How bad is our economy? (US)

[Fake Messiah]

Wages are up and unemployment is down, but prices are up, and war in Europe is aggravating the inflation. It's a mixed bag, unless you're a Trumpist, in which case it's the worst economy evah!

Ah, if Trump was the president he would just play golf and blame the deep state and Hillary as real perpetrators behind the war as yet another fake crisis to take over his presidency.

[vulcanlogician]

There's a severe shortage of low skill labor so you pay carpenters to do labor. 

Labor shortages can be beneficial to those looking for work, though. So at least there's that. Better than the Great Depression when all positions were filled.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There's a severe shortage of low skill labor so you pay carpenters to do labor. 

Labor shortages can be beneficial to those looking for work, though. So at least there's that. Better than the Great Depression when all positions were filled.

There is no ‘low skill labour’ shortage. There is a ‘people refusing to work for starvation wages’ glut.

Boru

[TaraJo]

I wonder why mainstream press is calling it a bad economy when there's low unemployment and high wages? It's almost as if the corporate oligarchs who run our media are objecting to having to pay their employees more.

[The Grand Nudger]

I recently read a piece that seems related to Neo's point. That there are certainly cases where the prices of things have gone up. That's contended to reflect the greater costs and lesser availability of a product or service - but, as far as the accounting is concerned, it's actually just down to producers and retailers seeing an opportunity to increase profits, buy backs, and dividends. And hey, lets not talk about those sweet sweet bonuses. That can make the economy seem terrible from some specific vantage point, but, ironically, it's the sort of stuff that boosts our economic numbers overall. There was a point where common 8 foot studs went from 8 to 16 bucks here - it was great for the Lowes.

[Foxaèr]

The price of studs.

[The Grand Nudger]

It really is an interesting case - because aside from a couple months at the start of the pandemic, mills here in the us have so many logs to cut that timber harvesters fight over who gets their logs through the mill first. There was never a shortage of logs or sawn lumber. It was profiteering, plain and simple, as with every major player in every sector of every us industry. Some of the players weren't even shy about it, explicitly stating that others raising prices gave them an opportunity to raise prices. As it turns out, the pandemic was great for business, just bad for people.

[Ranjr]

"We can't find people to work the mills because the gub'ment is paying them to do nothing."  

And half the country believed that.

[The Grand Nudger]

Amusingly, the gub'ment was paying them as well...and a whole lot more. They still decided that the way to go forward was to gouge the consumer. Record profits. Record buybacks. Record bonuses. Record dividends. Positively mind blowing fraud and grift in exploiting pandemic programs, all the while.

-but yeah, sure, the reason that your 2x4 costs more is because The Blacks aren't working. We should have starved them back into their starvation wages because that...you know, would definitely lead to businesses reducing their prices to pre-pandemic levels. You betcha!