Are Americans Really Whiners? A Discussion on the Nation's Economic Attitudes

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the economic attitudes of Americans, particularly in light of comments made by Phil Gramm regarding the perception of the recession and its impact on people's lives. Participants explore the implications of these views on political figures like John McCain and the broader economic context, including issues of deregulation, personal financial struggles, and the disconnect between politicians and the average citizen's experience.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants highlight Gramm's assertion that the recession is "mental," questioning whether this implies that many Americans are not genuinely suffering financially.
  • Others argue that the current economic situation, including rising fuel prices and job losses, contradicts the notion that the recession is merely a perception issue.
  • Concerns are raised about the impact of deregulation on the economy, with references to Gramm's role in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
  • Participants express skepticism about the portrayal of U.S. exports, suggesting that much of it consists of waste materials, which may not reflect the true state of U.S. manufacturing competitiveness.
  • There are repeated claims that McCain and Gramm, as wealthy individuals, are out of touch with the economic realities faced by average Americans.
  • Some participants note that while the GDP has not declined, the average net worth of Americans has decreased, raising questions about the accuracy of economic indicators.
  • Critiques are made regarding the perceived disconnect between politicians' views on economic pain and the lived experiences of citizens, with references to the rising costs of living and healthcare.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views, with significant disagreement about the interpretation of economic conditions and the implications of political statements. There is no consensus on whether the economic challenges faced by Americans are a matter of perception or reality.

Contextual Notes

Limitations include varying definitions of recession, differing interpretations of economic indicators, and the influence of personal experiences on participants' views. The discussion reflects a complex interplay of economic theory and personal anecdotes.

Ivan Seeking
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July 10: Phil Graham, John McCain's economic adviser, says we have become a 'nation of whiners.' MSNBC's Contessa Brewer talks with CQ Politics.com's Jonathan Allen and The Washington Post's Jonath... (more)
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&vid=ab2959c0-9424-4abc-a880-6f29c0a5963f&fg=rss

He says that ~ "the recession is mental".

True, the technical requirement for a recesssion is not met, but people have attitudes about the economy based on their own personal budgets and problems. Is he saying that many Americans are not hurting? It sounds that way. So I see this going a long way towards affirming to voters that McCain is out of touch, as are his friends and advisors. Being as how McCain is not strong on economics, having an advisor who even appears to be unsympathetic to people's problems, will help to add bricks to the quickly growing wall.

Gramm now is trying to say that he meant politicians and not the voters, and since no one will believe that, he appears to be not only unsympathetic, but also a liar - a good ole boy.

Hopefully McCain will keep him on-staff.
 
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They didn't even spell his name right!

Gramm is the chief architect of the current state of deregulation, that title being earned through his brilliant introduction of a mostly ununderstood section into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (2000).
 
I cringe at the glowing talk of exports.

PAUL SOLMAN: And then, topping U.S. exports in volume, there's this. Clark Hahne, on the right, buys trash from places like this.

CLARK HAHNE, Waste Paper Trader: You have the blue bin and the black bin. This is the blue bin, where the recyclables are in. The trucks go around. They dump it off here.

PAUL SOLMAN: His partner, Jimmy Yang, sells it overseas.

JIMMY YANG, Waste Paper Trader: Most of this material goes to Asia. It gets sorted out as different grades of paper, and it ends up in a paper mill in Asia.

PAUL SOLMAN: So when we're seeing all these containers being loaded on, what percentage of them have waste paper in them?

JIMMY YANG: One in three.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june08/dollarsworth_03-04.html

And that is just paper. Selling recyclable materials to China is generally big business.

I hardly see the references to exports as being representive of the state of US manufacturing, or our competitiveness abroad. In fact, being that much of the exports are garbage, it is really just a measure of the trade deficit - a natural consequence of imports.
 
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Gramm and McCain are dilettante millionaires who wouldn't know economic pain under any foreseeable circumstance. Maine is losing mills and good-paying jobs left and right due to the poor economy and the rapidly increasing price of fuel. There was a story on the local news recently about a company that is doing pretty well. The company specializes in hauling big rigs (think VERY potent wrecker truck) and their business is through the roof. Truckers can't make money on their loads with $5/gal diesel, especially if they are filling wood contracts to pulp/paper mills that they signed a year ago. They can't make enough money to keep making payments on the trucks, so they abandon them and let the banks have them hauled off and auctioned. The banks who loaned against these trucks are taking it in the neck, too, because nobody around here wants to buy the trucks and try to operate them in this environment. Some of the very large trucking companies are consolidating and picking up business, but the small-medium owner-operator companies are going out of business.

Trucking is just a segment of our state's economy, but it is an important one, with ripple-effects that are negatively impacting other sectors. Maybe we haven't met the technical definition of a "recession" yet, but we're in free-fall and this one promises to be long and deep.
 
We aren't in a recession because the GDP hasn't not declined - probably because the federal government is borrowing the money, and they don't count that.

The US spent about 2.25 trillion dollars on health care in 2007 (I need to find the reference), or abou 15.6% of the GDP. That's pretty sad. A good chunk of that would be for treating preventable diseases.


