[rejor121]

I think we might need to rethink what a recession is.

AFAIK, we have been in a recession since 2008. IMO we never really got out of it.

We will either bust hard and go into an actual depression, or we will forever stave off a true depression by…

Working for the same wage for years and years while costs go up and raises only happen to slightly offset cost of living.

We’ve been doing that for about 8 years now

[bogomipz]

>"AFAIK, we have been in a recession since 2008. IMO we never really got out of it."

That's complete nonsense. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the body which officially declares recessions in the US, 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."[1]

Aside from the 2020 pandemic dive, there has been positive GDP growth every year since 2008.[2]

[1] https://www.nber.org/news/business-cycle-dating-committee-an...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-...

[aetherson]

That's crazy talk.

It would've been arguably true in 2015 or so. But then we had years of high job growth, high median wage growth, and generally great economic conditions, right up until COVID, and then we actually recovered very quickly from COVID.

Like, is inflation high? You bet. Could we go into recession? We absolutely could. Did we have the last 8 years of costs going up and raises only happen to slightly offset cost of living? Absolutely not.

[_jal]

> high median wage growth

Wages are noticeably down since 2020.

WSJ and others prefer to report nominal wages (unless the article is about business costs), but you don't have to fall for the scam.

https://jabberwocking.com/wages-continue-to-plummet/

[aetherson]

Yes the pandemic has caused falling wages. You surely noticed that 2020 is kind of a weird year? And inflation is currently causing wages to fall further.

But 2014-2020 was very different.

[whimsicalism]

Can you explain how "[real] wages ... down since 2020" demonstrates "we have been in a recession since 2008"?

[rejor121]

For all job markets? Or just tech?

[whimsicalism]

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

[aetherson]

Here's both real average hourly (red) and median weekly (blue) wages:

https://econbrowser.com/archives/2021/08/yet-more-alternativ...

Helps to show that it's not an effect dominated by the very rich, and thus throwing off the average, and also that it's not that hourly wages have stagnated but people work more hours -- since they're broadly similar, we should feel strongly that it is a real increase in "normal people's" actual wages.

There are more data available if people want to look for it. This is a surprisingly complex subject for something that initially sounds simple, so it helps to get a few different views into it, but the upshot is: since the teens, people have been paid more.

EDIT to add: People are just slow to update on this. If you look at the world in 2014, then it seems a lot more reasonable to be skeptical that normal people will ever get a raise. Then, you'd had basically 15 year of stagnation, before that a little rise, and then more years of stagnation at a lower level.

[aetherson]

The overall median for non-supervisory workers in the United States, not just tech. I'm sure that there is some industry that has had hard times in the last eight years, but overall we've seen growth.

[01100011]

Not a recession, but something is definitely wrong with the economy when it is completely dependent upon continued stimulus.

Times like this make me glad to be in the US though. As bad as it gets here, it will be far worse in the developing world and Europe.

[whimsicalism]

> continued stimulus.

What do you mean by "continued stimulus"? There is no natural rate of interest.

[credit_guy]

The natural rate of interest is the one where supply meets demand. The Fed, with its enormous balance sheet, distorts the supply/demand equation.

[01100011]

Go look up the 'taper tantrum' and see what happened when the fed tried to normalize its policy a few years ago.

[whimsicalism]

"normalize" does not mean anything because there is no base rate of interest. the Fed underpins the whole thing as it provides the reserve balances for our currency.

[pertymcpert]

Why not use another word instead of redefining an existing word with an agreed upon and well understood meaning?