Correct. This is exactly why the people who are altering the definition are entirely propagandists (sometimes known as politicians) and journalists. In this case, they work in unison because they happen to be on the same team at the moment, so journalists are hoping and begging the government to change the definition so that it provides them sufficient cover so that they don't have to write on their front pages that the economy entered into a recession, which is obviously bad for the cause. It's the tacit "Help me help you!" situation. Their approach is that if the government says it, by journalists' standards (for the moment, of course) that's good enough by itself to validate it. Voila!
This is all stupid anyway. Call it anything you want at anytime, it doesn't change reality.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200928131548/https://www.merri...
https://web.archive.org/web/20201014032220/https://www.merri...
That doesn’t mean we have to listen to them. It is not rational to disambiguate truth from fiction based on words you read on the internet. It’s especially irrational to trust the words more when they’re on website served from a domain name of a company that paid an employee to write them according to some quarterly editorial calendar and Trello board.
If you’re altering your behavior in response to changes in a reality you interpret based on the words of a 2015 Columbia journalism major, then you have bigger problems than whether your most-frequented news sites tell you we’re in a recession.
“Aesthetic” is my current bugbear.
Is it the case that because Merriam-Webster or the Oxford University Press decide arbitrarily to change the meaning of a word that we all have to concede to that authority? Is there room for another dictionary forum to exist? At what point does language diverge into different dialects because of this phenomena?
The fluidity of language really is fascinating to behold.
Ironically, it's the exact same media attention phenomenon that meant that some people who have longstanding and entirely sincere objections to undue emphasis placed on US institutions in Wikipedia rocked up this week to the Recession article to question whether the NBER definition has been given undue prominence for the last 15 years, and not some other time when the definition of recession wasn't a major news story with unfortunate implications for a certain political figure.
So longstanding that not a peep of complaint is heard when Democracts use it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsYGOAVqmQI
Or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a 2017 interview: "Our society has come to respect people, whatever their sexual preference," Ginsburg said. - https://freebeacon.com/courts/barrett-shredded-for-saying-se...
But I'm sure there's a very sophisticated, nuanced distinction I'm missing, that explains the different treatment as totally not partisan gaslighting. Starting with an explanation for why "preference" is considered changeable - I can't make myself prefer one food over another, but maybe I'm an exception.
Perhaps it was the work of time travellers desperate to create the impression that Amy Coney Barrett is not a born again liberal, or perhaps, if the extent of your knowledge of the debate is restricted to gotcha videos involving Democrat politicians from the Washington Free Beacon, you're not particularly qualified to tell people with a personal stake in the debate that they actually invented all the longstanding objections to "preference" to criticise a foreign judge's comments they were barely even aware of, that they're the ones indulging in partisan gaslighting...
Call it a "gotcha" video all you want, but it's clear to everyone else what it is - a plain as day demonstration of double standards.
Of course politicians being self-serving hypocrites isn't news, or limited to Democrats, as the Republicans demonstrated when they argued it isn't appropriate to make a Supreme Court appointment near the end of Obama's term, only to find it very appropriate when they got to appoint a judge.
What is news is that now dictionaries cooperate in their hypocrisy.
What is novel is your insistence that it makes more sense to assume dictionaries conspiring against conservative jurists are a more logical explanation for Merriam Webster adding an advisory warning to a definition other authoritative style guides cautioned about in 1991, 2003, and 2013 than it was headline news today, and lots of people asked so we looked into it. Some might say making a change three decades after others wasn't that rapid...
And what did they find? That the term was routinely used within the LGBT community and never remarked on as offensive [1,2]? Or did they neglect to apply even the minimum of scrutiny, and simply took the word of grievance experts and hypocritical politicians as gospel, and presented it as a majority, widely-held belief in their dictionary?
I should note even the implication that 'preference' implies choice is utterly made up - I prefer chocolate to carrots, and blues to polka, yet I cannot choose to change those preferences. Whereas I am currently oriented south, and it is trivial to change that and re-orient myself to face west instead.
> some other people making less scrutinised remarks
Not just "some other people" - Joe Biden used the term while running for president. A presidential candidate's statements are usually closely scrutinized.
You are fooling nobody who does not want to be fooled.
[1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/lgbt-websites-now-say-sexual-...
[2] https://thepostmillennial.com/sexual-preference-is-not-an-of...
You can quote all the "anti-woke" attack blogs you like (I hear there's a subgenre dedicated to quoting words that rappers use to argue that everyone else should use them too!), but when you insist that the issue was invented to trap Amy Coney Barrett some thirty years later, you're only fooling yourself.
(as an aside, it's amazing that when you start putting sexual orientation on an equal footing in terms of mutability and importance and civil rights implications to your preference for chocolate you can't grasp that might actually be the bit gay people don't like...)
