Weekly Address: America’s Resurgence is Real

[cal04]

Source: White House

In this week’s address, the President reflected on the significant progress made by this country in 2014, and in the nearly six years since he took office.

This past year has been the strongest for job growth since the 1990s, contributing to the nearly 11 million jobs added by our businesses over a 57-month streak. America is leading the rest of the world, in containing the spread of Ebola, degrading and ultimately destroying ISIL, and addressing the threat posed by climate change. And earlier this week, the President announced the most significant changes to our policy towards Cuba in over 50 years.

America’s resurgence is real, and the President expressed his commitment to working with Congress in the coming year to make sure Americans feel the benefits.

Read more: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/weekly-address

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http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/20/weekly-address-america-s-resurgence-real

(snip)
The six years since the financial crisis have demanded hard work and sacrifice on everyone’s part. But as a country, we have every right to be proud of what we’ve got to show for it. More jobs. More insured. A growing economy. Shrinking deficits. Bustling industry. Booming energy.

Pick any metric you want – America’s resurgence is real. And we now have the chance to reverse the decades-long erosion of middle-class jobs and incomes. We just have to invest in the things that we know will secure even faster growth in higher-paying jobs for more Americans. We have to make sure our economy, our justice system, and our government work not only for a few, but for all of us. And I look forward to working together with the new Congress next year on these priorities.

Sure, we’ll disagree on some things. We’ll have to compromise on others. I’ll act on my own when it’s necessary. But I will never stop trying to make life better for people like you.

Because thanks to your efforts, a new foundation is laid. A new future is ready to be written. We have set the stage for a new American moment, and I’m going to spend every minute of my last two years making sure we seize it.

On behalf of the Obama family, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas.

Thanks, and have a wonderful holiday season.

[loudsue]

1. Too bad that 80% of Americans will be told the opposite by the talking heads they listen to.

I wish he had been able to do something about the media....restoring the Fairness Doctrine would be a nice start. Exposing the Powell Manifesto would be another.

That is the ONLY way that America can be put back on the right path, even though it will still take another 30 years to turn these UnUnited States around.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Thanks for posting!

This week's address was almost like a summary of the year - more like something that he might have used for next week's address, which would be the last for 2014... Maybe next week he will preview his agenda for 2015 and topics for the upcoming State of the Union.

[candelista]

3. Well, America's "resurgence" in Iraq is real.

Pentagon OKs deployment of 1,300 more soldiers in Iraq

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/middle-east-updates/1.632705

[JoePhilly]

5. OMG ... only 145,000 more to go!!!!!!

[candelista]

16. Is that what you want?

[JoePhilly]

17. No, and its not going to happen.

But going by some of the threads around here .... its already happened.

[candelista]

19. Sorry, you are not a prophet.

And ipse dixit is not proof.

[NewDeal_Dem]

4. bah humbug

The income of the median U.S. household was $51,900 in 2013, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. That’s essentially unchanged from 2012, after adjusting for inflation, and is 8 percent lower than in 2007, before the recession began. Median income hasn’t shown a statistically significant increase since the recession ended in 2009.

Median household income was lower in 2013 than in 1989 and is 8.7 percent below its 1999 peak.

The average income of the bottom fifth of earners has fallen 16 percent since 1999, compared to 2 percent for the richest fifth.

[JoePhilly]

6. If you understand economics ...

... you know that wages go DOWN during a recession because, with increased unemployment, you have more people competing for a smaller number of jobs. And you can see that decrease in the graph above.

And then ... only after you get UE down, usually below 6%, do wages start to rise again. Notice in your graph how wages drop after 2007. Although the recession technically ended in late 2009, UE at that same point in time, was over 10%.

Notice that as UE has fallen since 2009, the drop in wages stopped, and then flattened out starting in 2011. And the most recent bar, wages move up slightly. That can only happen when UE is low and companies have to compete for workers instead of the other way around.

So one can understand this economic reality, or one can be upset that Obama did not somehow change this fairly fundamental aspect of how the economy has always worked (which is pretty clear if you look at the other shifts in wage trends reflected in that same graph).

[NewDeal_Dem]

7. I understand that median income is below what it was in 1989 and that despite this,

the social safety net is being relentlessly cut and government jobs contracted out to organizations like "Goodwill" for much lower pay & security; that after 6-7 years of recession there's still little movement on jobs and pay and that because of a rare illness, I'm probably going to die in the gutter.

So you can stuff your lecture about Obama. He's rich and doesn't need you to defend him.

[RiverNoord]

8. The overriding economic reaility

is that concentration of ownership of the nation's resources in fewer hands is increasing radically. This is not going to change during the next several years, and probably will not change for many, many years to come. The markets or economics do not explain this. This is happening solely because of politics.

Various wealthy parties have bought exceptional influence during the past 20-30 years in the political process, and this has resulted in an extraordinary, contrary-to-market-forces shift in concentration in American wealth.

A considerably open international economy has also contributed to this. A small number of people make hoards of money buying in extremely low-income regions of the world and selling in high-income areas of the world. This doesn't just contribute to extreme wealth concentration, it also lowers wages in the 'high-income' markets where this stuff is sold. This is much more economic in nature - but it is also political. Greater international trade regulation would inhibit wealth concentration while slowing any related decline in wages and salaries of most.

So - understanding economics won't lead you to correct conclusions about income in this country, unless you open the economic model to the markets in politcal corruption.

