Economic forecast for 2004

reprise said:
I suspect that voters in the US - like voters here - no longer see "economic growth" as a measure by which they can predict the likely quality of their own lives, and no longer believe that just because something is "good for the economy", it will be of benefit to the average citizen.
Click to expand...

Anecdote alert!

I was laid off from a really good paying job in July. I got a much lower paying job in September. This is probably the case for a lot of my fellow hi-tech employees. Our industry has been decimated. Probably even worse than decimated.

(Edited to add: And the hi-tech industry is taking advantage of the large number of unemployed hi-tech workers. The wages they are now offering are less than half of what they used to be!)

So I am no longer on the chart of the Unemployed statistics.

Now how about that quality of life? Well, mine is much lower than it was in July, I can tell you that. Add a new baby to the picture and you get an idea. Things are so tight they squeak. Eating a meal from Burger King is a major financial decision.

But offer me that or staying on unemployment and guess which option I will go with. If I was still unemployed, my family and I would have had to move to much lower living conditions by now. A serious step backward.

We would have had to sell our house, instead of considering just refinancing it. We would probably be living in an apartment.

So, yeah. I think we are on the road to recovery. It will be a while before we are back to where we were, but I am confident we will get back to where we were.

Christmas this year is really going to suck, though.
 
The thing that really sucks about being unemployed is that the effects are felt long after you are re-employed because it wipes out your savings. Really, really fast.
 
shanek said:

There are really only two things you can do with dollars: spend them in the American economy, or invest them in the American economy.
Click to expand...
You can also bury them in the back yard. While ensuring that you spend all the counterfeit ones.

Are you not perturbed at the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US?
 
Luke T. said:
I was laid off from a really good paying job in July.
Click to expand...

Just to jump in with an old saying: "A recession is when you lose your job; a depression is when I lose mine."
 
Frank Newgent said:

You can also bury them in the back yard. While ensuring that you spend all the counterfeit ones.
Click to expand...

There are non-counterfeit ones???

Burying it just takes it out of circulation for awhile. If enough people do that, it will curb inflation; other than that, it doesn't have that much of an effect.

Are you not perturbed at the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US?
Click to expand...

Of course I am. My home county was pretty much all manufacturing jobs and there are precious few of them left. Our government gave them away with the "free" trade agreements that it made (which in no way resemble free trade), have worked to devalue the dollar (ostensibly to get more people to buy domestic goods but which really results in capital flight), and instigated regulations like the minimum wage which virtually guarantee these jobs are going to go overseas eventually.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom