Ya know the repuglicans are going to have to understand it's * a funky and low down feeling*, a majority of We the People are having, over this DEPRESSION. Yea baby.... because ~ What it is... is a DEPRESSION. The recession was in 2007.
We've evolved. They held off (during the election year) saying we were in a recession, till the dam burst just before the election & banks were failing along with the mortgage scene. While foreclosures were popping up everywhere, so were tent cities.
WE are going to have to be ROCK STEADY. If you have a republican congressperson stalling, voting no, bullshitting around with the political process and denying funds for OUR needs, we need to pounce on them. Write them, call, protest, pressure, write editorials.. because these same spendthrifts, tightwads, and cautious spenders, never denied Bush one damned dime for billions of dollars back door war budgets, for Wall Street bailouts & for tax breaks for the wealthy.
Suddenly they are frugal and unwilling to put out money to help the people who fill the federal coffers with cash, and pay their fat salaries?
No! We have to be mad as hell & not gonna take it any more!
That being said, this presents itself as a good segway to put in a plug for a new blog site by Enigma, (of Watergate Summer fame), titled THE 2009 DEPRESSION
a place to journal the goings on of our historic place in time. Swing by & share your thoughts & observations of the 2009 depression ~ What it is!
8 comments:
Yep... a good one too.. Nice segway...lol
What a great video.
One of my all-time favorite singers.
Back to the recession/depression. I know the economists have fairly precise definitions of what constitutes a recession v. depression. One marker of a depression is unemployment reaching 25%. In certain regions of the country -- Michigan, for one, the number is already more than 14%. In certain ethnic groups, unemployment is as high as 35%. Then there are the people who have given up looking for work completely -- they're not counted.
This is a mess and it began during Bush's time in office and everyone is to blame. Including Democrats who gave him the authority to go to war on credit and who voted for his tax cuts. You don't cut taxes during war times.
I think we should be prepared for the reality that the U.S. economy may never return to what it once was. The amount of debt we're sitting on makes restoring the economy to its former glory all but impossible.
Annette~ It will be an interesting historic reference, the depression blog. I had to take a double take on young Aretha.... Wow! She really is the Queen of Soul.
Christopher~ We were having a conversation, here at home about how economists define depression-percentage of unemployed-but because things have changed so much, I think there needs to be a revision of the definition.
Certainly unemployment is a consideration- and you pointed out, it is underreported- those no longer collecting unemployment, but the numbers are also skewed by those who, out of desperation took part time, low pay work for a fraction of the previous household income. They are now employed, but may have to work 2 jobs, with no health insurance coverage.
Here are the factors I think need to be added to the list:
1= Number of people uninsured, with no healthcare coverage:
• Nearly 90 million people—more than one in three non-elderly Americans—went without health coverage for all or part of 2006-2007. And four out of five of those individuals were in working families.
• The number of uninsured children in 2007 was 8.1 million – or 10.7 percent of all children in the U.S.1
• Young adults (18-to-24 years old) remained the least likely of any age group to have health insurance in 2007 – 28.1 percent of this group did not have health insurance.
2- Number or percentage of mortgage foreclosures
3~ Number of failing banks or financial institutions
4- National Debt
5~ Number of people on Food Stamp assistance (currently 1 in 10 U.S. Citizens getting food stamp help).
6- Number of people using food banks & soup kitchens
7- Stock market failure that made many retirement accounts vanish- especially for the very elderly 70-80+ year olds who will not reenter the work force.
8- % of people who lost 1/3 or more of 401k retirement savings.
9 ~ The emergence of Tent Cities
10 ~ # of people filing for bankruptcy
11- # of kids on reduced or free lunch programs (qualifying for low income assistance).
12- Number of jobs that were exported to other countries.
13 - # of private companies begging for billions in taxpayer bailout money???
Those factors just came to mind, I'm sure there may be others- like car repossessions, which are not technically a necessity like health care access, but in some circumstances, would make a difference for being able to get to work.
Leave it to Bush to create new horrific records of a distressed & destroyed economy.
We have crossed the line of easy recovery, and certailny losing 600,000 jobs in January has to
be a red flag, because as each of those jobs vanishes, it will create a domino effect of financial hardship on the businesses they used to frequent.
What it is, is no longer a recession.
Whew! That was a lengthy response-- but I heart Aretha too.
Have mercy, but I'm glad you posted this!
thanks for the aretha- ANY and all aretha makes me so happy...always...
thank you for the plug....that was so nice...
;-)
( and yeah, undermployed....that is a stat that needs more acknowledgement...for sure..)
I think it is cool you started that depression blog.
Thank You!
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