So, for some time now, we have been in this recession. And for as long, we have heard, from everybody, that this economic collapse is as bad as it’s ever EVER been. From the beginning, from the very beginning, I have had my doubts. Not only as to how long this has actually been going on, but also as to how bad it really is.
First, the beginning. The classic definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Contrary to what the think tank responsible for calling recessions says, this did not happen until October of 2008. As such, it is very reasonable to say that this current economic downturn is only a very recent event.
Now, onto the depth and width of the downturn. How bad is it? How bad, really, are we struggling? To answer that, we are going to have to go look into the many different economic indicators.
[As I type this, I am actually hearing Anderson Cooper say “No one alive has seen conditions as bad as we are seeing right now.] Dood!
I am going to make this a recurring theme here at TarHeel Red. I want to come back and visit how bad we have it compared to our recent past and our historical past.
Let’s look at one; Unemployment.
We are currently at 7.2%. This represents the highest rate we have been at since……the Great Depression? No, not even close. Unemploymenet was higher as recently as January 1993. IN fact, the current trend is that we have only 3—THREE—months of rising unemployment. If you wanna go a little more negative, we are at 8–EIGHT—months of rising or static unemployment. This compares with 11 such months as far back as, again, 1992 and 1993. In fact, there have been 81 months of higher unemployment since 1980!
Imagine that. As recently as 1980, we have had 81 months of unemployment higher than we are seeing right now.
Do you see this in the media? Are we hearing that, yes, we are seeing a rough patch but things seem to be alright so far? No. The main stream media is continuing to regurgitate this mantra of worst ever, worst of our lifetime, worst since……
So tell me. How bad is it?
“So tell me. How bad is it?”
It’s only “bad” until the bureaucrats and the panderers of the Left “progressives” scare enough people into aquiescence to more government assimilation of power and control over things political, social, and economic.
Only when they’re satisfied with the extent of the expansion of government power will we see the magic transformation back to “normal”.