Then I read Orwell's Politics and the English Language, and 1984.
After that, the fluidity of language appears to me to be more and more in the hands of lexicographers as Newspeak developers who work hand-in-glove (with Them, whom else? :P ) to form the new way of thinking. No more romantic notions of lexicography as the track record of a civilization's linguistic endeavours.
I am worried we will get another wave of censorship about "recession conspiracy".
Yup, without a doubt. Anyone talking about a recession will be an anti-biden conspiracy theorist. Then, shortly after the election, they will admit there is a recession but that they are doing a really good job combating it.
Examples:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/29/opinion/recession-not-for...
It is true, as the Biden folks argued, that the nation’s official recession arbiter, the National Bureau of Economic Research, has yet to call one, because it relies on many more signals. Still, it sure sounded as if the Biden team was splitting hairs. (It's a recession opinion)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/opinion/recession-gdp-eco...
But we won’t be. That’s not how recessions are defined; more important, it’s not how they should be defined. It’s possible that the people who actually decide whether we’re in a recession — more about them in a minute — will eventually declare that a recession began in the United States in the first half of this year, although that’s unlikely given other economic data. But they won’t base their decision solely on whether we’ve had two successive quarters of falling real G.D.P. (It's not a recession opinion)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/business/biden-remarks-re...
That is true — not every recession includes two full quarters of negative growth, and in 1947 the economy shrank for two quarters without a recession declaration. But typically, two quarters of contraction lead to a recession call. (It's a recession opinion)
Stock Market Drop Accelerated as Recession Seemed More Likely
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/business/stock-market-rec...
etc.
Personally I think we're in a recession and/or facing economic headwinds due to a lot of different factors. I also don't know that it matters. If Biden came out today and said "we're in a recession" what exactly has changed? What specific actions should be taken so that we're not in a recession? Should we never be in a recession? Is that possible? If we are in a recession then why is that the case? Can anyone even point to specific actions that any organization or person has taken to cause a recession? I mean the Russian invasion of Ukraine is for sure a big deal in the global economy. Interest rates rising is a big factor. Do we point to those and say "those caused a recession"? If we do, then what do we do about it? Lower interest rates and lift sanctions on Russia so we're no in a recession?
And recession discussions are all over mainstream news and extensively covered by journalists and bloggers so I'm really confused as to why anyone who is talking about a recession would be an anti-Biden conspiracy theorist. Is the entire US public square an anti-Biden conspiracy since everyone is talking about it?
The 'theory' that china deliberately manufactured and released covid is a conspiracy theory. I have not seen COVID called one, nor even, the idea that a lab in china was researching it, nor that its release is accidental.
There being a pandemic, that a lab is somewhere researching COVID, that a lab may have accidentally released COVID do not contain any conspiracies.
The phrase is a very clear term of art in my view: a conspiracy theory is a story about how the world works which places implausible conspiracies at the heart of its causal structure; in the manner of movie plots; and presents a paranoid style of reasoning in which major events, and their distal effects, are the deliberate decisions of a small number of people.
Conspiracy theories, and theorists, are by definition engaged in an epistemic vice; a pseudoscientific activity of explanation; a kind of intellectualised schizoprehnia.
It was a conspiracy theory, according to liberals, to believe that the vaccine would be mandatory and that it would not stop the disease.
Remember people saying that were called crazy not long ago.
It was a conspiracy that russia would invade ukraine according to conservatives until it happened.
Speculation gets you insulted until you are right.
Now if you say there is a recession biden worshippers will assume this is some kind of personal attack.
Which "conservatives" said Russia wouldn't invade? The realist view of IR is, largely, the conservative one -- and many conservatives were saying Russia was strongly inclined to engage in this sort of politics.
I have no idea what you're talking about. This just seems like apologetics for conspiracy theories.
"'They said' X was a conspiracy, and it isnt! When I say Y is, soon you'll find out it isnt too!".
Well 'They' didnt say it was; these mythologies of persecution reveal a lot.
2) its been claimed multiple times the vaccine could prevent the spread of covid or gaining it if I remember correctly.
3) fox news and many other groups claimed russia wouldn't invade. many disagreed but that is beside the point, we are talking about the slander of speculation.
4) that quote is a useless flanderization of my argument, I claimed many groups use the conspiracy argument to silence speculation.
as we see now its highly likely we are in recession, thats hardly a conspiracy theory I am pushing.
> It was a conspiracy theory, according to liberals, to believe that the vaccine would be mandatory and that it would not stop the disease.
> It was a conspiracy that russia would invade ukraine according to conservatives until it happened.
You appear to be agreeing with him? In any case, the use of "nutcase" isn't productive.
