• dragontamer@lemmy.world
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      Careful though. Declining gas prices have traditionally come with recessions. I recognize that Joe Biden is NOT responsible for the economy. But the President is always blamed for economic issues.

      The overall issue at play is that Chinese growth has stalled out, and so has the consumption of many other countries… and meanwhile the USA ramped up production of oil dramatically. This is only useful if we spend the oil on something (ie: economic growth) here on out. But if we too enter a recession, then all this oil basically gets wasted.

      I think we have a ton of space in our strategic reserves (Ukrainian war + Russian shipping issues + OPEC forced us to use our strategic reserves a year ago). So refilling up our reserves is good. But we can’t enter a long, deep recession (its surprising how small the strategic reserves are in the great scheme of our economic engine. A few months of recession is all we need to fill up the strategic reserves and then we’re forced to concrete-weld the oil shut / other expensive tricks to block out our oil wells). We need to hope that our economy remains afloat for all this to work out.


      My hopes is that all of the economic problems are associated with other countries and somehow the USA is immune to it. But we do live in a connected world today, there’s a chance that the Chinese slowdown spreads to over here through unknown (or at least, arcane) mechanisms.

        • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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          People on the internet have been telling me that we’re “already in a recession” since 2010 man.

          I’ll believe it when it happens. Not a minute sooner. I definitely see the risks of a recession though, but I’m not going to call it until the data says so.

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            until the data says so.

            If you don’t think the data hasn’t been “massaged” for a decade, to make it seem better than it actually is, you haven’t been paying attention.

            On top of the classic “you can prove anything with statistics” it’s a bit of a joke.

            • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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              The worker shortage continues today. We have record low unemployment, all my friends are working jobs (and some multiple jobs) because their boss doesn’t care enough to check in on them because there’s too much work to do.

              The economy today is rather strong. But there’s some headwinds that I’m seeing (ex: a somewhat isolated freight recession that’s playing into this decline of gasoline prices). Some items in our economy can change rather quickly, so I’m not going to confidently state that everything’s okay. There’s a lot of shakiness here. But nothing suggests yet that we’ve entered a general recession (like say, China has, or some other countries).

              Even my buddy at WeWork hasn’t been fired yet, lol. I know there’s been a lot of tech layoffs, but it seems like there’s so much programming work everywhere, that everyone basically gets rehired instantly.

              There’s troubling signs in some sectors. I’m worried that spreads to the rest of the economy. But those numbers just aren’t there for the “general economy” yet.

              • Nudding@lemmy.world
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                We have record low unemployment, all my friends are working jobs (and some multiple jobs)

                Try getting a third job, maybe that will help.

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                Lmao. Life is okay for you so fuck the statistics. That’s why we can’t get any economic reform in this country and y’all are going to be left wondering why the bottom fell out one of these days.

                • PeregrinoCinzento
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                  These people remember me my aunt, that every Christmas buys, like most people rushing at last hour, an artificially inflated octopus, and then gets surprised when it shrinks being put in heat.

                  That and the story of the frog being boiled alive without noticing.

                  The world didn’t learn in 2008. In 2011 while thousands were protesting and occupying the “walled streets”, the robbers were drinking champagne in the balconies in their fancy suits, smiling and joking on those asking for accountability and reform.

                  Things got even greedier than then.
                  How the boat its still floating is astounding.

                  We can talk about and show statistics and studies on how the biggest corporations cause the most damage in the world, on how the 1% accumulated more than 2/3 of the wealth generated in the last 2 years, how…it doesn’t matter.
                  We should have learned during covid.
                  The holy economy matters more than any life. Amen 🙏

            • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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              Gotchya, it’s all a conspiracy and every time some economics grad student checks the publicly available data for a standard project they are inducted into the ever growing secret conspiracy. It’s obvious!

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                Don’t ask a grad student. You’ll stop believing in the economy. It’s the news doing stupid shit. Just a few days ago CNBC brazenly printed a headline proclaiming the end of the cost of living crisis and that wages beat the inflation from the pandemic.

                Turns out they meant the actual pandemic, as in the less than 1 percent inflation in 2020. 2021-2023 is still fucked at record levels though. And the actual data they did manage to print was backwards to the headline.

                Then there’s the actual data we can easily access. Like the unemployment number. If you don’t get a job in the next 6 months it just stops counting you. Most measures of wealth distribution available stop at 100,000. Effectively grouping the middle class with billionaires. (Even researchers at Rand have complained about that one) The further you look, the more shenanigans you find. For example go pull the median household income for the last 30 years from BLS. (The agency cited all over the Internet for those numbers in articles.) I can tell you exactly how many teenagers died by slipping in the bath tub with like ten clicks. But finding the most basic economic data from the government is like pulling teeth.

                • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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                  Yes, free online news that relies on clicks isn’t the most reliable. That’s why you don’t see that nonsense in most respectable journalism.

                  As for the 6months not counted, you’re misunderstanding. Typically, folks have to have looked for a job in the last 6 months. (Once they pass that, they are considered a discouraged worker.) Which seems a pretty fair measure, you don’t want tp include people not looking for work, what you want out of the unemployment numbers is “of those working or looking for work, how many are currently unemployed.”

                  Here it is by worker, broken down however you’d like. It took a minute and a half of googling and meandering through the website:

                  https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?le

                  While household income is less of a good measure (do you only count married folks as people, how about households where one partner doesn’t have to work as the house is already owned etc) you can similarly find that with a quick google.

        • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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          Based on what measure? I won’t argue the economy is all unicorns and lollipops for us normal folk, but that doesn’t mean we’re in a recession either.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            The official definition is to do with the stock market. But the stock market is fully divorced from the real economy.