Our economic rebound<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Is hitting a snag. Well, the Market hasn't been happy. I'm not an economist, financial expert, accountant, or anyone to do with money. I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/04\/our-economic-rebound.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our economic rebound\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Is hitting a snag. Well, the Market hasn't been happy. I'm not an economist, financial expert, accountant, or anyone to do with money. 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{"id":2684,"date":"2012-04-10T17:11:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T17:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/04\/our-economic-rebound.html"},"modified":"2012-04-10T17:11:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T17:11:00","slug":"our-economic-rebound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2012\/04\/our-economic-rebound.html","title":{"rendered":"Our economic rebound"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Is hitting a snag.\u00a0 Well, the Market hasn\u2019t been happy<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019m not an economist, financial expert, accountant, or anyone to do with money.\u00a0 I struggle to keep my checkbook balanced and my bills paid.\u00a0 My wife and I are both searching for \u2018gainful\u2019 employment, so my skepticism about the great Economic Recovery that has been the focus of recent reporting should be noted.\u00a0\u00a0 Still, I can\u2019t help but see this last week has caused others to notice something is amiss. <\/p>\n

I know,\u00a0when something goes wrong, we\u2019re reminded that it all happened before, usually around another successful president\u2019s term.\u00a0 Many have pointed to the sluggishness of the 1982 economy, no doubt expecting us to draw the logical line to Reagan\u2019s overwhelming landslide in 1984.\u00a0 The problem there was that by 1984, just about every major indicator showed that the economy was clearly rebounding.\u00a0 In addition, contrary to expectations, Reagan hadn\u2019t stumbled in and inadvertently caused World War III.\u00a0 In fact, it seemed that cracks in the Soviet armor were beginning to show. <\/p>\n

Not that all was perfect and wonderful.\u00a0 It never is.\u00a0 But by 1984, even being surrounded by a family of Democrats, we all had to admit things were looking a world better than they did five years earlier.\u00a0 That is not the case today.\u00a0 Even with the MSM\u2019s clear desire to help Obama get reelected, the attempts to frame our economic recovery in such positive terms is obviously half-hearted.\u00a0 Even in their most optimistic takes, I can hear clear qualifiers being dropped and disclaimers about why the great recovery doesn\u2019t look so great to so many.<\/p>\n

We just took a round trip to Florida over Spring Break (more on that some other time).\u00a0 Driving almost 2500 miles all around from Ohio down through Alabama, up through Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee.\u00a0 We saw many cities, towns, states.\u00a0 And my wife and I noticed something: There is nothing out there to suggest the economy is improving.\u00a0 We saw lines of closed up stores, for sale signs on private property, foreclosed homes.\u00a0 We noticed that more than I can remember, the bulk of the vehicles on the road were older models.\u00a0 Oh, there were new ones.\u00a0 But not as many, and it didn\u2019t seem odd at all that we were driving a minivan almost ten years old, because we saw hundreds of similar makes and models and years.\u00a0 We\u2019ve noticed that hobbies and other \u2018little luxuries\u2019 have been reduced.\u00a0 Little things that suggest people just don\u2019t have the spare change anymore.\u00a0 Or perhaps they\u2019re not willing to go into debt to get it.\u00a0 I dont\u2019 know. <\/p>\n

I just know there is nothing out there that looks like across the board economic recovery, when in 1984 \u2013 the last time we had to recover from something on par with the economic collapse of 08 \u2013 things were clearly getting better.\u00a0 My biggest fear?\u00a0 That a huge swath of the American society has been hit and permanently knocked off the middle class shelf, and will not be returning.\u00a0 Unemployment, shrinking labor force, lower pay, fewer benefits will keep this segment of America in the lower rungs.\u00a0 Those not affected, mixed with growing markets overseas, may well help American manufacturing or industry.\u00a0 One thing we saw more than I\u2019ve ever seen was a constant stream of RVs with cars attached to trailers in their back.\u00a0 Someone has the money for those.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But I fear that an entire block of our country has fallen, and won\u2019t be getting up again.\u00a0 I also fear that the media,\u00a0that might be able to light a fire under this dilemma, is going to remain eerily silent in the hope that we ignore this trend and instead believe that light is on the horizon, if only we vote for The One.\u00a0 I could be wrong.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think I\u2019m too far off on either the current predicaments, or the reason why we\u2019re not hearing more about it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"