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A major reason for the poor economic growth over the last decade, says David Leonhardt in the...
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Sunday, August 19, 2012, 5:40 AM ETA major reason for the poor economic growth over the last decade, says David Leonhardt in the NYT, is demography: the share of Americans of working age grew to 53% in 2001 from 52% in 1997. That compares with an 8 percentage increase between 1967 and 1997. With baby boomers retiring, expect that share to fall.
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(2005) then proceeded to drop to a 64 year low (2011)...construction
employment to total non farm employment is at its lowest level since June 1946.....The number of completed new homes for sale are at their lowest level in recorded history (since 1973)
With respect to our current economic malaise I will paraphrase a saying of Bill Clinton in 1992: "it's the housing bubble, stupid." Demographics are just a convenient excuse, our problems result from consumers using their house as a get rich quick scheme and over-leveraging to do it.
But more importantly to the point of this article has to do with GDP investments. As people approach retirement they are moving their bond ratio up (percentage in years) which is consistently taking more money out of the stock exchange.
Add to this the general blow-up of stocks and even people who are well below 40 with any stock interests are running more of a 60% bond portfolio. And why not? Bonds have outperformed stocks for years now. So many that the case for going heavily into the stock market is losing.
nope. it's years and years of guys spouting nonsense like money isn't real. it's only unreal when you have enough to lose that you don't ever worry about living in your car.
it's like believing that the world ends when you die. it's a sickness. it's disney, with a fleet of bulldozers, driving lemmings off a cliff in order to create fake science.
Harry Dent "The Great Depression Ahead"
(Just remember: change is not a constant...people/systems do adapt, or ... else)
http://bit.ly/RumSGi
The problem dwarfs most human understanding and to cling to a political party line removes you from the discussion.
And most of us are not in the least interested in retiring.
A good part of the political conflict in this country - and it spans party lines - is too many in power - themselves Boomers or in some cases, Boomers' parents - trying to get Boomers in the 99 percent to make room for less experienced, less educated, and less qualified younger people.
Boomers in the 99 percent have been a convenient - and rather disgraceful - scapegoat for both parties' inability to get along with each other and reach consensus for the good of the country.
The "correction" to this problem, in political terms is so far outside of the comprehension of Republicans and Democrats that few can even understand the concepts needed. It's definitely not going to be Keynesian or MMT economics.