Name:
Location: Columbus, Ohio, United States

Friday, October 30, 2009

Consumer Spending

We should stop worrying about consumer spending as a bellwether of the long term economy. We spend less because we all realized that our debt driven lifestyles in the middle class were not sustainable. We need to get back to worrying about big things like trade balance, GDP, per person productivity, metrics that mean we're doing work.
There's profit in labor, not just consumption.

2 Comments:

Blogger Keith W said...

you need to define the "we" in this? Americans? Christian Americans? White Middle Class Americans? Economists?

Depending on who the we is, I would agree or disagree with you assertion.

:-)

9:34 AM  
Blogger RA Cook said...

OK--Economists and business people.
I suppose my argument isn't that consumer spending isn't a real indicator of economic health, but rather that year-over-year spending might more accurately indicate a different perception of debt and spending than we had before.

7:45 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home