The whole point was to show that its a common tactic regardless of your "side" of the political spectrum to demonize speculations as foolish conspiracy theories.
I was attempting to avoid being biased.
Honestly? If you say "we're in a recession" and then it turns out it is or becomes a recession, it sounds like you were right. Not that you caused it.
Dig through google scholar using terms like "confidence" and "recession" to find many more.
Dig through google scholar using terms like "confidence" and "recession" to find many more.
Dig through google scholar using terms like "confidence" and "recession" to find many more.
It's reasonable to think that the fact of a recession is of more electoral consequence than the declaration; I'm a little curious if the common definition or the NBER definition correlates with incumbent (dis) advantage better.
Are we looking at different stock markets?
No better prediction of future profits, than current profits.
Do you have any evidence from that? Personally, I'm pro-union, etc.; but what you wrote sounds like a bias-affirming conspiracy theory.
Why do you repeat yourself? Friendly reminder that Bohemian Club was founded by the San Francisco Chronicle editorial staff of the 1860s.
Even Biden "declared" recessions before (in 2020) and people didn't start questioning him or any economist opining so.
But now we have opinions by economists getting 'fact checked". Oh, the irony if fact checkers would get downsized due to "uncertain economic times".
Any other administration but his and wed hear "We don't need an official pronouncement by the NBER to tell us we're in a recession!"
Maybe in the current conditions it feels like just propagandizing.
But labor growing at 5-6% and core CPI growing at 5-6% and unemployment being historically low are numbers that are very important to the Fed (commodities inflation and oil is not that important or the Fed would have done something in 2011-2014).
They're likely to keep hiking rates until actual pain and a real recession is felt and those inflation numbers fall closer to 2% and unemployment rises sharply. They aren't just trying to propagandize in order to address the labor movement, to hit their stated goals and numbers they need to break its back with a recession. We're just not there yet.
Although maybe in the future they'll consider this a double-dip recession and we just hit the first dip.
I'm sorry what? Profits now need to be reduced? That seem the opposite of economic growth.
The 1970s saw high inflation and low profits, suggesting that corporations were facing enough competition that they absorbed as much of the price shock as they could before they passed price hikes to the consumer.
Low unemployment points is a tight labor market, meaning there is also competition to get workers.
And the economy is hardly dominated by monopolies. Take a moment to tally where all of your money is spent, and see how many of those companies are anywhere near a monopoly. The vast majority of people's expenses is spent in competitive markets: housing, food, energy (no company is a monopoly in any of those markets - largest housing company has < 10% of market share, largest bank has < 20% of market, largest energy company has < 30% of market share).
Here is another take on the subject:
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/paul-krugman-mon...
>So high profits and high inflation suggests an economy dominated by monopolies,
then pivot to
>Competition has decreased throughout the economy.
Competition decreasing is a far cry proving "an economy dominated by monopolies," which is simply not true.
>Or, to take another measure, in 1999 there were 8,000 companies listed on USA stock markets, but now there are only 3,400 companies
That says more about stock markets than number of companies. Fortunately the Census Bureau tracks relevant facts (and there are more at the BLS), and their data puts literally millions more businesses in 2019 [1] (the last year they have data) than in 1999 [2].
And nothing in their data supports "suggests an economy dominated by monopolies".
Care to explain how you measure dominated? As is most of consumer money is spent there? As in the majority of businesses? As in what?
[1] https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2019/econ/susb/2019-sus...
[2] https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/1999/econ/susb/1999-sus...
High inflation means values are simply bigger, with no other changes needed, so increased profits are exactly expected in high inflation (along with high revenues, high prices, high costs, high spending, .... that is the definition of inflation).
So your claim that larger numbers "suggests an economy dominated by monopolies" is demonstrably not true. It can merely be inflation with zero other changes.
Assume a company has gross margins of 100%, then they face a price surge in supplies, a price surge of 50%. If they are facing enough competition, they will pay the full cost of the price surge, lowering their gross margins to 50%. None of the price hike will be passed to the consumer.
This is economics 101, if the subject really interests you, there is plenty on the Internet that you can read on this subject.
Here’s an example that I have from a good source: Early on in the pandemic grocery stores started charging more for one food company’s products. This is a major, national brand. They hadn’t raised prices and the stuff they make wasn’t the kind of thing that flew off shelves like bread and tortillas did back then.
For many months this continued until the company said “screw it” and raised their own prices to match.
Clearly the competition between grocery stores didn’t have an effect. While the food producing company might have worried about the higher prices leading to less sales they couldn’t really do anything about it and decided they might as well take the profits instead.
First, gross margin is not net profit, which more accurately represents what a company could possibly absorb. Second, no industry has even gross margins near 100%; more accurate is around ~35% [1] .
