triticale - the wheat / rye guy

Boom And Gloom

The ongoing effort to conceal the success of the United States economy has been getting attention lately in the blogosphere. Bizzyblog reports on a survey which shows that Americans tend to think we are worse off than we actually are. Even more interestingly, he notes in the comments that those surveyed think we are worse off than their own crcumstances would indicate, proof that the nattering nabobs of negativity are having their intended effect.

Professor Althouse finds the effort to cast positive news as negative to be comedic. Several of her commenters strive to find bad news, and go off in odd directions to do so. One insists that the obsolete establishment survey is the only source for employment data. I have, in the past, asserted that over the past 55 years the income, first my father's and then my own, which has supported me has never come from a job which would show up in that survey. I need to correct that slightly. For a few months 33 years ago I was a direct employee of a tiny little branch of the Teledyne conglomerate. Interestingly, there is now zero market for that particular work.

Another seeker of emmiseration commenting there insists that inflation is being understated by means of "substituting hamburger for steak". I am not as extreme as one man I worked with who told his wife he would divorce her the next time she served him steak instead of chipped creamed beef, but I've never seen the point in paying more for meat when they don't even grind it for you. I am pleased to report, for those who need to grind their own meat, that altho in the 1980 Sears catalog a heavy duty electric meat grinder cost $399, they now list a similar one for half that price, and until tomorrow Farm & Fleet has a lighter-duty one marked down from $79 to $49. Other than energy and land, both determined by supply, the only thing on which I've seen prices climbing is automobiles, and you have to consider the fact that today's cars are not only far more regulated but also far better.