Another good jobs report shows America's economy is booming | Hacker News Reader

Another good jobs report shows America's economy is booming

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20 pointspg_123416 comments

The economy is "booming" while the average American's quality of life is in decline and they're struggling to afford basic things like food, rent, and utilities. I'm super happy for all the extremely wealthy people who are doing so well in the stock market, and for all the corporations who have been pulling in record profits, but for the average person the only thing "booming" is their household debit which is at record highs.

While it's a good thing that people aren't having too much trouble finding work, the jobs they have clearly aren't paying them enough. Eviction rates across the US are rising and people are being forced to pull money out of their 401(k)s in record numbers now too. None of that is a great sign for the economy. If amassing record amounts of debt and taking money from pension accounts are the only things propping up the "booming" economy, it's bound to crash hard eventually.

have you ever considered that maybe you need to get out of whatever online bubble you're in?

I grew up poor in the 80's and 90's. I've been homeless, lived without running water, electricity, and so forth.

being poor has always been hard and always will be hard. Everyone else is doing ok, wealthy or not. inflation hurts everyone, I certainly don't like seeing my food bill nowadays, but I can afford it just fine. If someone is lower middle class and above and can't afford their bills, their issue is lifestyle inflation caught them out.

I'm not saying there aren't problems, but you've lost perspective here. The vast majority of Americans are not _struggling_ to afford food, nor do you have to be "extremely wealthy" to avoid struggling to afford food.

> have you ever considered that maybe you need to get out of whatever online bubble you're in?

No online bubble can explain away the fact that the US has record high household debit, record high numbers of people eating into retirement, or record high numbers of people paying more than 30% of their income to rent (https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1225957874/housing-unaffordab...).

The fact is that most of us on this website are far better off than the rest of country. If you have just $1,000 sitting in savings you're better off than over half of the country (https://truthout.org/articles/more-than-half-of-americans-do...)

The vast majority of Americans have been forced to change their normal shopping habits because they can no longer afford what they used to. Millions of Americans are dealing with hunger and food insecurity (https://news.yahoo.com/millions-americans-live-hunger-food-2...).

None of this is a good look for our economic future.

online bubble: 1

sanity: 0

The question you have to ask yourself is if this was all true 20 years ago and the answer is yes.

The question you have to ask yourself is if this was all true 20 years ago then how could today's numbers be "records". When records are being broken that means that things aren't the same as they have been.

Maybe you could say that America has been in decline for a long long time, but it's still doing worse today in several metrics than it ever has.

I still find this hard to believe as ever since 2009s recession, I personally have never met so many people recently who have been laid off and looking for work in a lot of different industries and also the amount of people who work multiple jobs. Almost everyone I know who’s not very wealthy is doing their day job and has some other form of income to be able to pay normal bills

Software engineers are not.

I’m optimistic it will recover relatively quickly. It sucks at the moment though 1000%

Economic / market cycles seem to go a lot faster these days.

Do you feel the 2021 boom will be back? I hope so :(

I suspect it will feel more like 2010-2014. Layoffs have the potential to incubate disruptors.

When you steal your allies' money via LNG gas...

Would you prefer the US didn't offer it's excess LNG to Europe for sale, or would you prefer Europe continued to purchase LNG from the Russians?

That was an offer they could not refuse after somebody (probably Putin) blew up that pipeline.

Of course we can never be sure, but more sources and reasonable analyses point to the US rather than Russia. Russia had way more to lose from such an action, while the US would force alignment by doing so, even if it was at the risk of the lives and livelihood of their allies (EU).

good point. Could they atone for that by giving some of the oil they defend against villains in Syria to the EU at purchase price?

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