The Economy (US)

[Silver]

Discuss it here so I can be better up-to-date with the current climate.

All I know (or rather keep hearing from everyone at work) of it are two things.

1. Empty shelves in food stores.
2. Ridiculously high apartment rent prices.

[arewethereyet]

The prices of eggs and butter have gone sky high.

Something I noticed that makes me crazy is that car insurance companies used to, in part, base your premium on how many miles you drive in a year. At renewal they'd want your new mileage.

Since COVID and more people not commuting to work, they stopped giving you a better rate for driver fewer miles...at least our insurance did. Doesn't seem to matter that I have been with that company for most of my adult life. Now that I could qualify for that rate break....it doesn't matter anymore. grrr

[Silver]

I'm not one to trust everything I read, especially online, but I'm no expert on vetting economic articles. That being stated, this is the first thing to pop up on my search.

How Is the US Economy Doing?

The Balance

The unemployment rate has remained low during 2022. The unemployment rate was 3.7% in November 2022. That number was the same as it was in October and is low by historical standards. 1

Real gross domestic product (GDP), often touted as a measure of the overall economy, increased in the fourth quarter of 2022 by 2.9%. Prior to that, GDP had increased by 3.2% in the third quarter after dropping 1.6% and 0.6% respectively in the first and second quarters.2

Orders for durable goods like machinery and equipment increased by 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2022, while nondurable goods (pharmaceuticals, food, and lodging) rose by 1.5%.3

In December 2022, The Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee increased interest rates by 50 basis points, with a target range of 4.25% to 4.50%.4

The Consumer Price Index decreased by 0.1% from November to December. Prices on all items increased by 6.5% over the last twelve months, the smallest increase since October 2021.5

The stock market overall sustained growth during the previous year, but in January 2022 the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dipped significantly, and both indexes were low and erratic into March before regaining ground in April. In June the S&P 500 dipped into a bear market, 20% below its recent peak. By September, the index had gained back some of that ground but was still well below its peak.67

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

‘I should be able to explain economics to you, but I flunked that course. Not my fault. They taught it at 8:00 in the morning, and there is absolutely nothing you can learn out of one bloodshot eye.’ - Lewis Black

Boru

[Fireball]

If one took all the economists in the US and lined them up end to end, they would still point in different directions.

[Angrboda]

[Jackalope]

The economy is functioning precisely as intended - money continues to be funnelled from your wallet into someone else's who scarcely needs it.

[Silver]

Economy Is Improving, but Recession Risk, Inflation Still Hover

Nerd Wallet

You can always trust a nerd, right?

The latest bevy of government data shows prices are declining, wage growth has slowed and people aren’t spending like they used to.

By all appearances it seems inflation is, indeed, being tamed. But at this point it’s still uncertain whether the U.S. is in the clear or instead glimpsing a recession on the horizon.

Kathryn Anne Edwards, an economist, independent policy consultant and adjunct at Rand Corp., uses a “bad week” analogy to describe the economic situation.

“In this fight against inflation, we’re in a perpetual state of Wednesdays,” Edwards says. “It’s midweek. We know we’ve had kind of some bad days and we’re on the hunt for any further evidence of how this week is going to go, but it’s not Friday yet. By Friday we’re going to know if it’s been a terrible week or not; by Wednesday it could still go either way.”

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Three things that would help the US economy:

-Raising (and enforcing) taxes on the rich, both individuals and corporations.

-Universal health care.

-Eliminating student debt.

(There are plenty of other things you could do - cut the military budget, invest heavily in alternative energies, rent control, living wages, etc -, but those are the biggies).

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

1.7 trillion in debt collecting interest, 1.2 trillion in yearly private health expenses. The trouble we'll have in establishing universal healthcare and education is the disruption of those two profit centers...and their ability to drive wages down in order to pay those bills. The us economy is based on strip mining the us public, not just our natural resources. The campaign ads would likely write themselves long before universal programs showed their benefits. In the interim, and even if the programs survived and proved their worth - we'd probably cover that loss by strip mining the rest of the world that much harder. Unless it's immigrants. We could probably make up the difference with an aggressive labor-for-citizenship program.