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Originally Posted by _Richard_
isn't that just an illusion? one gets older and sees more, thus, 'gets worse'?
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That depends a great deal on the standards and models you use to measure it.
Our media speaks coyly of things like a "jobless recovery", declares that the recession according to official metrics ended long ago, and offers charts like this one published today by cnn.
Households lost 16 trillion & between 2007 and 2009.
Quote:
U.S. household wealth fell by about $16.4 trillion of net worth from its peak in spring 2007, about six months before the start of the recession, to when things hit bottom in the first quarter of 2009, according to figures from the Federal Reserve.
While a rebound in the stock market, an improved savings rate and consumer steps to reduce debt resulted in net worth gains since 2009, only a little more than half of that lost wealth - $8.7 trillion -- is back on household balance sheets.
That leaves American household wealth $7.7 trillion less than it was before the recession.
"The huge loss of consumption is due to loss of $8 trillion in bubble wealth," said Dean Baker, co-director of Center for Economic and Policy Research.
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So, according to that chart, and the stock market, things are better, right?
But last month the economy only added some 50K jobs, and we need at least 150K (roughly) just to stay even with population increase - so we are falling backwards - and have been most months these last 5 years.
And, the jobs being added are lower quality jobs than the working classes would like to have. And many are in "wealth transfer" sectors, like health and government and defense, not wealth producing jobs.
So, like I said, much depends on how you are measuring it.