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Old 02-24-2021, 10:06 AM
HARDCORE HARDCORE is offline
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Question Without Remorse

2-24-2021

Like it or not, far too many people go throughout their entire life-spans without so much as a second thought for the pain and the suffering that they heap upon others? And like the old movies ‘Scrooge and The Devil and Daniel Webster’, it usually is not until it is far too late in life to do one damned thing about it, that they demand to be absolved from all retribution -

‘Why Is That Exactly?!’

Now, for fear of sounding-off like “Some Angel of Light and Retribution”, I am ‘in no way’ trying to get anyone to ‘Straighten Up and Fly Right’, but rather, what I am attempting to relate is that: “Maybe we had all better start taking far better care of ‘Our Own Affairs?’

After all, causing pain and grief to other innocent beings is hardly a plus factor in life, ‘Now Is It - Or Do You Still Believe Otherwise?!’

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Old 02-24-2021, 11:06 AM
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If only this were true - the current system of operations has been abused and used to exhaust more than we could imagine. What we need is not freebee's but government project jobs for those unemployed.

The U.S. is officially in a recession. With unemployment at levels unseen since the Great Depression — the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world — some may be wondering if the country will eventually dip into a depression, and what it would take for that to happen.

The U.S. is officially in a recession. And it will actually become a depression?
By: Greg Iacurci - CNBC News - 06-02-20
Re: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/09/the-...epression.html

KEY POINTS:

* Recessions and depressions are periods of significant decline in economic activity. But there’s no exact definition for either one.

* We’ve only had one depression in modern times: the Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in the history of the U.S. and the industrialized world.

* A “depression” label could be appropriate if the unemployment rate exceeds 20% for a long period of time. Economists think that’s unlikely.

The U.S. is officially in a recession.

With unemployment at levels unseen since the Great Depression — the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world — some may be wondering if the country will eventually dip into a depression, and what it would take for that to happen.

By some metrics, joblessness — while improving — may be close to depression standards.

But the downturn will likely fall short of a depression relative to overall duration, economists said.

That’s because the causes of the current meltdown are much different and the government has more policy tools at its disposal to buoy the economy than it did in the early 20th century.

Definition of “depression”
The Great Depression is the only “depression” the U.S. has ever experienced in industrial times.

It spanned a decade, from the stock market crash of 1929 until 1939, when the U.S. began mobilizing for World War II.

There is no exact definition of a depression — just as there’s no precise definition for a recession. The latter label is determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research, often months after a recession occurs.

The U.S. officially entered a recession in February, the NBER announced on Monday, bringing an end to the longest expansion in post-World War II history.

A recession is typically defined as two straight quarters of negative gross domestic product, but the NBER has leeway to take into account the depth of a contraction, how quickly it occurs and how much of the economy is affected.

Simply put, both a recession and depression are periods of significant declines in economic activity.

But a depression is a “totally different order of magnitude,” said Susan Houseman, research director at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. “We haven’t seen anything like it for 80 to 90 years,” she said.

Unemployment rate
The unemployment rate is perhaps the best measurement by which to judge if we’re in a depression, according to Stephen Woodbury, an economics professor at Michigan State University.

The rate peaked at 25.6% during the Great Depression, in May 1933, according to NBER data.

This year, 21 million Americans were unemployed as of mid-May, as the coronavirus pandemic caused broad shutdowns of economic activity, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That translates to an unemployment rate of 13.3% — a slight reduction from the 14.7% rate in April, when roughly 23 million Americans were jobless.

With the exception of April, the current unemployment rate is at its highest level since the Great Depression. (The statistic includes furloughed workers, or those on temporary layoff.)

Jobless rate compared to Great Depression-era levels (see chart link below):
Re: https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/imag...36&w=740&h=510

The unemployment rate has breached 10% only two other times in history, in both cases during recessions — in December 1982 and in October 2009 (which was during the Great Recession, the country’s most recent recession).

The speed with which the unemployment rate increased this year is unparalleled in modern history — rising from a half-century low of around 3.5% to its current level in just two months.