On the other hand, the average net worth of Americans has declined for the last 3 quarters.
(I'm looking for the citation on this).
 
turbo-1 said:
Gramm and McCain are dilettante millionaires who wouldn't know economic pain under any foreseeable circumstance.
A wonderful start for an objective argument. :rolleyes:
 
Hurkyl said:
A wonderful start for an objective argument. :rolleyes:
I'll bet you that neither of them can tell you the price of gas, diesel, or home heating oil, and that neither of them could tell you how much the average family's grocery bill has increased in the past year, nor give you a ballpark figure on how much health insurance would cost an average family, nor a ballpark estimate on what percentage of an average family's take-home pay would need to be spent to buy that insurance.

These guys are millionaires who get their Italian-suited butts driven around in limos and fly from place to place in corporate jets. Their overly-simplistic views of macro-economics do not extend down to the economics of regions, cities, nor individuals. For those two nuts to characterize real economic pain felt by real people as a matter of perception (not real) is insulting in the extreme. Oh, the people don't have bread? Let them eat cake.
 
turbo-1 said:
I'll bet you that neither of them can tell you the price of gas, diesel, or home heating oil, and that neither of them could tell you how much the average family's grocery bill has increased in the past year, nor give you a ballpark figure on how much health insurance would cost an average family, nor a ballpark estimate on what percentage of an average family's take-home pay would need to be spent to buy that insurance. ...
And Millionaire Ivy leaguer Senator Obama could tell give all these common touches of course.
 
  • #10
mheslep said:
And Millionaire Ivy leaguer Senator Obama could tell give all these common touches of course.
The difference is (ta Dah!) that Obama does not tell average citizens that they are not suffering in this poor economy. McCain and Gramm did, and they are out of touch with the US public. This disconnect is telling.
 
  • #11
mheslep said:
And Millionaire Ivy leaguer Senator Obama could tell give all these common touches of course.

Millionaire?
 
  • #12
mheslep said:
And Millionaire Ivy leaguer Senator Obama could tell give all these common touches of course.
That's rich. No doubt you know that Obama (net worth $1.3 million) has only been a millionaire for the last couple years or so, and grew up on food stamps and student loans. McCain, on the other hand, is worth $40 million, enjoys the luxury of about a dozen homes and can't seem to remember what he said in his last speech (let alone the days before he was a millionaire, not that he was ever in a poor financial state even then).
 
  • #13
turbo-1 said:
I'll bet you that neither of them can tell you the price of gas,...
If you have all these points, then why not stick to them? When you lace your posts with name-calling and such, especially as your opening salvo, you discredit yourself.
 
  • #14
Ivan Seeking said:
Hopefully McCain will keep him on-staff.

I think McCain has suggested that he would appoint him Ambassador to Belarus after distancing himself from Graham's remarks. The CNN anchor wondered whether people in Minsk would be OK with that.
 
  • #15
We will see. It was a cute joke [a nice deflection], but McCain and Gramm go way back.
 
  • #16
turbo-1 said:
Let them eat cake.
No. It was Qu'on leur donne de la brioche ! :rolleyes:
 
  • #17
Gokul43201 said:
That's rich. No doubt you know that Obama (net worth $1.3 million) has only been a millionaire for the last couple years or so, and grew up on food stamps and student loans. McCain, on the other hand, is worth $40 million, ...
Sen. Obama is well on his way with a 2005 income of $1.7M, give him time. By the time he's old enough to start shaving he may have $40M too. A new autobiography every 10 years should do it.
 
  • #18
Gokul43201 said:
... and grew up on food stamps and student loans
And attended an http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec04/obama_7-27.html" which has a current tuition of $16k/yr.
 
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  • #19
mheslep said:
Sen. Obama is well on his way with a 2005 income of $1.7M, give him time. By the time he's old enough to start shaving he may have $40M too. A new autobiography every 10 years should do it.
And you can make your argument at that time.

Right now, if the best you folks can come up with are quips about shaving, you must really be pretty desperate.
 
  • #20
mheslep said:
And attended an http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec04/obama_7-27.html" which has a current tuition of $16k/yr.
Well if he had an academic scholarship, then that $16K/yr is meaningless, isn't it? Especially if you compare this with the exclusive private prep school that McCain attended (probably without scholarship), which has a current tuition of over $38K/yr...
 
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  • #21
mheslep said:
And attended an http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec04/obama_7-27.html" which has a current tuition of $16k/yr.

He was smart enough to get a scholarship worth $16k/year? How is that a bad thing?
 
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  • #22
Ehh, keep yapping about which millionaire has more money.

The truth is, there *IS* a lot of whining about things. The economy is not in the greatest shape right now, but the relentless day in, day out, in your face focus on it is a bit ridiculous.

One again this weekend, I will sit outside Starbucks, reading and drinking my straight black joe (in a mug mind you). People will go in, leaving their cars running for 15 minutes with the air conditioning running full blast, bringing back 4 or 5 frappe-latte-matte-satte cappucinos (with whip) that cost about 5 bucks apiece, which they will then distribute to the group of 6 year olds in the car, all the while complaining about the cost of gas.

