Innocent Bystanders

Accepting Your Recession With Gratitude September 28, 2022

There should be a special name for the sort of articles that try to find the silver lining in economic disasters under Democrat administrations. “Staycations” was one of the infamous ones. More recently we got to hear about how rampant inflation was actually a good thing.

And now we have the WaPo weighing in:

7 ways a recession could be good for you financially

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the author’s reasons range from the ridiculous to the economically illiterate. But check them out for yourself:

1. Housing prices may finally come down to reasonable levels.
2. Savings rates are up.
3. I bonds inflation rate might go even higher.
4. The dollar is king.
5. Unemployment is still relatively low.
6. Your used car is worth more.
7. Student loan forgiveness is coming.

Let’s take these one by one, shall we?

1. Housing prices: This is known as a housing market crash, and is generally considered to be a bad thing. A very bad thing. It means hundreds of billions of dollars in lost equity for homeowners, people who are underwater on their mortgages, and increased loan defaults and bankruptcy declarations. Anybody remember how bad it got during the last recession? The WaPo apparently doesn’t.
2. Savings Rates: She notes that interest rates on savings accounts are starting to go up. Nothing to do with a recession, and the interest rates are trailing inflation by 5 percentage points, but hey! Look at these rates! Of course, in a recession nobody has money to put away in savings, so, well, uh, let’s just move on.
3. I Bonds Rates: What matters is not the rate, but the rate relative to inflation. People holding older I Bonds are not too happy at the moment, I’d imagine. But again, nothing to do with the recession, except to make this point moot because nobody in the middle or lower class is increasing their investments during hard times.
4. Dollar as King: This counts on the recession in the US being less severe than the rest of the world. Maybe that will hold up – the author doesn’t give us any reason to believe that it will or won’t.
5. Low Unemployment: One of the hallmarks of a recession is that at some point employers start shedding employees due to slow economic conditions. The author does note that unemployment may be on the rise, but assures us, “…if you’re worried about your job security or a recession, just cancel your vacation plans for 2023.” Easy peasy.
6. Used Cars: This is probably the stupidest point, because right in the article they say, “Used car and truck prices jumped 7.8 percent, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unfortunately, new car prices were up 10 percent from a year ago.”
7. Student Loans: Nothing to do with a recession, and it’s only beneficial for a limited group.

The woman who wrote this article doesn’t seem to understand what a recession is, nor does she have the logical faculties to distinguish between a recession and our current economic circumstances.

And on top of it all, she doubled down on the “Staycation.”

Sad Decline in Elementary Students’ Test Scores September 25, 2022

If you were wondering how the pandemic and the recent emphasis on critical race theory/non-binary genders is affecting core academic performance of elementary school students, wonder no further. Chalkbeat has a chart for you:

This data was for 9 year-olds (4th Grade). The assessments are on a scale of 0-500, by the way, indicating that we’re nowhere near peak academic performance.

Personally I haven’t seen the rise in math proficiency that they claim here – kids today seem feeble compared to kids in my youth. But presuming that the improvements are real, it’s sad to see them leveling off in 2008 and then declining from 2012 onward. The latter is presumably due to the pandemic (thanks, Fauci!), but the former is, I suspect, due to the lack of time and energy available for core subjects.

Who Did It Better? September 21, 2022

747 people trying to break the world record for number of people doing Portuguese folk dancing:

Or

1069 Chinese robots trying to break the dance record in the robot dance category (2017):

We previously compared the robots to a massive assemblage of Shaolin kung fu practioners, and gave the nod to the humans. But in this case, I say robots in a walkaway.

Exoplanet Dad Joke September 19, 2022

Was amused by this tweet from @latestinspace:

NEWS: NASA has discovered a nearby Earth-like exoplanet using the James Webb Telescope, but it rains lava at night

Many commenters jumped to point out that planets that rain lava don’t fit the lay person’s perception of “Earth-like,” but I was wondering why a nearby exoplanet was using our telescope when it didn’t help pay for it.