Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anyone[else] noticed a recent economic downturn?

Locally a couple of aluminum smelter operations have recently given notice to employees of substantial layoffs in the near future, due primarily to China dumping excess product on the world market, causing raw aluminum price to drop significantly.

Another benefit of the global market,dumping excess product to drop the price of a product for control.

was on a local facebook forum today, woman talking about taking it a sick child for medical care, made me think of you:
Seething....at Urgent Care with my feverish daughter who likely has strep. It's gonna be a two plus hour wait, because it's Monday-no biggie. A loud women in sweats and slippers bops in, registers and sits down...then immediately starts complaining about the wait. She starts muttering she'll go to the ER instead so she doesn't have to wait, and announces to the room we should all go there to avoid a wait time. In astonishment, I ask her insurance carrier and she flippantly replies, "Access-you should get on it." I calmly explain that ER visit will cost about $1500 for her cough and she laughs, blows me a kiss and thanks me for paying for it.

access is the state insurance fund for low income people.

Short of the hit the O&G industry is taking I have not seen anything here...

I don't see where we are much better off than what we were in late 2009/early 2009. Unemployment benefits have run out for most people and they are now working jobs that pay much less than what they were working before 2008 or they have stopped working all together.

America is in a world of crap until the day both parties in DC figure things out. I figure that will be the day Trump is inaugurated.

kwg

GE transportation in Erie,say 4500 workers, is in for a layoff.
Dont know the numbers yet but its coming soon.
Gas and oil are down.
Mining is down world wide.
Transport companies like BNSF,CSX,UP and others have large numbers of locomotives parked.
When you have large numbers of locomotives parked.
You know what comes next.

dave

I went grocery shopping today. Hamburger $5 per lb.
Bread $4 for a loaf.
I never thought I would see the day.

As I have said before . No one wants to talk about the fact that in the past the US was a consumer driven economy. Well we are at the point tot where 1% of the population has over 50% of the money. Think about that for a minute. They expect the folks with the other 48% to be the ones to step up and support the economy while they sit on theirs.

They will not and really cannot spend their share of the money simply because no one needs that much stuff so the result is a slowdown. This has been coming about for far longer than Obama has been in office as jobs have moved off shore and since the fed has been pushing down interest rates under Greenspan and culminated in the great bailout after the recent crash. critics can talk about how bad redistribution of wealth is but it works both ways and for the past 20-25 years it been through polices that benefit the rich getting richer not the other way around.

Just read that Alcoa is suspending operations at their Bellingham, Wa smelter with about 425 jobs likely to be lost. Same town, CH2 Hill earlier this year closed their office with about 120 jobs gone. The former SP Newsprint in Newberg, Oregon just announced it was closing. When you see a number of these long time facilities closing in small towns, it does not bode well for the local economy and compounded - for the national economy.

What are you talking about? Kwik Trip has 2 loaves for a buck.
Major trucking transportation outfits are seeing the start of a projected 20-30% decline in shipments.

Remember when one of the Shrubs said we are becoming a service economy? Well, this is it. Whait until TPP starts up. If you thought NAFTA was bad, this is the last nail. How did your civil contractor for the corporations in DC vote for TPP?

I wonder if the O&G crash has had any knock-on effects on other industries/businesses? Many are clearly loving cheap gas...

don't know about a down turn, but I have noticed grocery prices, particularly meat prices, rocketing up. Gas is low, but everything else is through the roof.

sure it is.

how much? couldnt find anything on google.


but remember, due to lower gas prices folks was gonna spend more to offset those losses.

heard from a local welding supply salesman that his sales are dropping. 30 businesses in the area are laying off, with 16 closing completely.


there goes some of the OP's office supply business.

I didn't realize that there was ever an upturn.

vel, all who walk among us who support the military industrial complex ought to organize to get another dirty little war going. how about ground troops in Syria? oh, we already have that, 50 of them i think?

seriously, this problem has been developing at least since 1980 or so. china has agreed to produce our everyday products, wally world has agreed to be the middle man, and well, your job is to consume.

back when the export of machine tools was booming, the writing was on the wall. now the chickens are coming home to roost.

but there's no going back, only forward.

and whose fault was it? why, it wasn't anybody's fault. the invisible hand of economics kept on manifesting. as it continues to do so.

with advanced automation, just how many factory workers do we need? anybody know for sure?

we find ourselves in uncharted waters. but we all already know that.

I drive through North and Central Austin daily. Right up and down on Burnet Road. There are many businesses that are closing or have closed. Paint stores, resale and variety stores, pawn shops, an ice business, an old style lumber yard, a used car business... and there are signs a new style of urban living is blossoming. I don't know what you call them, but in North Austin, there are several.

It is a development that covers a large area, a city block or a block and a half. Condos and/or apartments in a block, with businesses on the ground floor. Complete with parking. So, there's a barbecue joint, a barber shop, a medium sized convenience store, a sandwich shop, and 1 or 2 other small businesses on the ground floor, parking available, and a whole neighborhood on 4 -6 floors.

typically, there is a CVS or a Walgreens close by. I don't know what to call such a complex. Urban neighborhood?

At any rate, this kind of development is replacing strip malls in my area.

it's kind of disturbing that big business is manufacturing such monolithic structures. They are consolidating profit in one operation that includes commercial and residential offerings, and they are usually close to or nearby hospitals, and tech centers. I'm thinking the thought is, you get them used to living in Dormitories in college, and then once they get out into the world, you can get them started in a large dormitory at the start of their career. as money piles up they then buy a house and move out, but some don't, and never develop the fine appreciation for yard work most of us have known for our lifetimes.

Our lives are changing gradually. Business at the gun shop is slow, which is unusual for a week ahead of deer season.

this is an odd year. i'll be glad when it's over.

-tom

Whadaya mean by "recent"? The economy in the USA (as well as the world) has been in the crapper since at least 2008 and there were signs well before that. BUT, things started really deteriorating after the '08 meltdown . . . just started being able to get our (the "personal" our) heads above water and here it comes again . . .

So today is as it was or worse than 2008? You are phuggin nutz.

I expect it is China slowing down. When they were booming, a lot of stuff was booming in the US, because we were selling the same stuff they were buying oil, copper, steel, lumber. A little bit of a bubble in world prices popping, maybe.

So once the oil and steel and copper guys get laid off, they quit buying trucks and atvs and new houses and furniture.

So the people who sell trucks and atvs and houses and furniture start cutting back, and then the people who make trucks and atvs and houses and furniture get laid off.

Big houses are back in Flagstaff, after being down , median house sold is now $350,000.

Our real estate is propped up/pushed by Phoenix money, for summer homes. so we didn't bottom out in 2008, it took until 2012 for the low median price. So maybe its a lagging indicator and will be coming down over time. Must be 6 new houses built near me in the last year, each pushing $750,000, most spec homes, too.

Sycamore