RadioFreeLiberal.com

It always seems to hit trucking first. In the last 3 months fuel prices have gone up at least 20 cpg. I have gone from grossing 7k a week on fewer than 2400 miles. To grossing 6500 on 3250 miles. Net income down 2500 a month. It won't be long before it hits those in the mainstream.

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

Yeah, the writing has been on the wall for a bit now.

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The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
- Mark Twain

a downturn in a downturn

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI2SyfEfN2k

Not that long ago, glen was talking up 45's economic policy....

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" I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

going from taxcut season to looting and war season

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI2SyfEfN2k

Glen when I think about costs I Inflation adjust them and set a base year rate of comparison.

I remember gas and diesel fuel being about the same price. And price stable for a long time as a kid. It was twenty nine cents at the cut rate pump for gas. The farm tanker delivery price was about twenty five cents for both gas and diesel fuel. That lasted until 1970 maybe 1971.

"$0.29 in 1965 → $2.32 in 2018." That inflation adjusts it and sets the late 1960's as the period of comparison.

The numbers come from here: http://www.in2013dollars.com/1965-dolla ... mount=0.29



Now we need to consider fuel taxes. I bought gas today for $3.39, diesel seems higher but I don't know what it is going for here, not for trucks.

A dollar and seven cents is the difference between the price I paid today and the 1960's inflation adjusted price of twenty nine cents. Federal fuel taxes in the 60's were five cents, now they'er about a quarter. States vary, today they average about thirty cents, They were about five cents in the 60's as well. Twenty cents Federal and twenty five cents states, is forty five cents.

So a fuel price of $2.77 is the base rate for fuel today, not high, not low. Today I paid the base plus sixty two cents.

Most of this year I paid that base rate or below. Most of the last several years.



Glen were you complaining about the fuel prices then?

Economic downturns come after the normal 1-2 years of impetus from tax cuts. Republicans are
talking of a second round of tax cuts which would postpone the downturn but let's see if they
retain control of the Congress after the mid-terms. What would help in a tax cut environment
is real financial discipline which likely is politically impossible unless they can sell the public
on allowing major cuts to social security, medicaid and Medicare.

Dumbfucker glen. Still believing that a President has something major to do with the economy of this country. Economist "experts" who know so much more than the rest of us have whatever opinions they have...but in my humble opinion, there have only been two Presidents who's actions directed toward the economy have had any effect at all. FDR and Obama. The latter, who's relentless moves with stimulus spending beat off a possible second great depression. I remain convinced that if the TARP handn't been set in motion by Bush and actively pursued by Obama, an extended freeze in the credit markets would have dropped the bottom out.

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The weird thing, if you ask people the #1 thing they vote on in any election ... "jobs and the economy".

How much influence presidents and public policy have on the actual economy may be less than people think. The bottom line is there is something called the business cycle with upturns and downturns, which independently of any policy action, will generates booms and busts, recessions and spurts, bulls and bears ... and it seems like politicians don't control it. They may just be lucky to be where it is and take credit for it as it goes up, and blame their opponents or their predecessor when it goes down.

Apart from that endogenous cycle, you have global forces. No American president can control the Japanese economy or stock market, but its booms and busts will affect ours.

No politician will ever have this as a complete and honest discussion with the American people of course ... it's the number one thing they seem to vote on, are they going to admit they have little or no control over it?

BTW2, the evidence that supply side tax cuts are an economic stimulus for growth and employment is slight - after all, I know very well an economist who reads the literature. Keynesian demand side spending has a larger impact on the economy.

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-- Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Malaclypse the Younger

I vote for Bold Capitol D's encased in parenthesis.

It seems like it would be rhetorical inside those parenthesis but its not.

It's habit forming.

Supply side is voodoo, and the main argument for it comes from an academic paper which has proven to be an unreproducible result. IIRC, the math was wrong and nobody caught it, probably for the usual reasons (nobody wanted to).

I can't go by the stock market, since it goes up and down, and every time it goes down I hear "hear comes the recession" and then nothing happens. I can't say if fuel prices are a precursor, since it's the result of the oil industry getting its agenda in DC. I can say that fuel prices do affect overheads, a lot, and it does tend to be recessionary if they go up too far.

All we have to go on is common sense, and that says we've been due for a business cycle for several years now. There's probably a limit to how long the government can prevent it with these tax cuts. They're not really doing much for Main Street, and if demand collapses, that's it for the Obama Boom.

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"This is the end of my presidency. I'm fucked." --President Donald J. Trump, May 2017

John Maynard Keynes said stimulus spending can help us get out of a recession (not prevent one, not end one).

Supply side tax cuts, because they usually lead to austerity, only make recessions worse. (Please note Keynes DID advocate for working and middle class tax cuts, because they lead to more consumer spending.)

Anybody remember? Massive Reagan tax cuts in 1981. Massive Reagan recession in 1982.

We have a few decades of empirical data establishing this. Also, some good films featuring Paul Krugman and Robert Reich.

