NEGATIVE GROWTH

Some economists in talking about the current economy said we are in a period of Negative Growth.The Archdruid in this weeks piece pointed out one of his readers heard them  talking about Negative Growth like it was some kind of a wanted thing.  Now we have had beat into our heads that we must always have growth some growth any growth , a negative number was bad very bad, till now.

Seems  the new school of thinking among the deep thinkers in the world of finance have adopted a strategy of wrapping almost anything up in shiny paper , get it stamped by a respected authority , then sell it to their clients who it seems will buy anything without inspection.

In the case of Negative Growth we are the clients they are trying to convince that growth no matter how negative  is a good thing.  We have been learning the hard way for the past 30+ years and have watched as many things in our lives have gone negative.

Negative careers, negative pensions, negative jobs, negative income , negative opportunities , all sold to us along the way by convincing us that all these trade deals were a good thing and would create all these wonderful ,high paying white collar jobs.  As Elizabeth Warren said the other day if they were so good for us "SHOW EM TO US" .

 A QUICK LOOK AT THE GRAPH BELOW .  The blue line is what a true reading of GDP really is , and it shows negative grow for a lot of years.  Seen to start in 2005.

Stories abound about desperate people looking for work , any work, maybe even a minimum wage job , but for many no matter how hard they looked could not find work.  

Once again the blue line is figured using the old rules before we started manipulating them to say what we wanted them to be.  There is a lot of distance between 23% to 5 and a little%.  Considering that 90% of all working people make $31000 or less I imagine we are not surprised we are and have been in a period of negative growth for quite awhile.

Now is the time to start looking at our perspective presidents for any indication of what if any thing they are going to do about changing the above stats.

From the Republican side we hear the same ole litany of tired old plans to attack the safety net programs with special aim at Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  While they are at it they want to  take a chunk out of food stamps, school lunches and any and all programs that reach directly to the people.  They never forget to throw in a new round of tax breaks for the fat cats.

From the Democratic side our one declared candidate Clinton has a track record of not being that much difference from her republican rivals.  There are several other maybe candidates sticking their toe in the water to see if they can catch a hold.  Money will be the big problem , they will need lots of it to compete.  They are talking about a 5 billion dollar campaign , twice election cycle costs in 2012.

Thinking about negative things brings politics to mind.  I think we need some key words to weed out the undesirables from the prospective list of clowns.  For starters:  any cutting of social programs should be at the top of the list, cutting pensions or health benefits are high on the no vote list, any mention of new tax cuts for the wealthy should be an automatic thumbs down.  Cutting of food stamps or other welfare programs should not be cut.

On the plus side, any candidate who suggests we can correct , save and improve all pensions and health care programs should put them on your consider list.  A revamping of the student loan program is a must with a look at reducing or eliminating all of them.  Placing a transaction tax on all financial transactions to raise funds and to eliminate Fast Track Trading.  Any candidate who suggest large cuts in defense spending, revamping of foreign bases , closing most of them.. Kill defense projects like the F35 a plane no military man wants but congress knows better.  

These are just a few of my thoughts on the field, with hopes that a few better will appear..