[appalachiablue]

13. Thanks for the explanation. (A new reality show should be coming out on the 1% Hoarders).

As Col. Wilkerson states below our jobs economy is almost exactly flip what it was post-war, 75% mfg., the rest service. GM was the largest employer 40 years ago, today it's Walmart with about 1.2 mill in the US. Unions have declined from 33% in the US to around 8%. Our trade policy needs serious change but little chance of that since we're looking at TPP now even after NAFTA. These factors add to the above indicators responsible for the current malaise, and the long term picture. Joseph Stiglitz expects stagnation to extend 25 years as he wrote this year in an article for Oxford Martin.

[candelista]

20. "If you understand economics"! What a laugh!

Here's how I would edit your post. Strike everything and replace it with "employment is a lagging indicator."

[proverbialwisdom]

15. More.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/17/wealth-gap-upper-middle-income/

DECEMBER 17, 2014
America’s wealth gap between middle-income and upper-income families is widest on record
BY RICHARD FRY AND RAKESH KOCHHAR

[newthinking]

9. We can only wish. Or momentary stability came from flooding the Stock Market with Trillions of doll

dollars, through the big banks, which became conduits.

If there was no massive Quantitative Easing, the stock market would not have skyrocketed. The trouble with this is it is another bubble, and when it pops it will likely be extremely catastrophic.

[Munificence]

18. I wish

more folks would understand what exactly has gone on over the past 5 -6 years with the Fed, the Gov and the markets. Most do not realize the game that has been played. Cheap money to banks and businesses = stock buy backs and profits. All the while they squandered our investments outside of the market.

Think of all the savings that folks have lost out on in interest. Gone are the days when a retired couple could walk into the bank and put some money into Cd's or U.S bonds and see anything above 2%. Folks used to easily get 4%-10% even on a simple savings account.

The game has been "let's jack this market up by 40-50% and make it look like all is well. If you were not in the market then you got fucked. at One point $85 billion a month was used to to prop everything up. All of this has been pure bullshit over the past 5-6 years.

The greatest theft of wealth ever has went on since 2008 until today and it all went to the fat cats on BOTH SIDES of the political spectrum.

If we did not have our social safety nets we'd be seeing food lines just like during the great depression.

$17 trillion damn dollars in debt and over $150 trillion in future liabilities.

Then there is the latest qtr GDP...yeah, way to remove the ACA costs from other qtr's and dump it all on this qtr so it looks like we have a 5% increase.

Thieves, every goddamn one of them and we continue to be silent and let them take it all. We have no fucking say in anything just continue to fuck our kids, their kids and on and on.

We are a self-centered lot - It takes a village.

Everyone is in the market now as there is no other way to invest and keep up with inflation. Wait until this bubble pops in the market - it will not be pretty and a lot worse than the last one.

[appalachiablue]

14. I think the figure is 47 million children in poverty in the US, awful as that is. Bernie Sanders

talks about it, bless him. From his website the number is 21.8%, the highest in the industrialized world. Denmark is 3.7. It's increased 73% since 2006. What shame.

[proverbialwisdom]

11. These tell a totally different story. I happened to come across both today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/opinion/your-waitress-your-professor.html

The Opinion Pages | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Your Waitress, Your Professor
By BRITTANY BRONSON
DEC. 18, 2014

504 comments

http://therealnews.com/idirect.php?i=11839

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson on TRNN
October 3, 2014

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT

WILKERSON: No, it's not. The real economy in this country, though, has shrunken so dramatically since World War II--I show the stats to my students, and I usually use the CIA stats. I can't remember them precisely right now, but I can give you general idea. In 1945, we were about, oh, 25 percent or so services and about 60 percent or so what was called heavy, medium, or light industry, manufacturing mostly. It's completely the opposite today. It's about 11 to 12 percent manufacturing, and the latest stat--and this is a precise number from the CIA--76 percent services. So you don't have the same real economy, if you will, and you don't have the same GDP reflective of that real economy. And that's a very different economy to wage war under than the one we had when we entered World War II, for example. Very different. And you could say in some respects this shadow behind the power that makes money off war, period, no matter who's the belligerent, makes money off that volatility now, especially with computers that are able to assist them in doing so, like currency manipulation, for example, or just general speculation. With computers you can do it at lightning speed and you can do it in a nanosecond, and you can make billions in that nanosecond, and you don't care about what you're doing to the real economy, because you're raking in the dough.

[MattSh]

12. America is leading the rest of the world in containing the spread of Ebola?

The USA sends the military, Cuba sends doctors.

[PersonNumber503602]

23. The US sent doctors and the military.

The military is useful in such situations because they can easily be mobilized and put to work.

[Odin2005]

21. It's not real for the 99%.

Shit articles like this prove that most of the Punditry is out of touch with working class Americans.

[Brigid]

22. People will believe it . . .

When they start seeing it in their paychecks, and not until.

[Cha]

24. It is real.. I see this all over the place. Of course there's going to be those who see nothing but

doom and gloom. I'm not one of them.

Mahalo and Merry Christmas, cal!

[cal04]

25. Mahalo and Merry Christmas to you Cha

[Cha]

26. cal..

[font color=blue] Merry Christmas, Peace, Love, & Aloha to you and yours!~[/font]

[Alkene]

27. "Pick any metric you want.."

Okay.

My household monthly income, the cost of living, the percentage of responses to job applications, my potential to ever retire, the likelihood that I won't need to go to the food bank this week, the probability of ever having a job with benefits, the potential for any protein in my diet...

vs.

Similar to the above before I lost my career after the crash.

Conclusion: not so much on the mend as continuing to sink face first into a foul and steaming diarrhetic pit of vocational despondency.

But at least the rest of the country is experiencing a resurgence.
Isn't it?