay basic necessities without 2 or 3 of them.
Ummmm.
The literal definition of a recession is that production is down. I dunno where you're going with this, but maybe you can go choose a better word for whatever the heck you're trying to describe. Economists have words for a reason, and the chief reason among them is that production of goods is an important thing to track.
No it's okay. Really. We just won't make a word for a country with a "booming" economy that exploits it's workers so hard they have trouble buying food. That way we can just pretend it's not happening! Yay!