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In 2005, few people on the planet could afford Americans’ standard of living. Not even Americans.
But now the wheel has turned. The US is facing financial reality. And yesterday, we gave you our most audacious forecast ever: the popolo minuto are headed for the barricades. Yes, dear reader, prepare for revolution, repression, and ruin. Buy stocks in companies that make police batons and pepper gas, prisons and window glass, drones and bandages.
The Christian Science Monitor:
Think life is not as good as it used to be, at least in terms of your wallet? You'd be right about that. The standard of living for Americans has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the US government began recording it five decades ago.
Bottom line: The average individual now has $1,315 less in disposable income than he or she did three years ago at the onset of the Great Recession – even though the recession ended, technically speaking, in mid-2009. That means less money to spend at the spa or the movies, less for vacations, new carpeting for the house, or dinner at a restaurant.
In short, it means a less vibrant economy, with more Americans spending primarily on necessities. The diminished standard of living, moreover, is squeezing the middle class, whose restlessness and discontent are evident in grass-roots movements such as the tea party and "Occupy Wall Street" and who may take out their frustrations on incumbent politicians in next year's election.
Per capita disposal personal income – a key indicator of the standard of living – peaked in the spring of 2008, at $33,794 (measured as after-tax income). As of the second quarter of 2011, it was $32,479 – almost a 4 percent drop. If per capita disposable income had continued to grow at its normal pace, it would have been more than $34,000 a year by now.
The misery index – which combines inflation and unemployment – is almost back to where it was 30 years ago – after inflation had reached 13% and stocks had been going down for 16 years.
But wait. Things didn’t turn out so bad after that, did they? In the early ‘80s came “Morning in America” and a 20-year boom.
Don’t count on it this time, dear reader. 1981 was everything 2011 is not. Back then, interest rates and inflation were sky high. Stocks were low. And Paul Volcker had just taken over at the Fed. When he said he was going to turn things around, he meant it.
Today, interest rates are at a half-century low, stocks are still expensive and Ben Bernanke is as confused as Volcker was clear-headed. Turn things around now and you get rising interest rates, falling stock prices and more misery. Look out the window. You can see the sun on the horizon twice a day. But only once is it rising.
The world has turned. Against us. Mitt Romney may have God in his pocket. But from our perch here at the Daily Reckoning headquarters in Paris, it looks more likely that the gods have gone over to the over side.
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And more thoughts
• “Can you help me,” said the tall, attractive, dark-haired young woman.
We had just gotten out of the subway at the Auteuil stop. It is a strange station, where the metro trains only go in one direction.
“I want to go the other way and I don’t know how to do it.”
“Of course, Mademoiselle,” we began gallantly. Then, we explained how the system worked in this part of the underground railway.
But she looked off into the distance. She seemed to be puzzled, with a far-away look in here eyes. We explained the geography and the mechanics of it. We oriented her, pointing her to what we believed was True North. We would have been happy to explain the motion of the earth around the sun and the shifting of the seasons, too, for she was pretty and smiled. But she seemed to be looking for more practical advice.
“Come over here, here’s a map, look, see how the subway line goes this way here and that way there. Don’t you see how it works?”
“No…”
“Well… just look at this… see the pattern…?”
“I’m afraid not…” she said quietly, lowering her head a bit and raising her right arm. In her right hand, we hadn’t noticed, was a white cane.
“Oh… I see… but I guess you don’t see, do you?”
“No.”
• One of the hardest things to understand is how come modern democracy could be so shiftless… and modern capitalism is so unproductive. As to the first question, how come the feds bail out the banks, when the voters are clearly against it? And how come they continue to spend trillions on foreign wars… when the voters clearly cannot afford it? As to the second, how is it possible for the most sophisticated, high tech, hugely funded capitalist system the world has ever seen to allocate capital so badly? Over the space of its most recent, and most flamboyant decade, it actually made people poorer!
It scarcely seems possible.
But here we are. American democracy and America capitalism have been hijacked by zombies. Trillions of dollars are directed to sectors with negative real rates of return – education, heath, bureaucracy and war. Washington is the nation’s richest city. And government – along with its zombie clients – are America’s only thriving industries.
More to come soon…
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