See, there's this great theory that if we give wealthy captains of industry tax cuts, they will take that money and pour it back into payroll, hire more people, give employees raises, expand employment and grow the economy.

That's the theory. Actual practice, actual data shows this tends not to happen. Instead, it goes back to shareholders, stock buybacks, golf cations, yachts in foreign ports.

Then you have this weird idea once scrawled on a cocktail napkin that this voodoo mojo will even increase government revenue, because although tax rates are lower, the growing economy means more tax revenue will come in to the government. Actual results once again falsify the theory. (See: massive Reagan, Bush, Trump debts.)

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-- Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Malaclypse the Younger

As often as Republicans have tried Supply Side, it always fails. "This one time" is the thought I guess.

It never works, no matter the Cons try to dress it up, failure is the end result.

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" I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

You are either lying or just to stupid to be able to comprehend what I wrote

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"my choice is for people like you to be deported -Ike Bana 5/13/18

"within weeks of being rid of the likes of you, rid of every fucking one of you,we would begin to see what kind of country this ought to be" Ike Bana 6/14/18

Not comprehending the incomprehensible does not make one stupid. It makes the writer stupid.

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"...If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set." -A Brit on Quora Digest, part of a much longer dissertation

Start making sense glen, then we can talk. You were boosting 45 and his economic polices, now you're not.

Hypocrite Much.

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" I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Probably not.

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I know I am asking the impossible.

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" I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

There are a number of conservative writers who have been trying to denigrate FDR's new deal policies. Amity
Shlaes for one wrote a good book on Coolidge attacking FDR's new deal which brought on the anathema
which is social security which Republicans have hated for 80 years. Coolidge himself followed policies of
real fiscal conservatism and saw the upcoming great depression when the congress rejected fiscal
conservatism.

I do think voters have forgotten how close we were to a second great depression in 2008 for those Bush
Tax cut policies followed by a massive increase in spending due to the Iraq war and department of homeland
security. Obama gets little credit from beating back the second great depression and I'm fearful of a third
depression with these Trump tax cuts and increased spending for defense and the upcoming battle to fund
the wall.

Me too.

It's not like 2008 for me though. I could see that one coming, could kind of see what shape it would take.

Otherwise I've never seen recessions coming before, not with enough certainty to act ahead of the news.

But I feel we sure could have one and it be a dozy.


I'm not positioned for one, nor am I ill-positioned.

I'm retired.

One can never assume tax cuts by themselves followed easing restrictions would lead
to this booming economy. Eisenhower was a fiscally conservative Republican who
strongly believed in a balanced budget but never advocated cutting taxes unless
there was balance in income and expenditures.

I could see real problems ahead if the second round of tax cuts gets implemented. The
truly honest fiscal conservatives in the Republican party likely are praying for the
Democrats to get control of the house for they know their party is beholden to
Trump, even after he leaves office.

Truly honest fiscal conservatives of today want to slash the shit out of everything not labeled defense.

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bird's theorem-"we the people" are stupid.

"No one is so foolish as to choose war over peace. In peace sons bury their fathers, in war fathers bury their sons." - Herodotus

The new motto of the USA: Unum de multis. Out of one, many.

Probably should be careful about over-reading the tea leaves here. Retail may be going away more because of long-term structural changes in the economy than a looming downturn/recession.

Also, we can argue maybe surviving retailers were smarter about adapting to on-going changes in consumer behavior than Sears (and Kmart) were.

But, still, worth noting.

Sears, the store that changed America, declares bankruptcy
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/business ... index.html

[snip]

As of the filing, about 700 stores remained open and the company employed 68,000 workers. That's down from 1,000 stores with 89,000 employees that it had as recently as February.

But Sears said that it's looking for a buyer for a large number of its remaining stores, and it will close at least 142 stores near the end of this year. That's in addition to the 46 store closings already planned for next month. The company did not rule out additional store closings as the bankruptcy process proceeds.

[snip][end]

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-- Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Malaclypse the Younger

Mao-Mart is trying to position itself. Something tells me that they will be more successful than Sears, understatement, yes, I know, but not nearly as successful as they have been. I can see store closings as they attempt to retrench as both bricks and mortar as well as online. Look for more and more consolidation as well as loss of competition with the result of increasing prices to cut declining profit.

And remember: interest, returns and profit are all claims on future growth.

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bird's theorem-"we the people" are stupid.

"No one is so foolish as to choose war over peace. In peace sons bury their fathers, in war fathers bury their sons." - Herodotus

The new motto of the USA: Unum de multis. Out of one, many.

theres other effects as well, sears located in malls where the security becomes overbearing and preocupied with intimidating customers they dont like the looks of could be convincing them not to spend their money there though it needs it to survive. that may be a result of loose high capacity ammo clip and high velocity gun policies that create a hyper security atmosphere mixed with taxcut and deregulation policies that embolden and insulate the owners from consequences that would otherwise have them bend to being fair and treating people with respect.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI2SyfEfN2k