Economic impact on you?

[speakerman39]

I wouldn't expect a good holiday season. I've already heard people saying things like "we are just going to agree not to buy any gifts this season except for some small things"

We are going to have a rough couple of years. And I don't really think we are going to see 90s "greatness" like people seem to think we will. A "recovery" ... based on what?

We don't really have a particular technology to get us out of this hole yet. Really we need to be on the forefront of green energy, but we have a huge shortage of engineers. Huge. I'm fresh out of engineering school and had plenty of job offers, most my friends are living at home or takign some bs job, there simply aren't enough engineers to get us out of this hole. Engineering, math, science, just wasn't cool. People went for the "business" degrees and "finance" degrees. They still are. It's a serious problem America is going to face, and might be the ultimate reason why we won't be able to keep up economically with recovery.

Expect.........well guess in many ways I am more hopeful than anything else. However, I am beginning to see more traffic in out stores with people that seem ready to spend some money. My guess is things will be good and I try to look on the positive side of things even if it is mere speculation. But, you are correct in that we all are in for some hard times.

 

[Exit]

I started this thread because there is so much “noise” about current economics that I wanted to get a sample of what may actually be happening out there in the broader world. I think Audiohaulics are generally better educated, better informed and financially better off than the average person, so that has to be factored in the equation. I didn’t count the threads but it seems like about a third of the posts are seeing real impacts, a third anticipate impacts on the horizon and are bracing themselves, and about a third see little or no impact at all in there lives. I don’t know if this should be classified as pessimistic, optimistic or somewhere in between, but I hope the posts will continue. This subject seems to be a defining topic of our times and I am learning from everyone’s take on the situation. Thanks for the responses and maybe we can get a good look at this economic situation for ourselves instead of all the media/political noise.

 

[MidnightSensi]

Law of attraction.... anyone?
Basically you are attracting what you're focusing on and thinking of....

So if focus is negative on layoffs and things being bad, that's probably what you're going to get.... However... I think it's surprising how much good things a positive mindset may bring... So even in very bad times, there are many good things to focus at and look at.

I would say, life is incredibly good ))))

I agree that in bad times we should look at good, no doubt man. But, I disagree with people saying the times are bad because we are negative. That's only part of it.

Hey, that's basically my job right now!
Although, they get me doing some interesting things. I fix laptops, printers, run Network and Phone cable across the campus, work on the domain from time to time, hardware upgrades, some other crap here and there. But, most of the time I read Audioholics or my VW Forums.
Not to mention, I get free computer swag from time to time!

Haha, yeah, I still have a bunch of the "free t-shirts." Companies would send like boxes full of them and the network people didn't know what to do with all of them. The lamest shirts with sayings like "Empower your network" with a router or something on it. I have a ton of them. haha. I wear them around my place and stuff.

Expect.........well guess in many ways I am more hopeful than anything else. However, I am beginning to see more traffic in out stores with people that seem ready to spend some money. My guess is things will be good and I try to look on the positive side of things even if it is mere speculation. But, you are correct in that we all are in for some hard times.

That's because my birthday is coming up in a month and people are buying me stuff.

I just spent 78 bucks on eyedrops for my allergies.. so the pharm companies must be doing well.

 

[haraldo]

Geez Greg, I wish I had that problem.......LOL!!!!! Just wished I could do the same.

Cheers,

Phil

You can try and see if it works

 

[bandphan]

Someone gave me negative rep for this.



Second time I have gotten negative rep here. Am I really that offensive? It's just an opinion.

i sign mine

 

[Exit]

Economic outlook now?

I was talking to a relative who lives a little outside of Orlando, FL last night. They are retired, doing well and seem relatively unaffected by the economy. She did mention that their local Dodge dealer, who had been there forever, went out of business. Mazersteven mentioned that 700 dealerships are predicted to close in the next year. I am not sure if he was referring to just Ford dealerships or all brands.

Even if you have hard feelings about car dealerships from haggling for a purchase price or outrageous service bills; car dealership closures are a sad thing for the workers there, loss of business taxes and loss of a car sales and service convenience. If we track car dealership closures anecdotally, it might be somewhat of a barometer of the changes taking place in the economy.

Personally, I am optimistic that our government leaders (despite their bickering) know enough to take actions to prevent a great depression, because of the devastating effects of the first one. I do, however, think that in the time it takes them to do it and for the economy to react favorably; there will be a lot of economic causalities and hardships. Some of the economists I have been reading predict there will be an economic upturn possibly in the third quarter of 2009 or in 2010.

