This article in liberal VOX is a great defense of the metric called Gross Domestic Product

 The only number that really matters

 ... GDP tells you how much resource-generating capacity you have by looking at how much you are doing right now. ...

 

And as you know if you read posts here labeled GDP, we aren't doing enough.

GDP today would be DOUBLE what it is if the compound annual growth rate of GDP from the Great Depression to 1984 had simply continued on its trajectory after 1984, but it didn't.

Meanwhile, the steady decline in capacity utilization in the post-war tells you why.

Reagan administration policy prescriptions were only temporarily successful at staving off the trend lower. 

Among its biggest mistakes was lowering ordinary income tax rates because those punitive rates had forced the wealthy to invest their money in American productive capacity in order to get preferential long term capital gains tax rewards from those investments.

Instead like FOOLS we gave them low tax bills on ordinary income, and they promptly took the surplus gains and invested them in low labor cost foreign lands.

Middle classes were created abroad in the millions where there were none before, at the expense of ours here in America.

Ronald Reagan wanted us to believe that it's our money and we know best what to do with it.

WE DON'T.

 

 

The only thing Trump has accomplished at "warp speed" is ruining the US economy because he ignored a deadly virus until it was too late

Trump, the supposed savior of US manufacturing, has presided over the utter collapse of manufacturing capacity utilization to a level in April 2020 never experienced in the post-war. The president could lawfully and easily order this unused capacity to make masks which would in fact protect everyone, and other PPE for hospital workers and care-givers to protect our front line workers, but he has not. Were he serious about re-opening the country, he would have made this JOB 2 on Feb 1, after JOB 1, which was hard-stopping all passenger air travel, the primary vector for the pandemic. Trump didn't do JOB 1, either.

Industrial production generally has imploded to levels never seen since 1919. The so-called America first president has done nothing in three years to make America strong enough to prevent this from happening. Remember Ann Coulter said long ago already that Trump was a lazy ignoramus. 

Motor vehicle production annualized has tanked 11 million units in just two months to fewer than 72,000 annualized. That's the typical monthly sales figure for a single popular car. 

Oh, I've forgotten unemployment, which also is unprecedented, though understated, at 14.7%. It's actually closer to 20%. North of 33 million not-seasonally-adjusted have made first time claims for unemployment from March 19th inclusive.

Trump's numbers are truly great, as in "you great oaf!"

Yes the government has "bailed out" the workers and the businesses, but with a Rube Goldberg machine which has been completely unfair in its results, picking winners by virtue of their established access to bankers or savvy state systems of unemployment administration. Bank or live somewhere not up to speed? Dats tuff, Anwar. You're a loser anyway.

Meanwhile coronavirus infections are set to soar again because our president is throwing a tantrum to open the country but hasn't made it safe to do so. He's had two months for that but has produced BUPKIS. If you want people to go back to work, they need masks. Where are the masks? Oh well, you were on your last legs anyway.

How anyone can vote to re-elect this level of horrific incompetence and reptilian danger is beyond me.

Warped New York Times views inflation as sign of increased demand

Nelson D. Schwartz, here:

Besides the increase in consumer prices reported on Thursday, data Wednesday on producer prices showed a rise of 0.6 percent last month, the largest increase since September 2012 and an indication that demand for a number of basic goods is growing faster than economists expected.

Never mind industrial production fell 0.6% (expectation was 0.0%) along with capacity utilization, which dropped to 78.6% (expectation was 79.2%). Import prices were down 0.4% (expectation was for an increase of 0.3%). Retail sales also disappointed up just 0.1% vs. expectation of 0.4%. The expectation ex-autos was even higher up 0.6%, and the disappointment even lower with a flat 0.0%. Crude oil supplies were up .947M when they were expected to be down .400M. The housing index came in lower at 45 vs. expectation of 49.

Against this backdrop of soft demand, higher producer and consumer prices along with back to back months of flat wages are indicative of nothing so much as . . .

PAIN.

Which is what, evidently, The New York Times enjoys inflicting the most. 

Refinery Capacity Utilization Is Down Almost 7% From The 1998 Peak Through 2012