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Personal Spending Misses Expectations By Most Since January, Income Juiced By Government Handouts
While the headline spending and income data consists of marginal moves, personal spending missed expectations by the largest amount since the dismal weather-strewn days of January. Consumption rose 0.3% in July, less than the 0.4% expectation and flat from the 0.3% June print. Income rose 0.4% - in line with expectations - ticking up YoY to 4.3% 0 juiced by a $13 billion government transfer receipts print - the most since March. The savings rate ticked up once again as those darned consumers refuse to spend as the elite demand.
Spending missed hopeful expectations by the most since January...
With YoY changes echoing the pre-collapse pathway...
And aggregated:
As the savings rate ticked up once again from 4.7% to 4.9%, matching the March 2009 level, and hardly indicative of a consumer who is willing to "charge" everything.
Finally, disposable personal income per capita: at just why of $38,000 it is up a whopping $2000 from the December 2007 level.
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In this so-called economy, $13B is a rounding error.
A perfect 61.8 fibo retracement in the last 2 days. Now it gets fun!
Let's raise those rates.
93 million unemployed people don't have a lot of money to spend......go figure.
and 100 million .......................underemployed people don'y have a lot of money to spend............go figure
And the fifty % government workers are living of the fifty % private workers = circle jerk
Only leaves company taxes.........................and there all sitting in offshore accounts
That's why they are looking down the back of the sofa to see what else they can tax and banning cash etc etc
Since Lehman.
Did you get a raise this year?
Where's all this 0.4% increase in incomes coming from?
Did the FSA get a raise?
What the hell is going on here?
Food stamps count as income.
All those transfer payments end up in corporate coffers at the end of the day; that some people avoid starvation in the interim is an acceptable side-effect for TPTB.
+1000. I wish I could upvote you more.
I read so many idiotic comments where people express envy for the poor. Apparently the mainstream position is to hate work, hate independence and hate self-sufficiency? How could anyone envy people who are in such bad shape they are utterly dependent on a system that hates them and wishes they would just die?
People talk about how a single mom on Welfare "gets" far more money than she would if she worked full-time at a median-wage job. Bullshit. She "gets" bare subsistence and complete subservience to a system that keeps her poor and punishes any efforts to take personal control. My parents went through some health problems when I was a kid and we were on Welfare for a while. I worked for neighboring farmers, and the ones I worked for through the county poor kids' job program; the money they paid me went through Official Channels and was deducted, dollar for dollar, from the Welfare my family received. Nice lesson, eh? Work and we'll penalize you. Because you are supposed to suffer in some weird Sado-Calvinistic ritual.
And who gets all the government largesse we envy of the poor and fucked-up? Housing assistance goes straight to the landlords, increasingly likely Blackrock. Food Stamps go primarily to food processors, as poor people tend to have shitty transportation, no time, and poor survival skills; so they buy the pre-prepared crap available in nearby bodega-type overpriced convenience marts. Medical assistance goes straight to the executive offices of corporate medicine and pharma. Daycare assistance is an indirect subsidy to employers who pay below-subsistence wages.
You're quite correct; "that some people avoid starvation in the interim is an acceptable side-effect for TPTB." No doubt that's a side-effect they're working to fix. The ideal Welfare program for TPTB is one in which the money goes from the public to private ledger, while the poor people die in silence.
+1,000,000
Welfare is THE way!!!!!! Why the f*ck work when I can have other people work and the gubmint take their income, giving it to me because I decided that I'd rather not work for a living?
You nailed it!!!! Hate the working people. Praise the people who decide not to work but are perfectly capable of working. I'm with ya, man! Not working is the ultimate in enlightenment.
(Stunning how many attempt to portray their "intelligence" yet have NO CLUE about society, motivation, ethics, and the like. Frick'n morons. Welcome to enlightenment.)
Not sure what you're talking about here. Perhaps I moissed a "/sarc"?
Not working sucks. Being dependent is horriible. Being on Welfare is like being rendered down for soap, mostly metaphorically. Mostly.
The reason people get into the cycle of dependency in the first place is because there's something wrong with them that they can't deal with an immediate crisis. If they get a temporary leg-up, most people can pull it together and get out of it. Some can't, but we'll leave them out of it because there's something more serious wrong there.
