Posted on 06/28/2005 5:14:12 AM PDT by OESY
...The U.S. expansion has been strong and steady despite the warnings of fragility, the repeated claims of a slowdown, and the fear of China (as intense as the Japan fears of the 1980s). U.S. growth has averaged a fast 3.9% pace since the initial 7.4% tax-cut-related growth celebration in the third quarter of 2003. Thanks in large part to smaller businesses, U.S. unemployment has fallen to 5.1%, with wage and salary income growing at a 10% annual rate in the revised fourth-quarter data. Beyond housing, household liquid assets have increased more than both total debt and foreign debt, helping build solid resources for the future. Add to that the nation's biggest unrecorded asset -- a robust system of innovation, market-based capital allocation, and decentralized decision-making.
Yet the litany against the U.S. economy is so ingrained and familiar that few disputed this spring's "slowdown." When strong data on income, employment, consumption and profits showed 3.5% first-quarter GDP growth and a continuation into the second quarter, the headlines shifted to other attacks -- adjustable-rate mortgages, a housing "bubble," the distribution of income -- rather than revising the slowdown story....
Why the urge to look for weakness at every turn? Partly, bad news sells; even in business news, if it bleeds, it leads. Second, some of the search for weakness is pure politics -- the party in the opposition has an interest in criticizing the economy and economic management. In its latest variation, the plan seems to be to paint the U.S. as an unfair, dying economy with insufficient resources to care for the elderly [and]... the poor....
The overarching reason for the consistent underestimation of the economy is a misunderstanding of its strengths and vulnerabilities. U.S. economic success rests on market-based flexibility and self-reliance unmatched in major foreign economies....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I don't know about this, maybe it's just my state (PA), but I there are an awful lot of small businesses closing up shop. Available jobs seem to be in "health care", paying minimum wage. Good paying jobs for the average Joe have long gone (Beth Steel, Agere, which used to be Western Electric).
Your good paying jobs and the steel industry were killed by the labor unions as were many of America's other industries. Who is in trouble now? Auto industry - controlled by the union. Airlines - controlled by multiple unions. Our education system - union controlled.
Unions are a Communist front and a major money source for the Democrats. The destruction of America as we know it is their aim. They are well on the way to success but we can still reverse their momentum if we carefully monitor the coming elections to prevent election fraud. However, if we don't reverse the trends in the courts elections will be meaningless.
I know what you are saying, the entire Northeast is like this. The good paying jobs seem to be in the education field, ie, public school system, they just raise property taxes every year to get their generous salary and benefit packages.
Historically only about 5%-10% of new business succeed anyway. The closing of large businesses usually also portend the closing of smaller businesses which serviced those large companies and their employees. Whether that is true of your area and the ones you see closing I don't know but it is a natural process.
The growth industries seem to be government and paid agitators.
People are leaving the N.E. too and the politicos don't get that History repeats itself and they are doing nothing to repeat Reagan instead of Marx.
Very true. But why would pols care....they all have good paying jobs and great benefits. Do expect them to lead??
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