Assume a company has actual net profits of 5% (more in line with actual net profits), and cost of goods (or labor) goes up 10-20% (and same for all their competitors, since all are sourcing goods in the same markets).
Then they pass cost on to consumers or go out of business.
This is a more accurate model using real world numbers from the current economy.
If I have more competition, I might trade off taking some of the hit from my increased costs while still passing some on to the consumer to offer a lower overall price than my competition and potentially increase my market share, which ideally still leads to greater profits due to increased sales.
Except your supplier.
I don't think this is true at all, look at the rise of "store brands" often time they are of lower quality and people still pick them because they are cheaper
As an example of a brand people to seek out, People do not buy Toyota brand because it is "fancy" they buy it because it has worked hard to cultivate a reputation for reliability across all of its market lines, where other brands have known to cut corners in quality to lower prices
For example, I will buy Brand name Advil not because the generic is less effective, but because every generic I have found is EXTREMELY bitter to me and the Brand name is not. This is an inactive ingredient, but it makes the product worth more to me, so I buy it.
In your mind I am just buying "for the brand name" when there are "perfectly good" alternatives out there, but to me the alternative are of inferior quality and or missing something I find to be important.
Under perfect competition the economic profits would approach zero.
But you can still have unlimited of accounting profits, even in a perfectly competitive market provided you are delivering enough value to customers with some sort of unique value proposition.
And if high profit means "innovation" it seems like "getting rid of high profit" is the wrong decision?
In other words, the supply is insufficient in the face of overwhelming demand, which is why prices increase in a functioning economy.
Inflation is always a result of monetary policy; if the cash in the system (low interest rates, quantitative easing, government stimulus, etc) is increased without a corresponding increase in output, then inflation will naturally occur because demand for goods and services will increase beyond the capacity of supply. (h/t Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman)
But, if economic output is actually decreasing because of those same economic policies (such as hiking interest rates or external factors such as war in Ukraine), then we can easily enter stagflation, which is stagnant growth with rampant inflation.
We've had three periods since WWII where inflation hit double digits: the period immediately following the war (1946-1948), 1974-1975 during the oil crisis, and 1979-1983 following Carter's disastrous presidency (partly what he inherited, and then he made it much, much worse).
In the last period (79-83), Paul Volcker immediately took strong action to control inflation by hiking interest rates through the roof. This caused immediate economic pain, but, in concert with lower taxes and reduced regulation, it succeeded in ushering in a strong bull market that lasted, by some definitions, decades.
That's why the central banks are acting strongly to reduce inflation by raising rates, assuming they have the stomach to keep it up even as it might force the economy into a temporary stall: controlling inflation by reducing the money supply through higher rates has historically made for a stronger economy in the near future, and rates can always be reduced to inject stimulus into the economy if needed.
Here's another Milton Friedman quote: "Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."
I sorta agree in one aspect - I don't think media really has the ability anymore to hold gov't to account, but I don't think it's because they aren't talking about these things or being a mouthpiece - some are, some aren't (and who is where depends on the issue, party, etc. often). No, to me it seems it's because gov't just doesn't care what the media says anymore. THAT is the consistent part, they've learned that no matter what the media says, the people don't have the power to change anything if they just ignore it or put out talking points, it will almost always just blow over. And yes, that is bad.
Are you saying fox news and onn or whatever nutcase media are not constantly blaming all things wrong on Biden? "The media" doesn't just mean news outlets you disagree with you know.
That is not what the media would have said.... Ironically that is what the media is functionally saying about the today's economy., for example repeating the lie that we have had the "most job growth in history" when in reality we still have not gotten back to pre-covid employment
Given the imperfect information, and the delay in gathering that imperfect information IMO governments attempting to "change" the economy is generally for the worse, and economies get better, faster when there is little or no government manipulation to them. In Short, the best thing the government can do is get out of the way and let the market work.
Sadly both the government, and the population want to believe that there is "someone" in control, so they look to government to solve the problem. This is also why conspiracy, and religion are so prevalent. People in general can not accept chaos or randomness, thus someone has to be in charge. at every level pulling the strings and causing the outcomes we see
Yeah and Boris Johnson resigned. About 70% of Americans wish the whole Biden administration would do the same!
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/us/politics/trump-covid-p...
Let’s go back to the Carter administration standard, then: The US economy is in a banana. Let’s hope it’s not a serious one.
It just doesn't filter through the bubble of propagandists and journalists that still mostly control our discourse. It's probably unpopular there.
Truth is we will have to wait until 2023 or later to call this a recession.
My suspicion is this is all wallstreet's shenanigans. There is a growing labor rights movement and this climate makes it hard to pass any laws that support the movement. "Minimum wage caused low profits and an unrecoverable bear market" is the sentiment they want to spread (by they I mean the market makers and investment bankers of wallstreet).