And, the funny piece is you know how to evaluate economic data also. Even if you have no such training, this is still true. The problem is these people are working 24/7 to convince you that you don’t have the ability to evaluate what’s happening on your own because they don’t want you to think about what’s actually happening because the minute you do, it will be painfully obvious how full of you know what they are.
Clearly, the most logical factor in evaluating a consumer based economy like the one that functions within the U.S. is to look at what’s happening with consumers. When I say consumer economy, what I mean is this capitalist economy is partially driven by how money is spent. If people have disposable money, they buy things. When they purchase things, since industry here is based on private profit, the corporations who consumers shop with experience increased revenues so the corporations hire more workers. In turn, those workers have money to buy things and the cycle continues. As a side note, we have been trained to believe that this type of system is universal when in fact it’s actually quite primitive. A developed and planned economy, a socialist economy, isn’t primitive enough to be based on how much money people spend. A developed economy should be based on people’s ability to participate effectively within it. In other words, an economy where people are gainfully employed and able to provide a quality life for their families and communities, that’s the definition of a productive economy. No one can logically disagree with that assessment. That socialist assessment, but that’s a separate piece. For now, we are talking about this consumer driven capitalist economy. You have the tools to assess and evaluate it. You don’t need lying idiots to guide you. You don’t need them because they are going to attempt to confuse you by suggesting, over and over again, that the criteria to evaluate the economy is based on the performance of the stock market. This is a highly effective method of confusing people about how economy works because most people don’t have a clue how to evaluate the stock market. They don’t have a clue because evaluating the stock market really doesn’t tell you squat about the strength of the economy. This is true because the stock market is really just the experience of so-called experts projecting the ability of a company to perform under current market conditions. Based on this assessment, the value of the stock of said company is valuated. This may be a solid method of determining which companies to invest money into for the capitalists, but it has very little to do with how productive the economy is for everyday people. For us, the factors and variables we should be concerned with are how much disposable income do you have? That question is answered based on the quality of wage increases you are receiving? The degree in which the price of your housing expenses, utilities, food, etc., is costing? If you and most people you know are not experiencing any significant improvement in disposable income, and no one I know is experiencing that, then the economy is not performing at some great level as these people try so desperately to get us to believe. In fact, most people are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Even the fluctuating price of gasoline isn’t so much the indicator it used to be because they will tell you the price of gas impacts travel costs. At least that’s what they always say when travel costs increase. Yet, gas prices can be reduced, as they are right now, and airline tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, package deliveries, etc., don’t reflect decreases in price. The costs for those travel mechanisms don’t decrease because the capitalists don’t voluntarily give their profits away. We are talking about people who would charge you $5,000.00 USD for a pencil if they could get away with it. That’s what a “manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) is folks. It’s a price these people pull out of the sky to represent what they want you believe the product is worth. If you accept that, then that’s what you pay, but the MSRP never has anything to do with what the product is actually worth, or what you should realistically be looking at paying for it.
The other false measure of economy progress is this lie that more jobs are being created than the previous administration(s). What they fail to explain is that their system is designed to incent multi-national corporations with sweetheart tax breaks and other goodies. In return, the corporations invest a small portion of their mass revenues into projects of their choice (instead of having to pay taxes like the rest of us, where we have no say so in how our money is spent), like the Ad Council commercials e.g. McGruff the Crime Dog, or Smokey the Bear (which promote respect for bourgeoisie authority, institutions, and snitch culture). The corporations also serve their own interests, as well as the propaganda interests of the capitalist government, by “creating jobs.” These jobs that are created are low paying service industry jobs with no health benefits and no pension plans. In truth, most people today don’t even know what a pension plan is, how it works, etc. Still, these corporations, and their chief spokespersons – the elected officials – love to taut this nonsense as improving the economy by creating more McDonalds quality jobs. Show me one state within the U.S. that is increasing jobs with livable wages, quality health care, and pensions that pay until the retired employee dies (defined benefit). You can’t do it. Maybe try showing me these new low paying jobs that provide people with enough resources to pay their basic bills? You can’t do that either. What you could do is underscore the growing trend where multi-national corporations make record profits while the average family in this country cannot even pull $500.00 USD together in the event of an unexpected expense. Someone please explain to me how this sad reality could ever be confused with an improved economy?
The economy is booming if you are a huge corporation. Those capitalists are so slick that they have even figured out how get the masses of people in this country to subsidize them (because they pay their workers so little, there are millions of workers who rely on food stamps, which working people fund with tax revenues). This scam is public policy while no one seems to be that concerned at all about this travesty because so many people are instead focused on a single parent, usually a mother, who must depend upon public assistance for a period of time to support her family. People are outraged at mom for legitimately needing pennies while massive corporations steal billions from you and you don’t blink any eye.
One thing I do give capitalism credit for. They hoodwink everyone, all the time. They have taken crookedness to historical levels so much so that they have even figured out how to get people who have absolutely nothing parroting their theme that “the economy is doing just great!”