American Economy isn't as Bad as People Think

[superskippy]

The American economy while having a large deficit that has been there since the 1980's, has quite a bit of punch left and is still at least stronger than the Europeon economies, the Dollar is stronger than it has been in a while and a Euro though still worth more than a dollar now only has a 21 cent edge. The average American income has grown sharply and now makes 30% more than the average citizen in any nation in the EU. Your deficit is large and may have to be dealt with soon, but in terms of gross national income you have no equals on the planet, the dollar is staying steady and is closing in on the Euro which is the true compitetor on the economic stage at the moment. The strength of the dollar has not fallen yet, and in fact is increasing.

 

[liminal]

The average American income has grown sharply and now makes 30% more than the average citizen in any nation in the EU.

The average income may be up, but that's misleading: it's not that the average person's income has 'grown sharply,' it's that the super-rich have gotten even richer, throwing the average off.

On another note, I just heard Bush announce that the budget for this year was $90-some-odd billion dollars less than expected. Well HOO-AHH. He's been watching too much Star Trek: Scotty pads the amount of time it will take him to fix the engines so he's done ahead of time. No one's impressed, you've still blown the biggest surplus in US history, whether or not you padded the deficit estimate.

 

[Connecticutter]

The average income may be up, but that's misleading: it's not that the average person's income has 'grown sharply,' it's that the super-rich have gotten even richer, throwing the average off.

If you have it, would you mind pointing me to the statistics that suggest this?

 

[anomaly]

If you have it, would you mind pointing me to the statistics that suggest this?

I don't have a nice website for you to go to, but I do have a book with some statistics. The level of inequality in the US has grown all through the 90s and 00s, and since middle class wages remained relatively static throughout the decade, we can conclude that the 'super-rich' have indeed seen their salaries grow. In 1990, the CEO to blue-collar worker salary ratio was 85:1: by 1999 that ratio was up to 475:1. It's rather obvious that liminal was right.

While the American economy is still the strongest in the world, we must understand how fragile it currently is. Our economy right now is completely dependent upon one fossil fuel: oil. If we happen to get a lower supply of oil in the coming years, driving the prices up, the economy may very well crumble. This complete dependency of ours is now accompanied by the Chinese and Indian demand for oil rising drastically, and also we've many geologists predicting peak oil to be 2007 (after which time fewer and fewer amounts of oil can be drilled). Now, this all may mean trouble for the future (unless, of course, we happen to invade an oil-rich nation and set up a friendly gov't which will secure us oil...hmmmm), but richt now, we already have a weakening economy. The dollar is dropping in value, and the deficit continues to rise (such a scenario has been seen under many a Republican president in the latter fourth of the twentieth century). While the American economy is still number one, it does have some serious competition. Soon, most economists agree that there will be only three real economic powers in the world: the EU, the US, and China.

 

[Nemo]

Greenspeak: In a faith-based economy, you have to believe that you are better off than you were before.

 

[nkgupta80]

The American economy is still at the top. The problem isn't that we're facing huge problem right now, the problem is that there are very bad future prospects. The dollar is still in command, but countries are very much losing faith in it. Euro is becoming more and more attractive to countries. BTW, 21 cents is a big edge, and should be considered as a bad sign for the dollar.

Anomaly is right in that our economy is really fragile. And this isn't some republican vs. democrat thing that could fix it. Almost any party in office would not fix this problem, or be able to fix it. Oil isn't the only problem (geologist's predictions on oil have always been off). Our manufacturing base, a good measure of a country's economic strength, is being taken over by Asian industries, mainly China, and thats a problem we need to address.