I’ve been digging into the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s report on 1st quarter GDP for 2015. Most people are commenting on the phlegmatic growth—two-tenths of one percent is nothing to write home about.
However, I think there’s more to chew on than that. A couple of things occur to me. First, I wonder when they’re going to figure out that healthcare spending is a drag on the economy. I think that’s the obvious conclusion from the spending numbers.
And the savings numbers are almost undoubtedly due to rising incomes among the highest income earners and stagnant incomes for everybody else. If we’re going to have an economy that depends on consumer spending and income gains are concentrated among the highest earners, they’ve got to start spending, darn it. Something’s gotta give.
It looks like total credit card debt has not recovered yet:
$762B in 2010 (First Quarter)
$659B in 2014 (First Quarter)
It’s at $700B in the last quarter of 2014, but perhaps we need a government subsidy to get credit-card spending back to its projected growth rate prior to the recession. OK, some of that was silliness, but in light of the post was interested in seeing where credit card debt was at since it is a form of spending.
Link
Oh, I don’t know. I just skimmed through the comments thread at OTB where I learned everything is great and Obama still an economic wizard.