This Is What Everyone Gets Wrong About The American Economy

[Yavin4]

There is no such thing as the American economy. What we really have is an amalgamation of various regional economies, where some are hyper-wealthier than others. Certain regions are very well-off, and other regions are third world like.

The reason why the media was so shocked at the state of poverty in N.O.L.A. is because the major media outlets are located in geographic regions that are generally well-off, NY, Chicago, L.A., and D.C.

[mainegreen]

1. So true.

Poverty in New England is nothing like poverty in Appalachia, where whole towns look like they're from third world country.

edited for spelling they're as there like the retard I am

[Democrats_win]

11. We´re separate, but connected.

Coal from West Virginia helped make New England rich. Yet those coal mines made people in WV sick thus insuring, to a degree, greater poverty. We like to think there would be justice for this, but we know ¨Life is unfair.¨

We could make these types of connections to Africa, Asia or just about anywhere. People think that they´re self made men (or women) but this hasn´t been true since fire was discovered.

We once had the right attitude about our fellow man, but that ended with the election of Ronald Reagan. The fallacy and selfishness of rugged individualism in a society that once stood on the shoulders of giants and humble men is absurd and continues to harm Americans.

[raccoon]

2. Was it, though, shock that there was so much poverty in N.O.?

I mean, they knew that certain portions of NYC, LA, etc., are very poor. Why shouldn't N.O. have had its Harlem/Watts, whatever?

Or was it shame and embarrassment that so many people were stranded and/or died in flooded N.O. BECAUSE they were poor?

[triguy46]

5. Why should anyone be "shocked" over poverty?

Are they that vapid, insipid and out of touch to not know that hunger and homelessness exist, even in our midst? Well, IMHO, the answer is yes, they are that far removed from reality.

[raccoon]

7. Most of those "journalists" probably make in the 6-figures

and have no clue.

[triguy46]

10. My point exactly.

They are members of the top 1%, have no real interest in anything other than their air time or getting a cable show. They are a part of the problem, we cannot assume, nor should we, that they have anything other than their self interest in mind.

[Arkansas Granny]

12. I don't think you can understand real poverty until you have lived it.

I'm not talking about simply having to budget your money to make ends meet. I'm talking about putting your kids to bed hungry, or worrying about having to live in your car because you can't pay rent. This is just unimaginable to most people because they have never experienced it.

[Yavin4]

13. The Poverty in Watts, Harlem, LA etc. Is Nothing Like

the poverty in N.O. Poor areas in large cities are at the very least somewhat connected to power centers. For instance, in NYC a poor person can easily get work in the mailroom of a large corporation. That won't make them rich, but it will make them better off than poor people in rural N.O. or Alabama who have no such connection.

[triguy46]

3. Excellent point.

The national media is in no position to assess or evaluate local conditions of any sort. They fly in on corporate jet, jump out do a talk over, grab video from the locals and fly out. This is not to be confused with journalism. This is entertainment.

My ongoing rant re: the media: they are too well dressed, too well fed and are too far from the real world to be anything but TV celebrities.

[Armstead]

4. Good point

To paraphrase Tip O,Neil "All economics is local."

[Voltaire99]

6. And because media interest in poverty (working and otherwise)...

...is limited to feeding white fears about crime.

Yes: there is no American economy. Neither in the regional diaspora you speak of, nor in the deranged metric that prizes corporate growth and the creation of millionaires.

If the Democratic Party wanted to stand for something meaningful, it would immediately call for a new New Deal. At the very least it could adopt Nixon's old guaranteed income idea. Yet to speak of these impossible scenarios is to realize how how far to the right--and hence into irrelevance to most Americans' real needs--the Dems have traveled.

[begin_within]

8. Even within those regions, there are the "haves' and the "have nots"

[ProfessorGAC]

9. Well, Then There Such A Thing As The American Economy

You said so yourself, Yavin. "What we really have is an amalgamation of various regional economies. . " That is what makes up the "american economy".

I do get your point though. However, be assured that economists look into those types of regional differences all the time. Region by region, state by state, metro areas v. rural, etc. There called medioeconomies.

Sometimes even industrial segmentations are done within those regional subsets. So there are folks who do look at that stuff.

Now, if we want to talk about how qualified or competent many of those folks are, we have a different issue on our hands.
The Professor

[Yavin4]

14. My Point Is That When People Talk About The American Economy

They are lumping in regions where there's great wealth with regions where there's great poverty. Using amalgamated economic statistics severely distorts the true economic picture.

Take NY state vs. NY city. If you lump in NY city with NY state, then the whole state looks rather prosperous. However, someone living in upstate NY is probably not connected to the NY city economy, other than tax receipts. That person does not share in the prosperity of NY city.

Take NY city out of the economic picture, and the economy of the state looks grim. I make these points because when the media or the politicians talk about the American economy they are distorting the true picture.

It's the old Bill Gates joke. If Bill Gates walks into a dive bar on the depressed side of town, then the average income of everyone in the bar is over $1 million.

[ProfessorGAC]

16. I Knew That

One serious note though: Remember that the disparity of income is the reason why economists and analysts use medians instead of means.

So, in your joke example, Bill Gates walks into a bar and the media barely changes. The mean goes to a billion a piece, but the median barely changes! And standard deviations based upon medians are de-biased differently than those from the mean. So, the distributions account for all that.

And, i don't talk about the economy as one big homogeneous set! And i'm a people.
The Professor

[rman]

15. i've always been saying "their" economy isn't the same as ours.

Ours can collapse without affecting theirs - in fact it may well benefit them. It has happened before, see the 1920's and the Great Depression.

[KayLaw]

17. I'm from Homestead

After Andrew the media went on and on about how poor the people of Homestead were. My family is not at all poor. We went through the same storm as everyone but in a well-prepared, well-stocked home. After the storm, my father contacted various people throughout the state and soon had multiple generators. There are poor people everywhere. They just blend in most of the time, but stick out after a disaster.

You wouldn't believe how poor some of the people in Miami are. I always worked in hospitals and restaurants and the janitors and dishwashers shared rooms and beds with one another just to scrape by. When you go into an expensive restaurant you can't see them but they're there. Let a good storm come along and you'll seem them on TV.

[kentuck]

18. Also, the stock market on Wall St. is not the same as Main St...

Oil companies are investing their billions in profit into the stock market. That has to have a positive effect on the price of stocks overall but it doesn't have much to do with the average person, in my opinion..