Hey All,

I've noticed a new popular topic of conversation for people: the "here's an example of the recession" story.

I find it pretty interesting, and they seem to preceed the actual hard news that confirm the stories by at least a few months.

I'm sure you've all had this conversation as well so I was wondering what signs of the recession all of you have noticed.

I'll start: I noticed two things this past week, both relating to golfing. For starters, the local courses I play emailed me coupons for BOGO golf. Not for twilight or midweek play, but for the friggin' Memorial Day weekend. I've never seen that, let alone on what should be a crazy busy weekend. Then I drive past the course Sunday and Monday and notice the parking lot is filled about 2/3rds of what it usually is. And this was with nice weather.

And P.S. - I know we aren't technically in a recession since the economy basically stayed the same last quarter instead of contracting, but that figure fails to account for population growth which means we need a slightly larger figure just to remain the same. So lets stay away from that semantic argument.

A recession consists of at least two quarters of losses though...

If we weren't headed for one, these damn gas prices are surely gonna make it inevitable IMO. I am not dying from them or anything, but it is definately eating up some of the disposable income. Food prices are getting out of control as well.

Damn snowbirds left town and it's 100+ daytime. Golf courses are all empty in the middle of the day here too Me and my buddies only play in the summer, we get to play all the insane expensive courses for next to nothing.

Please explain your argument relating to GDP - negative or Positive and population growth.

The definition of a recession does not change just on the whims of people's political ideology or what seems to be politically expedient at the moment.

I think you should reevaluate your comment about semantics.

The economy has slowed down, but we are not in a recession.

I agree with you. The definition is what it is, I'm not trying to change that. I'm just taking the non-official definition that Warren Buffett and Alan Greenspan have recently used.

Lets just generalize it up a bit and call it an economic slowdown instead.

What examples have you noticed just in your day to day lives? Or have you seen anything on the other end of the spectrum, something encouraging?

My co-worker explains "A Recession is when my neighbor is unemployed, a Depression is when I'm unemployed."

Just like the reasons why we are where we are, we are not going to agree at all, nonetheless the way out of where we are.

That said. I'm doing ok on a single income under $36K. Would be a lot worse off if I paid what others paid for their houses at the top of the market. I was lucky and bought the family house, who my Mom bought and wasn't looking for a huge profit when she wanted to sell it to me.

If I were a tad more conservative, I'd never get to do anything fun.

I'm not seeing anything encouraging. In fact I see the next few years going down the road in a not very optimistic light. Further government meddling, intervention, and regulation don't bode well as far as looking ahead.

Prices of food and gas are rapidly increasing. That is largely due to government. Yet in a global economy some are arguing for more government intervention. That doesn't bode well for the United States.

Let's call a spade a spade. Warren Buffett is a big time liberal and will say anything he thinks will get a Democrat elected. His longtime bullshit story that his secretary pays more in taxes than he does stinks worse than Al Sharpton's bathroom after he has eaten refried beans on 110th Street. Buffet's secretary pays income taxes. She is an employee. Buffett pays capital gains taxes. He is an investor. The two are not the same, yet they make for propaganda fodder for the ignorant and unwashed masses.

I don't know if our country's economy is in a recession, but I know my family's economy sure as hell is. Also, I've never seen so many houses for sale in my neighborhood. I didn't think we had the housing issue in Pittsburgh like on the west coast etc.

We actually did this test. We made a shopping list last month, went shopping and spent $87.16. We went shopping last week and used the same shopping list exactly. Cost $116.97. That's almost a $30.00 difference at the same store for the same products. Granted there are many factors that could cause that but overall it is still a $30.00 increase in our expenditure. Combined with gas, utility bills etc. We have no plans to travel, spend extra etc. We are doing pretty good and not hurting but don't want to find ourselves hurting either.

Quite a few people I've talked with have noticed restaurants taking a hit lately. The higher end the restaurant, the more empty the tables. Combine people cutting back on their disposable income and rising food prices and I think we'll be seeing a lot of restaurants tanking in the next year.

As a single guy, I'm not noticing the grocery prices as much, but Samuel's post really drives home that point. I wonder what that list would have run a couple years ago.

The litte deli I eat lunch at once or twice a week recently posted an open letter apologizing for having to raise prices on June 1st. They cite skyrocketing food prices and a recent local tax increase as the reasons. I'm curious to see what that $4.10 sub will run me once the calendar flips.