Some pundits say they predicted the current downturn and nobody listened to them. There is always a broad spread of predictions and after-the-fact, some of these predictions inevitably turn out to be fairly true. For the most part, the economic downturn severity seems to have been a surprise to the mainstream financial community, except the subprime mortgage lenders who kept their situations secret to the last minute and presented a positive public face. It remains to be seen whether economists’ predictions of a possible upturn are more accurate than the surprise downturn, and if they are going to occur in the 2009/2010 timeframes predicted.

This is just my take on our economic situation and I am no expert. Add your own ideas on how to gauge this economy and what you think is happening.

Closer to home, by now we have probably all read about the hard times facing Circuit City. Loss of Circuit City would unbalance the retail competition with Best Buy and possibly lead to higher prices overall. So even if you are predominately an on-line buyer, sometimes you just want something now (like a cable) and you go to one of these stores. This just shows that even our hobby may be adversely affected fairly soon.

 

[itschris]

I'm not sure how long CC would have survived either way. My understanding they've been in trouble for some time. Their model has sinmply not worked for some time and there was a strong resistance to change it.

Economy-wise, we're already starting to see things settle down... even in the world markets. The bottom line is economic contractions are based on a worsening self-driven cycle. People get concerned - they spend less. Companies see less revenue - they scale back. People get very concerned - stop discretionary spending. Companies are impacted even more - they cut jobs. The media then gets involved - a contest of who can characterize the situation worse ensues. People embrace the panic which becomes very real to them - they cut back all spending except for the most basic needs. Companies feel a tremendous backlash - cut more jobs. At this piont, you know have even less people working and spending money from job losses which restarts the same cycle to an ever worsening degree.

It's an oversimplification, but you basically break it down to just that.

 

[Adam]

As a complete sidenote, good morning General Chris. Congratulations on your promotion, SIR!

 

[itschris]

As a complete sidenote, good morning General Chris. Congratulations on your promotion, SIR!

HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!!! I didn't even notice! Thanks Adam. I'm in the most boring meeting right now with about 20 execs discussing the economy. If I have to look at one more chart I might have a seizure. I'm trying to look real important by typing on my laptop. I think I'll share the news and spice up the discussion with something worthwhile!

 

[Mort Corey]

Personally, I am optimistic that our government leaders (despite their bickering) know enough to take actions to prevent a great depression, because of the devastating effects of the first one.

That's one of the only things that gets me pesimistic The depression was largely brought on and lingered for so long by the very actions of our "government leaders".

As far as any recession or downturn is concerned, I just refuse to participate

Mort

 

[Exit]

Another 2 cents

I think Chris has the downside cycle described well. I think it also appears the continuing massive stock market declines may be settling down too, domestically and overseas. I have read from several sources that the stock market generally leads the economy by about six months. The stock market made a massive decline and it hasn’t yet started making substantial sustained advances to recover lost ground. I think there is going to be a period of financial hardship for at least some before we recover from all of this.

The stock market may just be idling, and that may be what the economy does for the next six or nine months. That would not be a bad outcome versus the downward spiral. I think the stock market will be foretelling which way our economy will head. I think everyone is hoping the stock market heads up, both for their own stock portfolios and for the economy in general. If our governmental leadership acts promptly in ways that instill confidence in the stock market, I think we can still get out of this without further downward spirals of financial pain. If the government bickers, procrastinates, fails to follow through, or otherwise messes up, I think things will get worse.

My personal BS opinion which you can totally ignore and don’t need to agree with - I don’t think this economic mess is a partisan political thing, but a question of whether to vote for any incumbents or not this fall. How we got to this point can be left to historians - its water over the dam. What we need now is to hold our government leaders responsible for leading our way out of the mess, and send our opinion in by voting on Nov. 4. Try to determine in your own districts which politicians are part of the solution and if they are not, then they are part of the problem. It’s not easy to sort through the politics to see which candidates are part of the solution, but this time it is especially important to give it a good try. You can’t just go by party lines, you need to go by individual candidates regardless of party. All we can do is turn out in large numbers, vote for new leaders if you feel it is needed, and try to get a clear message through, “No more fiddling around while Rome is burning.” We need to send a message through before our auto companies go extinct, before all the jobs are lost, before the s—t hits the fan. Watching the government wait around to see what happens next isn’t going to cut it this time and we need to say so. Just my humble opinion - RCB

 

[annunaki]

I couldn't agree more.

If we want more of the same vote the same old incumbents back into office. If you want to change things, show it with your votes. Nearly everyone up for election should be voted out so to say, "you suck and so does your agenda. We'll give someone else a go."

I would say if you have the option of a Libertarian or independent, vote for them to show that the two party system stinks and has become colluded. This goes for the highest office in the land as well.

 

[Exit]

Thanks Annunaki. I think there are some good incumbent leaders in both parties that we want to keep around, so I am more selective in who to keep in and who to vote out. We want to keep our best and get rid of the obstructers and undecided.

