"Real household income has risen as has consumer spending."

Bullshit! I don't know where you got this notion, but NO ONE I've spoken with would back this up. Huge swaths of the still employed got absolutely no COLA increase this year(self included), and many in the CE industry have taken pay cuts or quit the business. Discretionary income, if it exists, is not being spent.

_____________________________________________________
I got two wooden nickels and a rabbit's foot...
Matt King

I don't know where you are getting your numbers, but anecdotally, I can assure you that the majority of people I come in contact with are seeing their incomes stagnate or decline. I have a couple of friends making money right now, but they are the exception. Maybe the problem is that one of them is making a lot of money and that is skewing things. Kind of the whole problem we have been experiencing for the last 30 years.

You are definitely making money...

You make many assertions without providing links to the data:

Profits are exploding, manufacture is exploding, hours worked is going up and hiring is accelerating

Show us or STFU.

The wilshire profit indexes, the government manufacture indexes, labor department issues hours worked weekly. The data is everywhere.

THIS is from the article referenced by SPK:
The just-released U.S. industrial production data was strong, rising 0.8% MoM in April beating analysts’ expectations of a 0.6% increase. On a year-over-year basis, production is running at 5.2%, the strongest pace since mid-1997. Manufacturing is a bright spot with production jumping 1% MoM, matching the gain in March and is also up 6% YoY.
Steel production is up 74% year-on-year.
Lumber production has risen 29%.
Automotive by 67%.
Truck tonnage has risen 7.5% and container traffic out of Long Beach has surged 19%.
Railway carloadings are up 14% over the past year. Some of this is related to global growth, some it to the lagged impact of U.S. dollar depreciation, and some of it related to the improved productivity position of U.S. manufacturers, which indeed seem to be enjoying somewhat of a renaissance (something we wrote about three years and should be on archive back at the old shop).
The latest foreign trade data showed that U.S. exports of goods and services have exploded 20% YoY, as of March.
 

AND language cause I have been trying to play nice:)

This may reflect a change from underemployed to more employed, however there is little corresponding rise in employment.

The structural problems continue. Health Insurance costs up, some by 40%, gas at $3.00/gallon, real wages not rising much in 30 years, pollution up, huge expenses from an over large MIC and two stupid wars, money better invested on infrastructure.

US Life expectancy and infant mortality the worst in the the first world.

Shall we continue? And you deft change from subject from the US economy the the world economy above, built to a large extent by outsourcing jobs from the US.

All is well, no problems in the US, nothing to see.

Right?

The outsourcing as you call it by sharing our largesse with the rest of the world is one of the great philanthropic moments in history. Few cultures in the world have such care.

Our philanthropy is just like the philanthropy of any empire. The imperial elite milk the rest, whether at home or abroad. We outsourced jobs, but specifically excluded labor or environmental protections. In fact, when China added labor protections, U.S. firms lobbied very hard against the workers. U.S. firms have been extraordinarily aggressive at seeking permanent monopolies over production through abusive laws enforcing so-called intellectual property laws. For example, the effect of forcing India to accept GM seeds has been very cruel.

There has been significant improvement in many people's economic status over the past fifty years, but several things that apologists for the neoliberal global control generally leave out need to be remembered. First, the horrendous plight of many peoples was caused by 19th c. imperialism. Britain was no meaner to Ireland than it was to India, or to its African colonies, or to its concessions in China, and we know what happened in Ireland in the 19th c. In fact, Britain was nicer to Ireland. The improvements in living standards is from this very precarious start. Second, economic growth in the third world slowed with the imposition of neoliberal-style globalism. Third, while the statistics of overall improvement are very good, they hide the wide disparity in improvement for different areas. Specifically, it's China's growth, with so many people that makes the statistics on improvement so good.

However, lest I seem too opposed to philanthropy, I would applaud outsourcing corporate CEO jobs. That would really improve the rest of the world's statistics, and remove the suspicion that hiring people to work long days in unsafe, polluting plants for a fraction of what the previous workers were making has anything to do with greed.

equivalency is difficult. Applying today's standards to 100 or 200 years ago becomes problematical.

What I will say is that Britain has had a unique feature in their history that is not often seen. They stood down and relinquished power in a number of situations. They stood down in India, stood down in Hong Kong. And they stood down nonviolently. It is a fascinating contrast. Britain stood down with the US colonies as well, and then became the rebel colonies protectorate for 100 years. Became a key trading partner, it is a highly unthinkable - forward thinking - mental framing.

All the ills are there, all the bad behavior, but in the last fifty years I have seen a fascinating shift. With the shift has come a rising quality of life that is global. Not perfect, but rising. To compare the 1960 high death rate high birth rate global reality, with today's low death rate low birth rate reality, and the rising opportunities for learning the world over, the rising prospects of third world countries. It is a thing to behold, a far larger transition I think than any time I can think of.

It is not just China either. If it were I would concur with the assessment that it is skewed data. But that is not true. It includes Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, the vast majority of Pakistan, Brazil, Chile, Mexico. The East European countries are recovering so well that their migrant labor is actually creating labor problems in west European countries. There are nascent signs in Africa, though there are pockets that are very bad. It is NOT just China.

Life expectancy is the highest it has ever been. Infant mortality is the lowest it has ever been. Educational opportunity and literacy rates are at all time highs. Middle class around the world is emerging at all time high. Largest decline in poverty in the last generation. The advances are breathtaking and how can they be missed.

It is completely different in different states of the USA. S-P & Don are in Texas which survived the recession well, but these guys forget to say this aloud.

And it is another story in California.

_{-- China owns 30% of the USA}

also in Texas, west of Don and South of SP, but still in the general area.

"...in Texas which survived the recession well,"

I'm not a rancher or in the computer industry, I'm in mid-management for a local retail chain. Our products are purchased by discretionary dollars, and people in this area either don't have it or are not spending it. My take is that they don't have it.
I'm married, and my wife and I both work. We have no children. We use credit cards only for emergencies. Over the course of the past year and a half, our household has seen a bit of belt-tightening.
I can only imagine what my situation would look like if I had kids in high school and college. I would probably be carrying a load of credit card debt, and probably a second mortgage as well.

We may not be as bad off as California, but things aren't all that rosy here.

______________________________________________________
I got two wooden nickels and a rabbit's foot...
Matt King