The Burden Of The American Worker

There’s great elation flowing from the various economic bureaus down through President Trump. They bring a message of good news. If you haven’t heard, here in the USA, we live, work, and play in the dazzle and delight of an economy where GDP growth exceeds the unemployment rate.

The last time we drank of elation this cool and sweet was the pre-iPhone stone ages. Back when George Dubya was President. And when Lehman Brothers was still one of the titans of Wall Street.

Indeed, getting back to this agreeable place has been a long, hard trudge along the road to happy destiny. But step by step, day by day, a paradise lost has been returned to Eden. Thank you, Ben Bernanke.

By all official accounts, things have never been better. GDP, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, is growing at an annual clip of 4.2 percent.  The unemployment rate, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, sits at just 3.9 percent. But that’s not all…

Pot stocks have become the new bitcoin. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after a six-month hiatus, is marking new all-time record highs. And, most importantly, the Dodgers are tops in their division going into the final week of the regular season. What’s not to like?

Discrepancies

The panoramic vantage from the present summit is both extraordinary and astonishing. Here, standing at the heights of a quasi-centrally planned economy, we see distortions and discrepancies. There are pie charts and bar graphs displaying contrived and downright fabricated economic data. The garbage outputs are very much at odds with the reality of the situation.

The results are bizarre evidence of the determination of the central planners to depict a world that’s unfolding in accordance with an intelligent plan. A supposed reality where not only does your neighbor get rich…but you do too. Truly, it’s a laugh and a half, the whole thing.

For starters, the growth is being extracted from the future via massive infusions of corporate, consumer, and government debt. To dismiss this is to stretch the truth considerably. To understand that GDP is, in effect, a measurement of the rate we’re all going broke, makes the spectacle of a 4.2 percent rate of GDP growth an absolute howler.