The fundamental question at a time like this is, in our current economy, do we want a Herbert Hoover lazie-faire hands-off approach or an FDR problem-preemption approach? I would rather have problem preemption than probe the depths of a worst-case economic hands-off policy. Call it whatever you want, but I call it common sense. It’s not hard to get hung up on the political ideological labels of a bunch of out-of-touch old men from an another century who can’t break out of their political molds to innovate a pragmatic 21st century solution. Just think about this, “What kind of leadership skill does it require to stand by and basically do nothing as a solution to a major economic crisis?” An untrained monkey could do that. Actually intervening in the economy and solving problems takes good leaders and that is what we really need.

 

[MUDSHARK]

These are good times for my company. We expect to hire 25 welders and 25-40 pipefitters during the spring. While the new president will hurt the space program and adversely effect the 35 percent of our business that is KSC related, I do not expect to fully feel the impact for 2-3 years. By then our diversification into commercial applications should see us through.

 

[Exit]

Enough is Enough

I am assuming you feel Obama is going to get elected and you expect him to cut back on the space funding because he is not a Republican. I am in the defense industry and it is typically believed here also that Republicans are for strong defense (hence our jobs), so I think I see where you are coming from. (What does KSC stand for?). It’s sometimes a tough call in voting for what is best for your job (or company) or what might be best for the country as a whole or for your future well being. Sometimes these interests align and you have a clear cut decision on how to vote. Sometimes they don’t align and you have to think about it more before you decide.

Maybe you have read Obama’s views on space and defense spending and know exactly what they are, or you know the Democratic platform policy on these topics from the past. I am hoping Obama will recognize the value of these two economic sectors and make a reasonable choice. A lot of good jobs and technology are in these sectors and hopefully Obama realizes that, and would gradually ramp down spending as the war winds down rather than use a hatchet.

I have got a bigger personal issue with McCain which is overriding my concern for the defense industry and my job. McCain wants to tax company paid health insurance spending. From what I gather, employers spend about $8,000 a year on each employee’s health plan. I get taxed about 25% for federal, state, local, social security, etc. A tax of 25% on $8,000 is $2000 taxes on my family each year. He can go pound sand.

If he taxes health benefits, he will also logically eliminate Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs). I put about $2,000 a year in a FSA so that means I am going to have to pay another 25% of $2,000 or an additional $500 per year. He wants to privatize social security and give us a $5,000 tax credit to buy what? - some type of private plan not secured by the government? I have not paid social security taxes for over 40 years to be given the bums rush to some second-rate substitute at a higher cost because the government spent our Social Security Surpluses in earlier years and is now coming up short for the baby boom generation. I will vote out anybody who even hints as cutting social security benefits or pushing back retirement ages. My employer already gutted our pension plan so Social Security is the prime income source for my retirement, and we all know you can’t live on that alone.

Oh yea, we dutiful savers also have our IRAs and rollovers which are invested in the stockmarket. Maybe in a decade or so they will be worth what we originally invested and we will only have to contend with losses in purchasing power due to inflation in the CPI) He can go pound sand.

Well, $5,000 retirement plan income taxed at 25% means I will owe another $1,250 in taxes each year. Well the total so far is $2,000 + $500 + $1250 or $2750 additional taxes each year. He can go pound sand.

I think it is pretty clear to anyone who even casually looks, that McCain’s intentions are to stick it to the poor and middle class and give more tax breaks to the wealthy individuals and businesses. After the last eight years of this, enough is enough. I can’t vote for this guy anymore (Bush/McCain) or anyone else who thinks like him, even if it means loosing my job. If I can’t afford him now, I sure won’t be able to afford him in one of the multitude of up and coming newly-created service sector jobs at minimum wage. How many years has it been since we started outsourcing, sending good jobs overseas and de-industrializing? I know the steel industry equipment supplier I worked for went belly up in the 1980’s. It might have even started before that, but I know its been going strong ever since then. Like so many of the high-end luxury products on TV, what good are “cheap” foreign products when average people are losing the means to buy them?

 

[Exit]

O yeah, I made a math mistake adding up some of the poor and middle class costs of McCain's plans for us. Instead of the $2,750 taxes I cited, it is reallly $2,000 + $500 + $1250 or $3750 additional taxes per year. This is just the additional poor and middle class tax increases I spotted from listening to him on TV one night. If you really want to get into it, you can look at the news magazines because some (I think I saw Newsweek for example) have dug out more detail of the tax increases. McCain/Palin have promoted this big false image that they are for Joe six-pack, middle america, real America, blah, blah, blah while I have just shown they plan to slam us up against the wall with some of the biggest tax hikes I can remenber, while dupiing us out of the Social Security benefits we have been paying for all our lives. The McCain/Palin campaign is just one big fat lie pandering to poor and middle America while getting the nod from the rich and powerful. They think we are so stupid that they actually come out and detail their plan to stick it to us, to our faces on TV, while smiling and saying, my friends ain't that great. They say that the sure way to get away with a lie is to make it so big, everyone believes it has to be true. Poor and middle America, wake up, John McCain is not your friend. He is a lacky of the rich and powerful. He has sold his soul to the Washington lobbiests to finance his campaign and if he gets in office, there will be hell to pay for the poor and middle class. His economic ideas are so wrong that if implemented, our current economic crisis may some day be considered the good old days.