What crystal ball do I possesses that allows me to make such predictions? Experience. it's happened every darn weekend this summer.
 
  • #23
seycyrus said:
One again this weekend, I will sit outside Starbucks, reading and drinking my straight black joe (in a mug mind you). People will go in, leaving their cars running for 15 minutes with the air conditioning running full blast, bringing back 4 or 5 frappe-latte-matte-satte cappucinos (with whip) that cost about 5 bucks apiece, which they will then distribute to the group of 6 year olds in the car, all the while complaining about the cost of gas.
Sounds like SoCal. :biggrin:

I wonder if that is one of the stores that Starbucks will close. Perhaps not if it has been open two years or more.
 
  • #24
Astronuc said:
Sounds like SoCal. :biggrin:
For a second, I thought you said Sokal !
 
  • #25
Gramm worked as a lobbyist to help prevent regulation of the sub prime loan industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F-LVfcbOxs&NR=1

He is also the person who gave us the "Enron Loophole". McCain is going to have to throw his old friend and economic adviser under the bus.
 
  • #26
edward said:
He is also the person who gave us the "Enron Loophole". McCain is going to have to throw his old friend and economic adviser under the bus.
But that's old news - though actually, it has hardly been in the news.

McCain's advisors are a strange lot. They are almost the who's who in the "I'm responsible for this mess today" club.

There's Gramm, the Economic Adviser, who masterminded the banking and energy futures deregulation.

Then there's Kristol, the Foreign Policy Adviser, who was one of the strongest proponents of the Iraq War, and is famous for quotes like these:

"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."

"According to one estimate, initially as many as 75,000 troops may be required to police the war's aftermath, at a cost of $16 billion a year. As other countries' forces arrive, and as Iraq rebuilds its economy and political system, that force could probably be drawn down to several thousand soldiers after a year or two."
 
  • #27
I resent the arrogant appropriation of whinerism by Americans.

That is a Scandinavian virtue.

You have so much else in the world, why can't we keep our whining without your intervention? :cry:
 
  • #28
Gokul43201 said:
But that's old news - though actually, it has hardly been in the news.

McCain's advisors are a strange lot. They are almost the who's who in the "I'm responsible for this mess today" club.

There's Gramm, the Economic Adviser, who masterminded the banking and energy futures deregulation.

Then there's Kristol, the Foreign Policy Adviser, who was one of the strongest proponents of the Iraq War, and is famous for quotes like these:

"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."

"According to one estimate, initially as many as 75,000 troops may be required to police the war's aftermath, at a cost of $16 billion a year. As other countries' forces arrive, and as Iraq rebuilds its economy and political system, that force could probably be drawn down to several thousand soldiers after a year or two."

And Fiorina, who is probably the most hated person to have ever presided over Hewlett-Packard
The Illinois senator accused her last week of distorting his tax plans. His campaign has highlighted the layoffs she presided over as Hewlett-Packard's chief executive, as well as the hefty compensation package she received when she was forced out.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208700518
 
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  • #29
seycyrus said:
Ehh, keep yapping about which millionaire has more money.

The truth is, there *IS* a lot of whining about things. The economy is not in the greatest shape right now, but the relentless day in, day out, in your face focus on it is a bit ridiculous.

Does this include the fisherman who can't affort to run his boat, and truckers who pay over $1000 to fill their tanks? How about the single working mother who is about to lose her home?

Everyone complains, but that doesn't imply that everyone is exaggerating the seriousness of the situation.
 
  • #30
Ivan Seeking said:
Does this include the fisherman who can't affort to run his boat, and truckers who pay over $1000 to fill their tanks? How about the single working mother who is about to lose her home?

Everyone complains, but that doesn't imply that everyone is exaggerating the seriousness of the situation.
Self-proclaimed conservatives who are well-off and don't care for the well-being of other citizens can say that the economy isn't that bad because the weak economy does not personally impact them.

Conservatives who DO give a damn about other citizens (like myself) tend to watch downward economic trends with some alarm. When critical industries like trucking, fishing, logging, etc start crashing in around us we have to measure the damage not just in the personal losses of the people's livelihoods, but in the ripple-effect that their lost incomes will have on the local economy. There are a few yacht-builders in Maine that still have some business, but the people who make working boats (trawlers, lobster, boats, etc) are laying off their workers and shutting their doors. When fishermen can't afford to operate their boats, boat-builders can't build and sell them, and they lose crews of skilled craftsmen that may be difficult to replace even if the fishing industry rebounds. It takes a lot of people to keep commercial fishing boats in the water, including my friend's machine shop (he specializes in rebuilding marine engines), chandlers, bait dealers, trap-makers, and on and on, including fish brokers, dock-workers, truckers, packing houses, etc. My father's nearest neighbor is a lobsterman. He has shortened his trap-line and moved the traps to shallower waters nearer shore to conserve fuel, and he checks his traps as infrequently as he can. His catch is down, but it's all he can do to keep his boat fueled and he's absorbing the losses for now. Younger fishermen who are making payments on their boats and gear are dropping like flies.