By comparison, it took more than a year for Depression-era unemployment to witness an equivalent rise, Woodbury said.

Depression-era rival?
A rate that breaches 20% and persists for several months would likely meet the definition of a “depression,” economists said.

That would mean 1 in 5 Americans in the labor force can’t find employment.

“We’re already way past [prior] recessions,” said Jay Shambaugh, an economist and director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank. “Do we push this to 20% and stay there for a few quarters?

“If the unemployment rate is 20% in December, I think it’s very fair to say we’re in a depression.”

Unemployment near 20%
In fact, we may closer to that level than the official unemployment rate suggests, according to economists.

For one, the BLS has hinted that the true unemployment rate is actually above 16%.

The agency determines the official rate based on a household survey. Many Americans who should have been classified as furloughed appear to have been mis-classified in the survey — thereby depressing the official unemployment rate, the BLS said.

In April, the same mis-classification occurred. At the time, the BLS suggested the true unemployment rate was around 19.7%.

However, the similarity between the unemployment rate today and during the Great Depression is somewhat “superficial,” Woodbury said.

That’s because 73% of currently unemployed Americans are temporary layoffs, or furloughs.

That means more than 15 million of the 21 million unemployed Americans are still technically attached to an employer and expect to return to their job once states and companies reopen for business.

Chart with Temporary layoffs:
Re: https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/imag...45&w=740&h=474

(The number of unemployed Americans, from which the unemployment rate is derived, differs from the number of people who file for unemployment insurance. Not all those who are unemployed apply for unemployment insurance, for example.)

This level of temporary layoffs relative to the total unemployed population far exceeds any other time in modern history (with the exception of April’s figure, which was 78%). The next-closest during the post-war era was 24.4% in June 1975.

“That’s one big difference between what’s happening now and during the Great Depression,” Woodbury said. “Those job losses were permanent.

“They were jobs that were lost and gone forever.”

Of course, many of those job losses could ultimately be permanent, depending on the scope of business failures and the speed with which economic activity restarts.

Self-inflicted
Some economists also don’t believe the unemployment rate — if it officially breaches 20% — will hover at that level for an extended time, as it did during the Great Depression.

“If the unemployment rate drops down to 10% by end of the year, I think people would say this was a really horrendous recession, but not a full-fledged depression, unless it persists for a number of years,” Shambaugh said.

About half of the U.S. population is jobless (see chart link below)
Re: https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/imag...17&w=740&h=510

The current economic situation is different from the Depression era because it’s largely self-inflicted, economists said. Federal and state officials decided to shut down broad sectors of the economy to stem the spread of the coronavirus, and the economy could rebound as states and businesses begin reopening.

The Great Depression, by contrast, wasn’t self-inflicted but the result of many factors, such as a stock-market crash, use of the gold standard, deflation and the lack of any real fiscal or monetary policy from the Hoover administration to combat the crisis, Shambaugh said.

Unemployment insurance, for example, wasn’t created until 1935, in response to the Great Depression.

Doing enough?

The U.S. government was caught flat-footed in the early years of the Great Depression, since it didn’t yet have many of the economic tools currently at its disposal, economists said.

This time, federal officials have implemented relatively aggressive measures, such as various lending programs for small businesses, enhanced unemployment benefits and direct payments to Americans, to try to stave off a further catastrophe from the coronavirus, economists said.

What the government needs to do is get people back to work. This pandemic isn't helping we all know - but Welfare funds will only continue to allow people to stay home and collect monies - that drain the system of funds across the country.

They all need to work! Not just given monies for doing nothing! Cities across our Country needs infrastructure repairs. Put them back to work and in the process fix up our states and water systems. Road repairs - even border wall repairs - anything! Just get them back to work and off the streets.
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To continue to give them something for nothing - only bankrupts our country - and drives the prices up on more items.
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We don't need dead wood - we need to get them off their asses and work for living.
-
Boats

ps: If my wife wasn't so bad medically I would still be working. I don't know how people can live like this.
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O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
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