 

[annunaki]

They both stink and I do not feel either one really has America's best interests at heart. Both are coming from the worst Congress in US history. Either one is giving us more of the same. Most of Washington has lost touch with America. If any of them were really doing what was in the best interests of the country, we would not be in this mess, nor would we have a lot of the issues that plague us.

Neither one will get my vote.

 

[Mort Corey]

Anyone that believes that either of the two major party candidates being elected will change much of anything is in for disappointment.

Mort

 

[Exit]

It’s a lot to hope for, but there is a lot to lose.

Annunaki and Mort Corey:

I feel the obligation to vote that was instilled in us since we were kids, since we live in a democracy and have that privilege. Throughout our history, a lot of brave people have died to make sure we still have that privilege and if you don’t use it, you dishonor their sacrifice. Even if you don’t know what you are doing when you vote (i.e. Bush was elected twice), you should still vote on principle.

If you don’t vote, you have no moral right to speak out about what happens in the future because you couldn’t make the choices or didn’t do your research to wade through all the crap and see what each candidate was proposing. Voting is not just about the president either. There are a lot of other government leaders to vote for too. The president is only one out of three of the branches of government. Voting for the House of Representatives and Senate leaders is equally important because they equal a president and surely you might find someone there to represent your views. If not there, then maybe state governor or state representatives, etc.

We all need you to vote this time because we are balanced on the edge of a potential great depression and everyone could be adversely affected if the wrong economic policies are put in place. As I have explained, I see McCain taking $3,750 per year out of my average middle class income, and nowhere have I seen any proposal of a stimulus package anywhere near that for the middle class and poor. I don’t think sucking the lifeblood out of the middle class and poor is going to stimulate consumer spending to save the day. I think it is a recipe for a great depression. Combining that with the lazzie-faire, free-market, non-interventionist philosophical bent of McCain and the Republican Party, we could be facing another Herbert Hoover (a staunch republican) great depression scenario. The republican approach is to passively watch everything melt down so they can toast marsh-mellows on the fire while they wait for the free-market to magically come along and save our country’s wealthy elite.

I am also not in favor of the republican tinkle-down theory, where all us little people get a golden shower from the wealthy elite, unless they miss a little and it all runs down their leg. The Democratic Party is not handicapped by the same philosophical economical flaws as the republicans and the therefore stand a good chance of averting an economic meltdown. The democrats have Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) as an example of what their party can do when the going gets rough. FDR came in after Hoover’s republican policies put us in the first great depression in the thirty’s. He was an innovator who got policies put in place on the fly and pulled us out of a further economic nosedive as well as running our country successfully through most of WWII. The Democratic Party permits such a man to lead and that is what we need now. I think Barrack Obama is a proven innovator. He revolutionized the way campaign finances can be raised independent of the Washington lobbyists and that is no minor accomplishment. If he can do that, and being a rational person with an even temper, he can lead our way out of this economic situation as well as our other problems.

I haven’t focused on Obama much because I knew from my average economic situation, everyone would be better without McCain and the republicans - for our country as well as the middle class and the poor. The wealthy elite will always be the wealthy elite. To them, money is an abstract scorecard where it is a game to see how many zeros you can put behind the first digit in your net worth. They have either never known or long since forgotten what it is like to live from paycheck to paycheck. They don’t comprehend what $3,750 a year in increased taxes means to an average or poor family. They don’t have to choose between buying food or paying utility bills.

You don’t have worry about the wealthy elite; you can rest assured they will always be getting more than their fair share. The wealthy elite control the businesses, the money, the lobbyists and a lot of the leadership in our country. For the first time in a long time, we may get to elect a leader that represents the common people in our country. That is why you need to vote.

At least if Obama owes anyone a favor for campaign financing, it’s the common people and not the Washington lobbyists. For their financial and political support, McCain owes lots of lobbyist’s favors. So if you are really tired of the same old politics, I suggest you give Obama a vote this time around and I think you might see a positive change. It’s a lot to hope for, but there is a lot to lose.

 

[MidnightSensi]

...but if Obama gets in maybe we won't have to listen about how racist America is anymore.

And maybe foreign countries won't hate us as much as they do now.

Just trying to stay positive.