What has the economy done to you?

[blkfordsedan]

I forgot to add to my last post: My wife worked as a vet tech the last 4 years. When she started, their business was booming. The kennels were all full on weekends with people boarding pets, surgeries scheduled all day, everyday, etc.. She was putting in 45+ hours/week and still couldn't get everything done. She quit voluntarily last month because they were down to only 2-3 surgeries and 4-5 boarder per month. The vet that owned the place was not paying himself some months and refused to lay anyone off or cut their hours. I think he was actually dipping into his own personal finances to make payroll and he is already past retirement age.

[Damkid]

Where I work, it has been steady ever since I started working there almost 3 years ago, so the economy hasn't effected me and I hope it doesn't either

[MJD]

Dad always told me .........

..........just because we in USA had one depression, does not mean we could not have another one !!!
But, when they lived through those times, they were always cautious from those days forward. I remember he made do with a lot of home made work and remedies to struggles on the farm at times. I admire all that thinking, and try to remember so many times the words of wisdom he had !

[1990new]

I'm no economic expert.
My Dad always voted for Democrats and my Mom always voted for Republicans.
I'm not a Democrat or a Rebuplican. I vote Independent, but sometime I don't like any of them.

I grew up on a farm (1944-1964). Peaches were our main cash crop, but every few years a late freeze would come, it would be too wet or too dry or a hail storm would damage the crop so badly that we couldn't sell them for much. So depressions came more frequently for us. as they do for most farmers. We had to work twice as hard those years to plant annual crops (cotton, corn, wheat, tomatoes, peppers, etc.) while still doing the work needed to maintain the orchards. Lucky for use we also could eat, can and freeze our vegetables and the meat from chickens and pigs (had cows only for milk and chickens for eggs too).
While we had it tough sometimes while I was growing up, in the US overall, it was the best of times according to these facts from Wikipedia:

"The U.S. economy grew by an average of 3.8% from 1946 to 1973, while real median household income surged 55% (or 1.6% a year).[4][32] The economy since 1973, however, has been characterized by both slower growth (averaging 2.7%), and nearly stagnant living standards, with household incomes increasing by 10%, or only 0.3% annually.[4] The worst recession in recent decades, in terms of lost output, occurred during the 2008 financial crisis, when GDP fell by 4.1% from the spring of 2008 to the spring of 2009."

So you see the situation we are in now has been building for a long time and it's likely to get worse before it gets better.

People are now losing service jobs (aka Vet Tec mentioned above) because people who lost manufacture job have had to take other lower paying service jobs just to eat, have a place to live and buy gas, or they are losing their jobs altogether.
Our General Aviation MFG businesses are being sold to China (they say many of the jobs will stay here though...believe that one?) Large Commercial Aviation is moving within the US to escape union wages (Boeing will begin building some of the new Dreamliner 787's in Charleston, SC this year.) There is a mass migration going on right now in the US like there was during the great depression because people are losing their jobs and their homes and have to move to try to find another job just to survive. Home values continue to drop almost everywhere. (The value of my home has dropped $40,000 since I bought it at the height of the market 3 years ago.) Unemployment benefit have or are running out for most of the unemployed and while the employment statistics are supposedly improving. I believe some if not a lot of that improvement is because people are giving up on looking for a job and making do with fewer household breadwinners. I'm know more than one family locally whose grown children have moved back in and brought their families with them.

In my opinion, the US Government cannot continue to try to spend us out of this situation. Until the Congressmen and Senators who are members of the two big political parties quit saying what they think the people who are likely to vote for them want to hear and get together and institute some tough policies that must be instituted to stop this slide, we will be getting into worse trouble. I'm not smart enough to know what those policies are, but surely we have elected some people smart enough to know how to run a government, haven't we?

[bastille10]

We've built our economy by selling each other hamburgers. Thats not going to last. We need manufacturing. Would people pay more for "made in USA" stuff? When you buy that $4.00 sweatshirt at Sam's Club, just ponder that there used to be a guy in Wisconsin at a textile mill.
No easy answers - just think about your purchases. Support local business.

[FFW]

Middle class is pretty much being wiped out. It be either Rich or poor like in Mexico. There so many factors that contribute of this epidemic but i believe many of us lived out of our budget or was not prepared of at least for no work for 5 years.

[1990new]

We've built our economy by selling each other hamburgers. Thats not going to last. We need manufacturing. Would people pay more for "made in USA" stuff? When you buy that $4.00 sweatshirt at Sam's Club, just ponder that there used to be a guy in Wisconsin at a textile mill.
No easy answers - just think about your purchases. Support local business.

Excellent points. A service economy cannot provide the growth that is required to sustain a capitalistic society. It must produce material good which can be sold and then resold at a profit.
If anyone is so inclined: Here is a link to an excellent summary on the subject by Washington State University author and educator Richard Hooker.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GLOSSARY/CAPITAL.HTM