[BTM]

Originally Posted by Rawhide

Yeah I know. Hence the statement in my last post: May not necessarily be hyperinflation (but it seems plausible and somewhat likely), but we're good and fucked long term.

FTFY

I see you're guilty of even quoting yourself out of context

And yes the service economy. We'll all get rich doing each other's laundry - what a crock. True wealth is created by making tangible things out of raw materials, not shuffling pieces of paper around or scratching each other's backs.

There is still plenty of advanced manufacturing in the US, where we still excel at producing high end electronics and advanced materials such as carbon fiber. You are misunderstanding my use of the term services. I don't mean only laundry, or janitors, or massages, or the like, though those do qualify as services. I'm talking professional services such as well including financial services, logistical efficiency, consulting, engineering. Professions where it is the knowledge of HOW to do so something complicated and that isn't common knowledge or otherwise pretty simple to learn. Were it not for these types of professions, the manufacturing sector would be hopelessly inefficient with limited profits limiting growth.

What has happened to average wages with inflation factored in over the last say, 30 years?

US per capita GDP or PPP (the commonly accepted measure of "an individual's well being") has shown a steadily increasing trend. The US is 6th in the world according to the IMF and the CIA Factbook and 5th according to the World Bank.

1 out of 6 people in the US are now on some sort of government anti-poverty program.

The number of children living in poverty in the US is rising dramatically.

Not sure where these facts came from and I would really like to see hard statistics showing that the slight divergence in income equality of late has lead to a "dramatic rise" in children living in poverty. Poverty is also a concept that is hard to "adjust for" across generational gaps.

Commercial real estate is on the verge of imploding.

Again, pure speculation.

What good, exactly, did the bailouts do? Remember the phrase "bail out wall street to save main street"? Has it worked? Drive around any major city in this country and look at all the empty shops and malls. You tell me.

Given a major disruption of some kind how stable do you think our society would be? Remember Katrina?

I could go on... want to talk about the derivative market? There's a nice little bun cooking in the oven for ya.

You can quote college economics 101 class all you want if you'd like, but I would suggest you also take a look at what's going on.

I along with many others thought the bailouts were not in our best interest. But they happened, and the country hasn't collapsed either. If you really bought into "bailing out to save main street" you need to quit listening to what politicians shit out of their mouths. I live in a major city and malls are PACKED on weekends. Consumer spending has risen and dipped, but has been relatively stagnate throughout this entire recession (which is now, given the academic definition of a recession, over). Not to sound insensitive, but from a historical perspective, Katrina was but a hiccup on this country's development.

My economics background goes much further than an Econ 101 class. I fear yours doesn't go much further than reading the "free" portions of articles WSJ provides for non subscribers.