Sunday, November 04, 2007

The Media and the Economy


Granted, the credit crisis is a big problem, both for the people who bought houses they can't afford and for the bankers. However, why is every story about the economy full of gloom and doom? This past week we found out the economy grew 3.9% in the 3rd quarter and added 166,000 new non farm jobs in October (twice the number expected) - great news!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think you quite get it. Yes, the economy grew, but only for the wealthy. Yes, more jobs were created, but for less money than what people were previously making. Just think for example of the 10000 jobs that Chrysler announced they would cut, these people will probably get new jobs, but at a much lower wage. all in all, these wages are not enough to stimulate the housing market or keep it going for that matter.

Jon Vander Plas said...

I did not see any data that showed that only the wealthy benefited by the increase in production. Nor did I see any data supporting your claim that these new jobs are merely replacing higher paying jobs. If this data exists, I'd like to see it. So what do you propose? It seems important to you that growth is shared equally. The vast improvements in standard of living for each quadrant of society over that past few decades is evidence that everyone benefits from a growing economy. The rich may benefit more, because they have more skin in the game and they are more productive (in a strictly economic sense) than the average person. You can not have freedom and equality. Using government to enforce equality limits incentives to be productive, hurting the entire economy and bringing everyone down.