I'll toast our success after we unwind QE and a reasonable fraction of the bottom 70% have jobs and wages that support buying a house.
We still have TBTF banks that can implode again, just like in 2007. We still count military spending and excess medical spending on the plus side of the GDP and productivity ledgers. We still have disturbing quality of life issues in policing, the Drug War, education, and health.
Let's say Putin wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and invades some FSU nations. Still complacent?
There is nothing virtuous about “caring” compassionate” “progressives” demonstrating how caring and compassionate and progressive they are by spending money yet to be earned by generations yet to be born.
Do you have a source for that? According to Wikipedia, the US ranked 151st for year 2013. Did they make such a huge jump in ranking in 2014? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_g...
The US might have REAL GDP growth. It's population grows about 1% per year. How much more GDP above this 1% does the US really have?
This being said. How do you measure GDP growth? In money? Your would have to subtract inflation. How do you measure inflation? Increase in money supply?
Would be interesting to see the GDP growth based on energy consumption: http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-...
Maybe someone has the statistics for the last 100 or at least last 20 years.
Energy consumption is not 100% correlated, as there are different patterns of trade than there used to be.
A more interesting question is why we focus so much on national numbers, as most of the large forces in the economy are international. Keeping score at the national level creates things like the inequality of income illusion, where global inequality is decreasing while inequality in many countries is increasing.
Solid economic growth in the 70ies, then a big dip around 1980, a smaller around 1988, then solid growth in the 90ies until around 2004. Then decline. I would trust this model much more than any government announced GDP growth.
Reminds a little bit to Sow jet Russia. They had a tractor manufacturing plant with state given output increases they had to match. They were not able to fulfill the quota but since output (like many other things) were measured in "tons of tractors produced" the solution to the problem was easy. While they did not produce more tractors, the tractors became heavier and heavier every year...
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_snd_d_nus_mbbl_a_cur.htm
The vehicle fleet has been significantly improved in the period you are talking about:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/13/c...
So even though petroleum consumption has been flat or whatever, miles driven have expanded by ~2x:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA
I doubt it's as noticeable, but housing and appliances have also improved over that period (the average energy efficiency of newer buildings is probably the biggest effect, but better appliances and lighting probably manage to show up).
Decline after 2004? sure.. it went from 100 quadrillion Btu to 97 in 2013.
There are structural issues with how America works that has prevented trickle-down economics from being a reality.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/08/why-britain...
There are only 3 countries in the world (Luxemburg, Switzerland, and Norway) with a higher median household disposable income than the U.S. (using PPP) [1].
Obviously this doesn't tell the whole situation since most of Europe provides more government services, but the U.S. also has a lower tax burden (which isn't fully taken into account in disposable income because of VAT).
Yet the number of folks who want to come to the US is unending, including folks from Western Europe, SK and Japan.
1) All those people are average where they are coming from.
2) All those peopke are coming to America expecting to end up as average Americans.
3) All those people have an accurate understanding of the economic conditions they are coming from and those experienced by the average American.
Otherwise, it's a complete non-sequitur.
Elberto34, of all the clowns you are the funniest one. ;-)
Debt as a percentage of GDP is a way to quantify what the confidence is likely to be, but that's a convenient estimate, not reality. Confidence is paramount, and that's difficult to quantify.
The essential point is that nobody seriously expects America to default on its loans.
And, no, the rantings and hysteria aside, China can't "call in" loans. That's not how it works. Bonds have a maturation date, decided in advance.
The US dollar and S&P 500 has outperformed all peers
US GDP growth has exceeded nearly all counties, including emerging markets (adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile Russia, EU, Australia, Canada and Japan all having problems due to falling oil and stagnation.
Yields still rock bottom due to huge demand for low yielding debt
America is not just pulling ahead of the rest of the world, it's running circles around it.
I hate to be the bearer of good news, but America, for all its flaws, is still the envy of the world. Its fastest-growing, most innovative tech companies and its most prestigious institutions of higher learning, such as the Ivy League, Caltech and MIT, are inundated with applicants from foreigners. Foreigners also can’t get enough of America’s most expensive real estate, nor can they get enough of America’s low yielding debt. If we really were in a ‘post America’ era as the left insists we are, none of this would be happening.
The US economy has hardly been in a slog, especially compared to the rest of the world. The last quarter of GDP was revised to 5% – the fastest growth since 2003.