This isn't really true. People with the same degree I have in my field have an ~1.7% unemployment rate.
In fact, a bit of deflation actually puts me, personally, in a better spot.
No, I'm not suggesting that such a selfish outlook is a good voting tactic. Just saying that there's plenty of people that are perfectly fine, and some that have even benefited from the malaise.
---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 09:10 AM ----------
I concur. Biden's silly, but not dumb. Palin's.... well, let's just say she's about as bright as the average person and leave it at that. Ryan's a pretty sharp guy and a very good speaker.
It's because the town is the closest thing to the base. I agree we should slash the Military budget. To increase it for what? a few months ago the defense dept wanted to try this sonic air boom. It's idea was to ride waves through the sky and travel faster then any airplane. Ever...it lasted for under thirty seconds what was supposed be an hour and it broke apart into the ocean.
Point is I agree. We are already spending way too much on stuff we do not even need. I say put that money back into the system for programs.
You are assuming, of course, that the resulting economic meltdown means that no one in your field will lose their jobs due to forced budget cutbacks and lack of consumer spending. That could be true for certain fields, but for most I think it would be a real issue at some point.
I am looking forward to Crazy Joe Biden's debate tactics. Should be amusing.
Ok then let me rephrase: almost everyone is negatively affected.
May I ask what business your family is in that you benefited from the recession? I work in a counter-cyclical industry (private education) that usually profits more when times are bad, but this has negatively affected us too since gov't is now locking down their funding due to budget concerns.
I think there's a number of defensible uses for the money; one would be to simply cut deficits (although I don't think this has great value in an economic slump). My personal tastes would be massive spending on alternative energy, research in various fields, and infrastructure spending.
While it'll never happen, I'd love to see targeted funds for transforming cities that could be bikeable into actual bikeable cities. If more American cities looked like Madison, WI, we'd have more people riding. That cuts emissions, improves people's fitness, cuts noise pollution and traffic, and numerous other benefits. I'm not suggesting that building bike lanes fixes an economy, just ranting about one of my personal desires.
---------- Post added 2012-10-04 at 09:18 AM ----------
I think you're overestimating the number of people that are adversely affected. Again, to be clear, I'm not pro-recession policies... just that not everyone gets hit hard, and many people wouldn't notice the difference if you didn't inform them.
One industry that's profited strongly from the recession is rental housing, which has seen both an increase in demand, and a fall in the cost of investment properties. People that have been buying rental properties during the slump have done great (I haven't, my parents have).
You thought it would be funny to mention your family pocked the wealth while American's struggled to maintain food on the table. Yes this irates me on a moral level. Exploiting or taking advantages of people who are already facing hard times. It's..unthinkable. It's like a man selling blankets a homeless shelter for ten bucks a pop. Sure he makes a profit but he's taking advantage of people in a hard situation.
Property trading. People tend to not realize that the best time to get into the real estate business is when the housing market is collapsing. They think that the market is permanently dead, but logic says that eventually it will return to normal. Combine that with all the bank foreclosures in the area, and we were able to buy huge chunks of several neighborhoods for dirt cheap. We flipped the houses and started renting them out. Once the market picks up again, we'll sell them off and make one hell of a profit. We've already made back well over our initial investment just off the renters.
Wage levels haven't been especially depressed in high-skill fields during the current economic slump. The drop in median income is mostly a result of unemployment; nominal wage stickiness has prevented any real drop in actual wages. I've personally seen significant salary increases over the last two years and nearly got a big bump from switching jobs (but lost out to another, more specifically qualified applicant). Individual circumstances swamp overarching trends; any individual can have success just fine in the context of an economic slump.
Just to reiterate, so no one misreads me, the economic slump is a very, very, very, very bad thing. I'm not saying it's not. Just that I don't have any reasonable personal expectation of suffering from it, and I know plenty of others in the same boat.
The banks are the ones who kicked the people out of their homes. We just made sure that they didn't go to waste. Anyway, it's pretty hard to feel sorry for somebody when you're pulling up bathroom tile because the floor underneath it is rotted from piss. Those people lived like fucking animals.
Did you guys know Big Bird was funded by communist!! Clearly PBS is the reason we are so in debt to China lol
I've seen the same shit. It can be pretty appalling. I helped fix up a duplex that had been a crackhouse. We had neighbors coming over and thanking us for buying it and turning it around, as it had basically been a den of crime for years on end until it was foreclosed on.
On the flip side, I've been part of doing minor rehab work on houses that were owned by old folks that were just moving into smaller or cheaper places. It takes all kinds.