But those who can make use of a temporary leg-up aren't allowed to, because our culture demands that everyone feel shame for not succeeding in a rigged game. So there has to be a punitive angle. If you get Welfare, anything else you get is deducted from your Welfare, to make sure you can't get ahead by taking Welfare. Makes the moralists feel great, but what it really does is guarantee a permanent underclass that can't make it to any sort of self-sufficiency.
That's very lucrative for the corporate interests who wind up with all the money that flows from the government's Welfare office, through the Welfare recipient's required high-fee bank account, straight to the landlords and discount chain-store owners.
Having experienced Welfare in my youth, I've spent the past 30+ years doing everything I can to ensure I never have to endure that humiliation again; nor anyone around me. I've gotten to the point where I can't even tolerate traditional jobs anymore; I'm so allergic to subservient existence. Self-employment and political anarchism are all I can tolerate, the older I get. Self-reliance and personal responsibility aren't for everyone I guess, but once you try it and get the hang of it, there's no going back; no putting the shackles back on.
+1,000
+1,000
I agree. Wal Mart gets a huge pecentage of its income from EBT card users, and thus would appear to be a huge govt subsidy--that's at the low end. Then at the middle end are the government subsidies handed to for example, hospitals and doctors, medical equipment makers etc. through Medicare/Medicaid payments.
Finally, the biggest government transfer occurs at the apex of the pyramid: banks and the military industrial complex.
The government itself?: Well that is not a "transfer" or "subsidy". It is direct confiscation by a useless , non productive class of people who decide that signing up for EBT cards is not enough, and therefore sign up for government jobs. Sure, they have to show for "work" but it appears to be handily beating working inthe private sector (except for the above examples of "not-so-private industries.)
Read this article and get back to us, unforgettable.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-07/when-work-punished-ongoing-tragedy-americas-welfare-state
I know all about that, from early personal experience.
Everyone misses the point, though. The mainstream meme is that a family on Welfare "gets" total benefits of, I've seen, let's say $75,000. So why work? You'd "lose" that wonder benefit total, adding up to 1.5x median household income. Right? That's the storyline.
But it's bullshit. That family doesn't "get" that much money. Not by a long shot. Not even half of it. If there's any $75,000 total involved, a huge amount of it is in crony payoffs at inflated rates to connected corporate interests that overprice what they provide. So maybe it's $2,500 per month in Section 8 housing rent for a rat-infested hellhole without properly functioning appliances and utilities etc. On the open market it's nearly unrentable at any price, or maybe $800/mo., but a connected crony can gouge the government for 3x the real value and the MSM calls it a lavish $30,000/yr. "benefit" to our unworthy family of lazy ingrates. And how much of that money did they actually see? None of it.
That's just one example, and of course it's hypothetical and there's a little hyperbole in it.
The point is, living on welfare sucks for everybody. Most of all for those trapped in the system. The system prevents people from becoming independent and functional not because "Liberals want everyone dependent on Mother Government," but because moralists want everyone who is desperate to suffer and feel their moral worthlessness. Conservatives and Liberals alike get a major hard-on for savaging the poor; it suits everyone's atavistic fetish desires. And there's nothing more profitable for connected corporate interests than powerless, dependent humans. Without that basic truth, we wouldn't have had "The Matrix" or "Soylent Green" or "Rollerball" or any of the genre of dystopian corporate futurism.
Agreed. But I think the comparison is not with a successful person making $75 and working for a living. The comparison is people working their ass off and getting raped with taxes and inflation. They may be living in an outlier to Sec8 but the FSA is on a similar standard for nada.
Single mom? Should be the exception, not the rule.
There's 75% of the problem with this fucking society.
Good rant, but you could have stopped after that statement.
There was a time when that was shamed to a point where it was almost non- existent. Now, right is wrong. Bad is good. Gay is great. No shame in ANYTHING any more.
Thanks; nothing like a rant in the morning.
