IcyPatriot

I use the real wages definition ... the money Americans have to spend in stores and everywhere. Real wages are down since 1999. I own my own business and I know many who do ... everyone who does is feeling it.

All companies big and small have been scratching to lower their expenditures ... many workers now doing the job of 2 and 3 people...many Americans working 2 and 3 jobs. Eventually that cycle reaches an apex where there's nothing left to cut/save ... getting a 4th job is impossible and the recession will come hard and fast.

The reason as above .. we are producing less and less. I am going to post a great article on this that I just found. It's a good article because it is current and reflects the views of our candidates.

BelichickFan

It's not true. Not according to the numbers I can find anyway. The easiest to view graph I found was the second from the top here :

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfe...shots_20060111

It shows from 2000-2005 (no more up to date than that) :

Low 20% incomes had real hourly wage drop of .2%.
Median (50%) incomes had real hourly wage increase of .7%
High (95%) incomes had real hourly wage increase of 2.2%.

Now, I'll concede that the latter two years of the graph also have the median down .7%.

Moving on from the numbers, it's nice that you use your own definition but virtually everyone defines a recession at the macro level not the micro (individual) level that you are using. If you want to say things suck for people, great. But it's misleading to say "recession" when your definition, while I don't doubt you can find it somewhere, is unusual at best.

maverick4

Based on that table the US is barely better than France or Japan's economy, but the US economy is barely growing while the population is growing at a faster pace.

Also, I think there are other measures like our various trade and federal deficits and the super weak US dollar, that tell the rest of the story. By the time GDP growth becomes negative, BF, it will be totally obvious already.

IcyPatriot

It's like sometimes it's hard to fathom beyond what you can see.

I live in Rhode Island ... economy here sucks.

BelichickFan

I have said several times that we have clearly slowed down but the discussion here is over "The US has entered its first economic recession" and there is simply no evidence to suggest that right now. Evidence may appear by the middle of the year that we're currently in a recession - or it might now - but right now the subject is misleading at best and a flat out lie at worst.

BelichickFan

The economy is like real estate - it depends on the area. And I think it's safe to say that overall things aren't going too well right now. But that still doesn't make it a national 6 year recession

patsfan13

RI has been stagnant for a long time due to the libs running the state and their handouts to the civil servant community among the highest in the country. Why do you think the Red states are growing?

__________________
"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."