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You thought the economy was bad. It's worse than we thought. That's not just the WSJ headline from this morning. It's also the conclusion of most of top economic bloggers.
The Kauffman Fondation's new survey of economic bloggers is pretty revealing.
- Only about half of those surveyed think we'll see growth in the near term, a drop of 20% since the 2nd quarter survey.
- 49% think the economy is doing worse than the federal government's statistics show, compared to just 7% who think it's doing better.
- When asked to assess the overall condition of the U.S. economy right now, fully one-third said we are facing recession, compared to just 5% who said "strong with uncertain growth" (none said "strong and growing," 55% said "mixed, and 7% said "weak and recessing").
And even though the group is mixed ideologically, this chart is interesting and says a lot about the larger debate we are having in America about what kind of social contract we want to have:
This response helps explain why we're having what Charles Krauthammer referred to this morning as "a great four-year national debate on the size and reach of government, the future of the welfare state, indeed, the nature of the social contract between citizen and state."
In order for us to gotten to a place where we could even have this debate, we've needed more people to wake up to the reality of a bloated, tired, over-stretched state. The bloggers see it. Voters last year saw it. Will the Obama Democrats ever wake up to it?
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