I want to use this chart from EPI for my own evil purposes.
Lots of people want to focus on the right end of this graph. I want to focus on the left.
Look at the entire period of the 70s. Stagflation, awful economy. However, look how few businesses are reporting “poor sales” as a problem. That’s because they weren’t.
Which is why its important to point out that poor sales is not simply a way of saying the economy is doing poorly. It refers to a specific kind of doing poorly and that is on the demand side.
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Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 11:42 am
Siddhartha
Wish the graph is legible..
Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 11:48 am
Andy Harless
The chart needs to be bigger. I had to enlarge it to read it at all, and even then it was fuzzy.
On the substance, good point. The chart confirms my contrarian intuitive sense (based mostly on looking at a bunch of other data) about how the demand side has been over the years: the Ford/Carter years were actually a bigger boom than the second Clinton administration.
Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Matt (@MeCampbell30)
I find it funny that taxes and regulation have also seen an increase despite those two things remaining relatively unchanged from the final years of the bush administration.
It confirms my sneaking suspicion that small business owners are not economists.
Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Becky Hargrove
A lot of my friends were able to do well with their own small businesses right up to the mid nineties.
Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Friedrich Brieger
Very interesting. Where I can find this chart on the net?
Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Curt Doolittle
You’ve won the argument over stimulus Karl. You aren’t going to win the argument about method until you address all of those methods.
Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 6:36 pm
srm
Chart from here:
http://www.epi.org/publication/regulatory-uncertainty-phony-explanation/
Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 7:05 pm
Tel
The way I see it, all three lines trend upwards from left to right, so I conclude that every problem has become more of a problem than it used to be.
I think the axis on the left hand side says “Percent” so presumably the US federal government has been slowly cranking it up to 11. This is what happens when management schools teach people to give 110% effort.
Monday ~ October 17th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
Th
The upshot here is that you can do well with a small business because most of your competitors don’t have a clue as to what is going on around them.
Tuesday ~ October 18th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
Steve Roth
Likewise, my evil purposes.
I’m assuming this is NFIB data they’re showing? Can’t read the chart much.
The most amazing thing about that NFIB monthly survey, over twenty years, is that “Financing and Investment” are almost without fail *dead last* on businesspeople’s list of constraints. Even at the height of the so-called “credit crisis,” it was dead last.
So is business finance the “fuel” that drives the economy, or just a lubricant, necessary in relatively small quantities relative to production? Too much, and the shop floor gets pretty slippery.
Thursday ~ October 20th, 2011 at 2:37 am
Daily Deadline: Romney’s Blast from the Past | My Blog
[...] the demand, stupid: Karl Smith at Modeled Behavior points out that “poor sales” are not a problem of all bad economic [...]
Saturday ~ November 12th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
Collected Links, 11-11-11 « Vox Rationalis
[...] Shocks: Demand and Supply by Karl Smith: “Look at the entire period of the 70s. Stagflation, awful economy. However, look how few businesses are reporting “poor sales” as a problem. That’s because they weren’t.” [...]