Economic recovery..

[Kevin Seitzer]

Hmmm...I'm not tracking with you here, KS. Industrial production and utilization since 1989 is summarized here:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/table12.htm

By my read, we've had negative growth since 2001 in industrial production, and a significant decrease in utilization.

Well, for example, here:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/ipdisk/gvp_sa.txt

and they have other data on the same site.

It's true that the rate of growth has slowed since 2001, and it took a big dip in the 2008-2009 recession which it hadn't completely recovered from in 2010.

EDIT: Actually, on second or third look, I'm not sure it's true that the rate of growth slowed after 2001. The rate of growth was really strong in the 1990s, and that makes the growth from 2001-2007 look smaller by comparison, but really it's pretty much in line with growth in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

[Lucky]

I am a little skeptical of tariffs doing much more than making things more expensive for consumers. FWIW, a 25% tariff on goods imported from China seems to be one of the central platforms in Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

I think you are right that tariffs will make things more expensive, but if they are used correctly they can do more. They can give us enough breathing room to get our economy back to some semblance of order.

And as I said in my other posts, I don't mind things being more expensive if they are quality goods made in America by workers paid a decent living wage. I don't mind having to save up for a television or washing machine. As long as it will get our economy turned around and running properly, I think we should be willing to make sacrifices.

[Lucky]

KS, one of my concerns is what we are building. As compared to previous generations, we are not building roads or bridges or dams. We are not building refineries or power plants. Wouldn't it make a difference if we returned to heavy construction and manufacturing?

[B-Fly]

I think you are right that tariffs will make things more expensive, but if they are used correctly they can do more. They can give us enough breathing room to get our economy back to some semblance of order.

And as I said in my other posts, I don't mind things being more expensive if they are quality goods made in America by workers paid a decent living wage. I don't mind having to save up for a television or washing machine. As long as it will get our economy turned around and running properly, I think we should be willing to make sacrifices.

Or we could adapt to the global economy by abandoning nation states in favor of one world government that imposes American-style age, wage and hour and product safety regulations on everybody. :hereTalonsTalonsTalons:

[chancellor]

Growth, annualized from 2000-2010, with your chart, I don't think even equals half of population growth in the US.

[chancellor]

Or we could adapt to the global economy by abandoning nation states in favor of one world government that imposes American-style age, wage and hour and product safety regulations on everybody. :hereTalonsTalonsTalons:

Shoot. Lucky's part of the Trilaterate Commission. I better start being nicer to him.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Growth, annualized from 2000-2010, with your chart, I don't think even equals half of population growth in the US.

It's not a good idea to measure from the peak before a recession to just after the bottom of another very deep recession. If your point is that the recent recession hit manufacturing output very hard, I will agree with that.

[Wonderboy]

Or we could adapt to the global economy by abandoning nation states in favor of one world government that imposes American-style age, wage and hour and product safety regulations on everybody.

I'm working on it! I'm working on it!

[chancellor]

It's not a good idea to measure from the peak before a recession to just after the bottom of another very deep recession. If your point is that the recent recession hit manufacturing output very hard, I will agree with that.

I hear you, but I'm with Lucky on this one - it's not merely that this is a down cycle, it's that the down cycle appears to have a great deal of permanence going with it. And the down cycle vis a vis manufacturing has been extremely long. Construction hasn't been affected as long, but the argument can be made that it's much more extreme and not likely to recover in the near future.

[Kevin Seitzer]

I hear you, but I'm with Lucky on this one - it's not merely that this is a down cycle, it's that the down cycle appears to have a great deal of permanence going with it. And the down cycle vis a vis manufacturing has been extremely long. Construction hasn't been affected as long, but the argument can be made that it's much more extreme and not likely to recover in the near future.

If your concern is what has happened to manufacturing in this downturn since 2008, I'm with you there. I also have concern about what happened to other sectors. Our economy took a serious hit and a jobless recovery and the overhang in the housing market continue to be problems without easy answers.

It seemed to me that you were saying that our manufacturing output has been in decline for a long time prior to the recent recession. I just don't see that. The output had been going up pretty steadily.

Now manufacturing employment, on the other hand, like farm employment a century before, is and has been going down for a long time, and that's not going to reverse itself. Just like farming became much more efficient and thus required less human labor, so manufacturing is becoming more efficient and requires less human labor. I don't think that's a trend we want to reverse. Even though it has painful consequences for our society due to the adjustments many individual people have to make, in the long term we will benefit from it greatly. To try to create make-work jobs for people in manufacturing and to put a drag on the productivity of our manufacturing in order to slow it down would just drag the process out, make the pain greater, and reduce the reward in the end.

[PaleoMan]

Yes, that's right. One third. It really is tragic. The best thing you can do for the future is buy plenty of ammo and rolls of razorwire because when Uncle Sam finally can no longer deliver those checks (and that day is fast approaching), your desperate neighbors will come for what remains of your dwindling resources:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41969508

Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement.

[Wonderboy]

The best thing you can do for the future is buy plenty of ammo and rolls of razorwire because when Uncle Sam finally can no longer deliver those checks (and that day is fast approaching), your desperate neighbors will come for what remains of your dwindling resources:

Hey, I've got my mini-helicopter all gassed up, so I'm ready!

[onejayhawk]

Hey, I've got my mini-helicopter all gassed up, so I'm ready!

That is not a helicopter. That is an autogyro. Much more economical, which makes it suitable for this thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro

J