Is the economy really getting better?

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So is it getting better like they say? where I live at most I think maybe. Whats your guys input on this?

If you consider being fueled by the creation of new money, then it is.

Of course, what the creation of new money does is channel most of it into the pockets of the wealthy.

I believe we're out of the depths pertaining to the economy, at least here in the US.

But we have a long way to go before we could allege that the economy is anywhere near "good."

Paradoxically (and tragically!), we would need a war the scale of WWII in order to achieve consistently low unemployment and low inflation.

I too feel as the above poster; the US economy is getting better but we need a war with someone to really get the economy "jump-started". This Iis a bit off topic but this is why I feel the US needs compulsive military service for all it's citizens when they turn 18. If some politicians want to start a war to improve our economy maybe they will think twice if they might be sending their own sons/daughters to war.

I don't know about the economy, but, hiring continues to increase in the industry I've studied (technical design). I do a salary survey every year and a lot more movement (being hired away for a new job) is being indicated by the members and more of them are getting raises instead of having their wages reduced (at the height of the recession, 15% of the professionals in my industry indicated pay reductions, now it's down to about 2%).

Yep, Ms Dorkness---this is why education is essential.

If you don't have the training, you're still in a recession, for all intents and purposes.

Yep. The printing of additional money (whether coin, currency or digital) inflates the amount of available cash, but deflates its value. To illustrate this fact, imagine if the whole nation were three-feet deep with cash. Each dollar wouldn't be worth much would it? The same thing happens when the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank prints and issues more dollars than is needed to maintain a balance of available money (since the Fed has had a century-long contract with the U.S. government to get paid for printing our currency "plus interest," they have some big reasons to continue printing as much of it as they can). Having too much money flowing around makes prices go up (because making corn chips, denim jeans and iPhones cost more than printing the money). And, as eric76 pointed out, those who benefit from this inflation/deflation game of printing money are the people who print the money ("the wealthy").

This fact, and that of the number of unemployed Americans (many with college degrees) tells me that the economy is NOT better. Not by a long shot. There is a reason why banking is the only booming business in the world right now.

Wars tend to bring about much higher inflation. This was the case in both World Wars, and even the Vietnam War was a major factor in Nixon's taking the dollar off the Gold Standard in 1971, thus setting the scene for a decade of very high inflation.

According to people like the US Federal Reserve's Janet Yellen, and your Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US currently enjoys very low inflation, though I'm sure that "real" prices are rising at an appreciably faster rate.

Also true. Most of the people surveyed have a BS or higher, 3x as high as 13 years ago when the survey began.

And, when people talk about being unable to fill manufacturing jobs, they're not talking about the the kind most americans think of when they think manufacturing jobs, they're thinking engineers and plm leaders, the kind you need years of experience plus very specific education for. Those with both are being courted pretty heavily because they're so very hard to find.

Heck, I'm in a much smaller niche (FM) and I'm being headhunted more frequently as well.

for the majority of working americans the economy remains at rock bottom and is having to dig deeper. the only ones coming out ahead are the 1% who run things. this is largely by design.

It's not clear to me that a war would really help the economy.

It did in World War II, but the situation was vastly different. Our debt was far less. As a percentage of GDP, our debt was something like 35% or so going into World War II. By the end of the war, it was something like 110% to 120% of GDP. Today, our debt as a percentage of GDP is not all that much less than 100% of GDP. We paid for World War II by borrowing money -- it's not clear that we could borrow enough to fight another war. Instead, we would probably have to finance it by creating a great deal of money which would lead to a serious inflation that would only damage the economy.

Another thing in World War II was that by the end of the war, the productive capacity of many countries was seriously damaged. Many US companies did very well for years afterwards by helping to rebuild those countries.

Today there are far more countries that would likely be able and ready to step in and do much of the work. Our portion of that work would be significantly reduced.

As for compulsory military service, that's a non-starter. It would do nothing but increase government spending even more requiring that we either borrow much more money or print far more money leading to greater inflation. And it would not help the readiness of the US to fight a war one little bit. In World War II, it was all about how many troops we could deploy. With modern weapons systems and technology, we need people who are well enough educated to use those systems wisely. Adding more people to a job than is necessary does not make that job easier to do -- it can even make the job impossible to accomplish.

Probably for 70 to 80% of the USA it is.

But most of the the problems that caused the depression (Great recession my ass) such as "to big to fail" remain. Which is not surprising since the people that caused it instead of being jailed were rewarded.
The depression has left a huge permanent underclass of 20 or 30 percent who are just falling further behind now that rest of the country is moving forward again. And a lot of us are a part of this underclass

We're in a 'Tale of Two Cities economy" (credit to CNBC's Jim Cramer for that phrase)

the poor side of town 'cross the tracks, versus uptown.

The American standard of living is so grossly overindulgent that our economy will always have issues. An American is considered doing standard by having: a 50" or larger LED TV and stereo system, living room set, at least one game console, an Iphone or similar, a tablet, at least one PC, at least one car, at least one pet, at least one hobby, at least one charity and of course in order to support all that they are owning (or mortgaging) a home and raising a family to put children to college at a rate of around 30k a year so they put aside $150,000 just for their ONE child's education.

THIS IS INSANE!!

There are places in the world where people worry about clean water, their child making it past their first birthday and living their lives without the complication of painful untreatable diseases.

FOR CHRISSAKES!! Seriously! That's why the world is sick in a way that seems insolvable. Greed.

Edited to add: Yes American economy is getting better, people are buying s**t again! Wheeeeee!

it is an illusion that our economy is getting better, only the upper segments of society are spending more. wall street shows signs of a market top [oscillation].