We're Not In a Recession

The sky is also purple. Michael Jordan played hockey. Orange juice comes from grapes. Bugs taste delicious. And I was once a backup pilot for the Starship Enterprise.

What is a recession? Maybe a better question is what stage are we in of the empire’s collapse when we can no longer even admit that the economy is in a recession? Look, I did not like the orange boogeyman saying things like “strongest economy ever.” By just about any legitimate metric, it was clearly not the case and I had arguments with people about it at that time. But now we’ve gone from boasting about something that isn’t true to flat out changing the definition of what something is to meet our ends.

Which, frankly, is pretty on-brand for the last 12 months or so. Fun fact: my jabbed father is now considered “anti-vaxxer” by this abysmal interpretation of a term that didn’t even exist when my paper dictionary was printed:

a person who opposes the use of vaccines or regulations mandating vaccination

Bold my emphasis. Don’t like injection mandates? We’ll you’re an anti-vaxxer then! This is, of course, nonsense. Nothing logical about it. The same can be said for the administration’s perplexing messaging around the state of the economy. The white house is literally saying that we’re not in a recession yet is refusing to clearly define what goalposts it is using to make that assessment.

What is a recession? I don’t know. I just know we’re not in one. You got that, Jack?

Cool, man. Go back to your cartoons now.

The creator of that meme deserves a Memey Award.

Ah, I remember the photoshop wars in college very fondly…. Anyway, here’s how a recession is now defined according to Investopedia:

A recession is a macroeconomic term that refers to a significant decline in general economic activity in a designated region. It had been typically recognized as two consecutive quarters of economic decline, as reflected by GDP in conjunction with monthly indicators such as a rise in unemployment. However, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which officially declares recessions, says the two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP are not how it is defined anymore. The NBER defines a recession as a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.

Historically, a recession has been two quarters of declining activity coupled with a spike in unemployment. Now, the definition is far more vague and requires a significant slowdown across all industries. I guess that’s good for us because that means we’ll never actually have an official recession again. Figures lie and liars figure. The problem is, pretending that we’re not in a recession now just because we have job growth is an example of exercising statistical liberties that have been enabled because of a massive catalyst. Namely, forced lockdowns in response to the ‘Rona. But I can make shit up too, oh dear White House. And my projections show your employment data is skewed because of widespread job losses two years ago:

Based off of 30 years of employment data, some could argue we should be at 156 million working people in America based on the average monthly growth rate of 0.09% monthly employment growth over the last 30 years. But we’re not at 156 million working people. We’re about 4.4 million under what the long term trend would suggest. After dot com, America puked up about 3 million workers. The GFC was a bit more than that. The point is, if we could have reasonably expected 156 million jobs in 2022 pre-COVID and we now have less than 152 million and two straight quarters of declining GDP, isn’t it fair to call that a recession? It doesn’t matter because this exercise is just another expression of statistical liberty designed to make a point.

What is actually happening on the street?

Forget about the nonsense. Forget about the fact that labor force participation is still well under pre-COVID levels. Wonky academics who reside in ivory towers and administrators who have nothing to gain from telling the truth should largely be ignored at this point. What are the biggest corporations in the country telling us about the economy? You know, the people who are actually participating in economic activity. What are they saying?

Well, Walmart just told us that it has to slash apparel prices to move inventory because people aren’t buying the merch anymore while their income gets eaten by higher food costs. Shopify announced it will be cutting 10% of it’s workforce. Oracle is considering layoffs. Netflix started layoffs in Q2. I could keep going if you need me to. Nice little economy we have here. Certainly no issues in the job market while we have two straight quarters of negative GDP, right?

wE dOn’T sEE a ReCESsiOn

Repeat the line.

Do you see the scam yet?

It’s the same playbook that we’ve seen before with consumer price inflation. Don’t like how high the CPI is? Just change the methodology. Don’t like what the GDP numbers say? Just change the definition of a recession. From admin to admin. Again and Again. There is no honesty. Only gaslighting.

Do you get that no matter which party is in power, none of these people should ever be taken seriously again? Indoor masking only applied to the serfs. The SEC only targets individual citizens for breaking securities law rather than policy makers who brazenly do it in front of everyone. Recessions aren’t recessions anymore. Anthony Fauci didn’t advocate for closing schools even though he totally actually did.

They are all flat out lying to you. They don’t think you’re smart enough to check the receipts. They have no actual answers. They’re awful leaders. They are purely here to take the rake from the casino and to pretend like they’re being helpful. It’s always the other guy’s fault. And the few times they’re actually all on the same page, it’s because they’re making our lives more difficult in some way. As I said in the You Have the Power series; Congress has a truly horrendous approval rating. Yet their retention numbers are massive. What is the definition of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Yes, a lot of this is our own fault. So what are we going to do about it?