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But is it bad for those 8 people? Or do they just perceive it being bad for everyone else?

• hga 16y ago
  "It's a recession when someone you know loses their job. It's a depression when you lose your job." True, U-6 and beyond unemployment, underemployment and just plain given up searching is so high (22% according to http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...) that we're seeing something akin to Great Depression levels. It's just that we're wealthier, have much greater safety nets (as I recall 40 million are on Food Stamps), we're more flexible, etc. For that matter, our government is a lot better than in the Great Depression (Hoover/FDR), e.g. we aren't doing stark raving mad things like driving up food prices by destroying food and preventing planting when 1/4 of the nation is malnourished....
  • mkr-hn 16y ago
    Mobility and information are big factors too. In the Great Depression, a poor person or a farmer out in the middle of nowhere couldn't just hop on the web and make themselves more employable (or market themselves), or drive 50+ miles on well-maintained highways and interstates to other opportunities.
    • hga 16y ago
      Exactly, that's an important subset of what I labeled "flexibility".