Missing the Boom

[MtnBiker]

Economy: With rising incomes, soaring wealth, bigger and better homes, plenty of jobs and low inflation, we may be living in the most prosperous time ever. Yet chances are you don't believe it one bit.

The economy isn't perfect, of course. But it's a long way from bad — a long, long way. We ponder this as a new employment report comes out, showing 243,000 new payroll jobs in February even as the number of people re-entering the labor market swelled by nearly 350,000.

So before the data are spun beyond recognition by others, let's recount the good news: Since May 2003, when President Bush's tax cuts became law, the U.S. has created 4.7 million jobs. Payrolls have now expanded for 30 straight months. The jobless rate, though up a tick at 4.8%, is still near its five-year low.

Worker pay is also on the increase. Average weekly earnings rose 3.5% last month from a year earlier — the best gain in more than four years..........


In spite of all the great news, Americans remain strangely downbeat. A Gallup Poll taken earlier this year found just 38% who viewed the economy as "excellent" or "good" — down from 46% at the start of the last recession.......

Why the gloom? Much of it, no doubt, stems from misreporting by the media. Against the backdrop of surging payrolls, for example, we keep seeing story after story, in print and on TV, about job "losses."

A recent study by the Media Research Center bears this out. It looked at TV news coverage of jobs in 2005 — 151 stories in all — carried on all three major networks.

This, mind you, was a year that saw the creation of 2 million new jobs, the addition of $350 billion to gross domestic product and an increase of $2 trillion in the value of household financial assets.Yet more than half of the networks' job reports focused on losses, not gains — a picture that wasn't just distorted, but wrong.

Americans deserve better. In fact, they may already know better. The same polls, including ours, in which Americans indicate they are down on the economy in general also show they are upbeat about their own financial situation.

This, more than anything else, may indicate that Americans are being influenced too much by mainstream media outlets that would rather be wrong than acknowledge that an economic boom is under way.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20&issue=20060310

I am amazed everytime I go shopping and run into hoards of people, yet the media keeps telling me the economy is not doing well and that most of my fellow Americans believe that as well.

 

[Emmett]

As small businesses all over America are being swallowed up by larger companies those unfortunate folks ARE INDEED entering the job market, to work for the big companies that are swallowing them.

Some folks are second generations. Remember the butcher! The guy who couldn't compete with Winn Dixie or Publix even though he possessed something they did not have (smile and a personality). He works for them now!

How about the mom and pop grocer who used to be located in that beautiful little store in Smalltown, USA. They clean houses now or work for BP, Shell or Exxon. Hmmm! I wonder which one will buy out the other two to create the National Gas and Oil Service!

Folks, be careful how you read those numbers! How many are burger flipping jobs? Been to Houston or Dallas lately? Have you seen the immense number of White American Males standing at redlights asking for handouts? It is staggering! In Austin they are fighting over intersections each morning. Don't read what I am writing the wrong way. They are lazy folks who can make more begging the corner than working menial labor jobs. That is why the illegals are fairing so well here.

Being the owner of a small transportation company I can tell you that it is tough trying to squeeze profit out of a linehaul after fuel, outrageous insurance and trying to compete with the super companies (swift, JB Hunt, Schneider etc). They have government subsidy programs avail to help offset their expense in training drivers and so forth. As a small business (3 trucks) I of course don't qualify because I cannot be that big of an influence. When I go broke, where do I go? JB Hunt, Swift, Yellow, Overnite etc,... I don't get trucks for 15,000 to 25,000 off sticker due to the fact that I can't buy 500 at a time.

Maybe those numbers you mentioned are impressive but I think we have to lift the ink off the paper to see what is really written sometomes.