{"id":4276,"date":"2013-12-21T14:36:26","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T14:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=4276"},"modified":"2013-12-21T14:36:26","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T14:36:26","slug":"economy-jumps-ahead-but-few-folks-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4276","title":{"rendered":"Economy jumps ahead, but few folks notice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The latest report from the U.S. Commerce Department about the state of the nation&#8217;s economy has me wondering about something.<\/p>\n<p>When are Americans going to start accepting that we are recovering from the Great Recession of 2008-2009?<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/on-the-money\/economy\/193730-economy-jumped-41-percent-in-third-quarter<\/p>\n<p>Commerce officials report that the economy grew 4.1 percent in the third quarter, which is revised upward from 3.6 percent &#8212; which isn&#8217;t a bad report, either.<\/p>\n<p>Joblessness is down to 7 percent. We&#8217;re adding an average of just less than 200,000 jobs a month; the vast bulk of those jobs are in the private sector. Foreclosure rates on homes are at a five-year low. Companies are making money. The stock market is rockin&#8217; and rollin&#8217;. The Federal Reserve Board is going to start scaling back the stimulus initiatives it launched with its bond-buying.<\/p>\n<p>And yet &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>We keep hearing pundits, commentators and some economists harping about a struggling economy.<\/p>\n<p>I totally understand that a 7 percent unemployment rate isn&#8217;t good. It&#8217;s a lot better than where it was four years ago. And it&#8217;s <em>trending downward<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Some leading individuals &#8212; such as former Texas Workforce Chairman Tom Pauken &#8212; have griped openly about what they&#8217;ve called a &#8220;jobless recovery.&#8221; Employers are finding they&#8217;re able to boost productivity with fewer employees; I despise the term &#8220;workers,&#8221; by the way. However, we&#8217;re not in the middle of a &#8220;jobless recovery.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I should add that energy production &#8212; which helps fuel the Texas economy &#8212; is way up. The Energy Department reports our oil imports are way down and the United States is on the verge of becoming the world&#8217;s leading producer of fossil fuels, a spot occupied for many decades by Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The gloomy Gus crowd, though, keeps winning the argument.<\/p>\n<p>How come? What am I missing?<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest report from the U.S. Commerce Department about the state of the nation&#8217;s economy has me wondering about something. When are Americans going to start accepting that we are recovering from the Great Recession of 2008-2009? http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/on-the-money\/economy\/193730-economy-jumped-41-percent-in-third-quarter Commerce officials report that the economy grew 4.1 percent in the third quarter, which is revised upward &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4276\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Economy jumps ahead, but few folks notice<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1080,1588,1589,1781,2502],"class_list":["post-4276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-commerce-department","tag-energy-department","tag-energy-independence","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-jobless-rate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}