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Who: Kimball Corson. Text and Photos not disclaimed or that are obviously not mine are copyright (c) Kimball Corson 2004-2016
Port: Lake Pleasant, AZ
09 April 2018 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
10 March 2018 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
10 March 2018 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
22 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
22 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
22 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
22 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
22 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
22 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
22 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
22 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
09 August 2017 | Pago Pago, American Samoa

More on Our Current Economic Situation

25 April 2016 | Pago Pago, American Samoa
Kimball Corson
The post-2000 trend line (or LLS fit) on US industrial production (i.e., US output of productive effort) is certainly well below the pre-2000 output trend line. It is essentially flat. The difference between these trend lines reflects our the US output gap. Before 2000 we had a much higher percentage of the working age population in the US employed. In terms of production and consumption we are in a stable new "lower low" and we can stay there for quite some time.

Output or industrial production remains depressed because consumption is depressed. Consumption drives industrial production. Consumption is depressed because because the distribution of income in the US has become badly and increasingly skewed toward the top such that now the top 10 percent got a record 48.2 percent of all national income last year.

U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. The rich hoard much of their income so that is does not get spent on current consumption or real productive investment in the US --- much sits in off shore accounts and much in cash. That depresses aggregate demand and aggregate production adjusts downward to clear markets and not have huge inventory build-ups. We now live in a new lower low and will stay there as long as income is so mal-distributed. Distribution is American capitalism's greatest failure.

Not one in twenty economists get this and most lay people, including those here, don't either. It is an inconvenient truth most want to deny. The answer is political, not economic.

_____

Post script

With export of much American industry abroad to take advantage of cheaper labor, Many Americans became super rich on the savings in labor costs while many Americans lost their jobs and became super poor or were squeezed into the US service sector with jobs at much lower pay. These developments were one source of American income inequality, but other factors are involved too. Neither production, nor employment of American's of working age population has been able to recover from the Great Recession which quickly ensued. It was the shake out of the aftermath.
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Vessel Name: Altaira
Vessel Make/Model: A Fair Weather Mariner 39 is a fast (PHRF 132), heavily ballasted (43%), high-aspect (6:1), stiff, comfortable, offshore performance cruiser by Bob Perry that goes to wind well (30 deg w/ good headway) and is also good up and down the Beaufort scale.
Hailing Port: Lake Pleasant, AZ
Crew: Kimball Corson. Text and Photos not disclaimed or that are obviously not mine are copyright (c) Kimball Corson 2004-2016
About:
Kimball Corson: I am a 75 year old solo sailor, by choice. However, I did take on a personable, but high maintenance female kitten, now a full grown cat, named KiKiPoo when she is sweet, or KatKatPo after she has just killed something like a bird or bat. [...]
Extra:
Although I was a lawyer and practiced law with good success for thirty years, creating significant new law, I never really believed in the law, the politics of law or in the over reaching self-interest of most lawyers I met. Too much exposure to Nietzsche and other good and seriously thoughtful [...]
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Profile

Who: Kimball Corson. Text and Photos not disclaimed or that are obviously not mine are copyright (c) Kimball Corson 2004-2016
Port: Lake Pleasant, AZ