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That's just about the dumbest thing I've ever read. First of all, 2000-2010 was not a lost decade in any meaningful sense of the word. It only looks that way b

That's just about the dumbest thing I've ever read. First of all, 2000-2010 was not a lost decade in any meaningful sense of the word. It only looks that way because there was an exuberant growth period at the very beginning and a recession at the very end. Looking at economic growth over the business cycle, and we were pretty much on trend. You can argue that the growth was unsustainable due to a heavy reliance on consumer debt, but that's an entirely different argument. Second of all, if growth does stagnate for the entire period of 2011-2020, it won't be because of "something something wall street something something main street". It will mean that we ended up on the back end of a consumption cycle, which can take time to slowly correct itself. If you spend too much money for 10 years, you spend a little less money for the next 10 years. There's very little any government can do to accelerate or mitigate that. And Wall Street "greed" has exactly nothing to do with it. You could literally burn all of lower manhattan to the ground and replace it with a massive federal credit union and it wouldn't change the fundamental dynamics of "credit up, credit down". Finally, if a couple thousand college-aged leftists protesting in a coastal american city actually signified an incipient revolution, we'd have had about 20 revolutions in the past 30 years.

srdev 15y ago
Was there an exuberant growth period at 2000? That's about the time the tech bubble burst. I was starting college for CS at the time, and the consensus was that the outlook was pretty grim for tech jobs. Hiring seemed to be slow. Most claimed that we were in a recession. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2000s_recession http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2000s_recession (Wikipedia link, but its the first thing I dug up). I was lucky and the tech sector bounced back with gusto. But I suspect that, for a great many people, 2000-2010 was, in fact, a "lost decade."
thaumaturgy 15y ago
That seems awfully dismissive of the situation and people's frustrations with it. Wall Street greed and political corruption do have a lot to do with it. For example, here's an article from Rolling Stone that's probably partly responsible for unleashing a lot of the frustration towards Wall Street: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre... Whenever the subject of Wall Street's participation in our economic woes comes up, a few people show up and try to attribute it largely to normal growth/recession cycles, but that doesn't explain why so many of the figures that we're seeing now more closely resemble trends from 70 or more years ago. Lastly: those "couple thousand college-aged leftists" have recently been receiving support from a wide variety of other groups. About the best thing you can do for their cause is to continue underestimating them.
- acslater00 15y ago
  I'm being intentionally dismissive of the notion that America is on the cusp of a popular revolt against "the rich", at least to the extent such a revolt takes the form of the occupy wall street movement. I think various establishment Democrat-affiliated groups have taken an obvious interest, since they're hoping (against hope, I'd say) that this will become a counter-balance to the Tea Party. I will happily continue to underestimate them, despite the risk that it will somehow make them stronger. Also, I'm not saying that our recession is a normal growth/recession cycle. The 'standard' business cycle is (usually) inventory driven and the economy quickly recovers once inventories drain. This is a "balance-sheet" recession. It's driven by excessive consumer (and public) debt, and only goes away once that debt clears the system. "Wall Street" is to blame for excessive debt in the same way that McDonalds is to blame for obesity. They're one side of a two-sided transaction that was taken to excess, and now we have to patiently wait for the consequences to play out.

srdev 15y ago

Was there an exuberant growth period at 2000? That's about the time the tech bubble burst. I was starting college for CS at the time, and the consensus was that the outlook was pretty grim for tech jobs. Hiring seemed to be slow. Most claimed that we were in a recession. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2000s_recession http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2000s_recession (Wikipedia link, but its the first thing I dug up). I was lucky and the tech sector bounced back with gusto. But I suspect that, for a great many people, 2000-2010 was, in fact, a "lost decade."

thaumaturgy 15y ago

That seems awfully dismissive of the situation and people's frustrations with it. Wall Street greed and political corruption do have a lot to do with it. For example, here's an article from Rolling Stone that's probably partly responsible for unleashing a lot of the frustration towards Wall Street: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre... Whenever the subject of Wall Street's participation in our economic woes comes up, a few people show up and try to attribute it largely to normal growth/recession cycles, but that doesn't explain why so many of the figures that we're seeing now more closely resemble trends from 70 or more years ago. Lastly: those "couple thousand college-aged leftists" have recently been receiving support from a wide variety of other groups. About the best thing you can do for their cause is to continue underestimating them.

acslater00 15y ago
I'm being intentionally dismissive of the notion that America is on the cusp of a popular revolt against "the rich", at least to the extent such a revolt takes the form of the occupy wall street movement. I think various establishment Democrat-affiliated groups have taken an obvious interest, since they're hoping (against hope, I'd say) that this will become a counter-balance to the Tea Party. I will happily continue to underestimate them, despite the risk that it will somehow make them stronger. Also, I'm not saying that our recession is a normal growth/recession cycle. The 'standard' business cycle is (usually) inventory driven and the economy quickly recovers once inventories drain. This is a "balance-sheet" recession. It's driven by excessive consumer (and public) debt, and only goes away once that debt clears the system. "Wall Street" is to blame for excessive debt in the same way that McDonalds is to blame for obesity. They're one side of a two-sided transaction that was taken to excess, and now we have to patiently wait for the consequences to play out.