I guess my point is, "Cui Bono?" "Who Benefits?" It ain't the single mom. It sure as hell ain't her kid(s). It ain't the absent dad, being docked child support and if he can't earn enough to cover that, his driver's license and ability to live lawfully. All these people are turned into debt receptacles, to fuel the Finance Sector. It's not much of an analogy to see them hooked up to a power grid, as in "The Matrix" movies. As human beings they are rendered worthless and inert. Their only function is to have a SSN to be attached to debt, which drives and perpetuates the system these people couldn't hack in the first place.
Shame? Great concept. Let's start by demanding it from the people who perpetuate and benefit from this system that destroys functional human beings.
Aw, shit. Got going on another rant. 2 is too many this early.
and kocherlakota just planted the seeds for QE4 when asked by steve liesman (who almost fell of his chair because the question was actually answered which he wasn't expecting)
moar free shit is what the people want, so give it to them
side-bar - anyone see those 50 protesters yesterday at jackson hole? comical that these people don't "get" that the ONLY way to solve income inequality is to cut the debt to zero, normalize rates, and give people incentive to SAVE instead of SPEND ($$$ they don't have). rather, these people are advocating rates stay at 0 so they can borrow more to buy shit.
but but but but .... GDP was revised up up UP! And away!
End of the fiscal year coming up in September. The government must spend the excess taxpayer money. Of coursewe never get any back.
Serious question here - Doesn't paying down debt ahead of schedule count as "Savings?" Because I, and many people I know, are making extra payments. I on my mortgage, as that's the only debt we have, but I know others paying down cars ahead of schedule as well.
And none of this is adjusted for inflation, is it? I mean, whatever the hell inflation really is.
As long as it pushes the next due date back and not just paying down principal I agree with your perspecitve. Allocating money today to save yourself if a payment needs to be skipped for a month or two.
Depends on your assessment of your circumstances. I like to have both options on a home mortgage; the availability to skip a month or two if needed, and also to pay down the principal so more of each payment goes to principal, building the actual equity as a financial asset.
Serious question here - Doesn't paying down debt ahead of schedule count as "Savings?"
Consuming something, agreeing to pay for it later, and then paying it off slighly quicker than the payment schedule is not savings... To the extent that you've got a net positive market value in your consumptive expenditure, then by the grace of luck you might get savings. However, given the likelihood of overpayment on the front end, combined with the interest expense from financing the endeavor (speculation), appreciation is dubious. Compound this issue with an economy where there is no price discovery and the likelihood of your expenditures resulting in savings is nil.
Oh, yes, I agree totally.
But I meant to ask, when "they" calculate such things as Savings Rate, are "they" counting accelerated debt payments as "Savings?" I think I read that somewhere a while back, as almost an aside comment, and now I can't find any reference to it.
Because my paying extra on my mortgage to save myself some interest costs (and to build available equity should I want to borrow against it before I have the house paid off) shouldn't count as "Savings." Nor should paying less than I could for something. That's just "Paying Less."
"Savings" should be money I have left over after I'm done spending. But in our current fraudulent economy, it wouldn't surprise me if they count any failure to spend as "Savings."
Oh please. Government handouts are the only thing preventing massive social unrest. Think you have seen a lot of killings so far? Take away all the entitlements. Welfare is just one piece of the “me” generation. Social security was never intended to be 100% of a person’s retirement. Medicaid for illegals? Medicare spending way beyond what people ever paid into the system? EBT cards for 50 million people? How about tens of thousands of phony PTSD claims for veterans who never were in combat? Never even left the USA. Get $3k-$5k a month to sit at home for the rest of your f***ing life? Get high and watch TV…beats working at ChinaMart.
All these programs are designed to prevent civil disorder, and are bankrupting the country. The bankers are “forced” to intervene daily in the markets to prevent panic. We all know these things; maybe Trump will finally do something about it…
How many of us would love to see this motherfucker unwind, just to see the wheat seperated from the chaff?
It would by ugly, and painfull, but a lot of this bullshit would go up in smoke within two weeks.
What a goddamn fantasy we live in today.
95 million get a check.
Illeagals and h1 b out of control.
Government employment and contractors living like royalty.
Processed slop we eat turning the whole country into diabetic fat- fucks.
And a media telling us everything is great.
I gotta drag my dumbass outa here, and go make a buck.
Adios, kids.
Amen nopension, amen