I work part time at a golf course, and last year over memorial day we had 260 players on Sat, and 225 on memorial day. This year, we had 75 Sat, and 70 on memorial day, and it was a perfect day for golf with a good rate.

Yes, I've noticed food prices have gone up. They are going to go up even further. A lot of that is because of this moronic push to use food grains for fuel.

The local government around here doesn't seem to think people are suffering any financial woes. By that I mean, they don't mind raising their fees.

The water tax here is going up another 14%. That is on top of an 11% increase last year.

If we are in a recession as some people claim, why are governments all over the country going on hiring sprees? Why is government expanding? That costs money. That cost has to be borne by the taxpayers. Why isn't government seriously cutting spending if we are supposed to be in a recession as some of these politicians claim?

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2008-04-29-stateworkers_N.htm

You do! What course and why haven't we ever had an AZXC tournament at it?

Holy blazes. That's a bloodbath. You never really see it, at least around here, but I suppose we could start seeing golf courses going out of business if this keeps up.

But with the real estate market so hideous it's possible the course would just sit there unattended to for a few years. That sure would look weird.

One of my biggest expenses at the grocery store is soda...

Two years ago, you could get a 2 liter of Coke for about 1.29 full price, but usually either it or Pepsi was on sale for 89 cents or less. Now...regular price is $1.89. Rarely is it under $1 on sale. I've gone to store-brand soda. It doesn't take much to get used to the difference in taste, and the REGULAR price is around 70-80 cents.

Thank God I don't have kids and don't care too much for milk. That's gone through the roof.

Milk isn't to bad here in AZ. Me and my kid go through a gallon every 2 days. Milk is my non-Soda beverage of choice. Frys do half gallons for $1 quite often and 1% keeps for weeks, so I load up when they have those kinda deals.

I'm a milk FIEND but fortunately the grocery store by me still uses milk as a loss leader so I'm able to pick it up for around $2.50 a gallon.

If I don't limit myself, I'll go through a gallon by myself in less than 3 days. I even crave it after a sweaty afternoon mowing the lawn or doing yardwork. Nothing like a glass of skim that's a nanodegree from freezing.

I did a "drive by" of the boat access by the lake I usually fish on last Monday (Memorial day). Expecting the usual overflow of boats and a line at the access, I was STUNNED to see several available slots to park your boat trailer in. It was a windless PERFECT 70 degree sunny day...

I doubt it is recession related, as much as it's probably gas related... You can't drop a decent sized bass-boat in the water for more than two hours without spending at least $50 on gas. Suddenly, my little 50hp two stroke outboard looks a LOT more appealing than that 75hp 4-stroke I was looking at!

My next door neighbor dropped $600 into the tank of his cabin cruiser this last weekend (454 cubic inch 300hp inboard V8). It lasted him ONE DAY on the lake.

A lady at my wifes work took her boat out and it cost her 1600 bucks for the weekend in gas

Business is booming for me... I make double now than what I did 2 years ago, and should continue that same $ figure gain for the forseeable future.

Recession?? Just means less competition for the toy purchases...

:p

Work for Exon or Shell?

What the hell did she do with (at least) 300 Gallons of gas in a weekend???

You've obviously never filled a boat before.

Whatever the price is at the pump for a car...figure the pump at the water (lake, river, whatever) to be considerably more.

At my parent's lake house, when gas was $1.00 on the road, it was $1.75 at the lake. Not sure how large the difference is now...but I imagine it's considerable.

She has a big house/party boat

Oh my GOD that's such an absolutely disturbing waste...you have GOT to be kidding me...

Who's to say that's a waste? If she had $1600 worth of fun, then it wasn't a waste. Our Electronic Warfare Officer blew $6000 in 8 days in Australia on leave. He had a lot of fun. Don't be so damn judgemental.

I've got to agree with the other guy - not a waste as long as she felt she got her money's worth out of the weekend. My wife and I dropped several grand (in total) to go to Ireland for about a week. Loved it and we're planning our next trip now (might be Iceland, Scotland, or the Caribbean - not sure).

BTW - for those asking, the last gas price I heard for boat fuel was around $4.75/gallon. That would mean she managed to blow roughly 336.8 gallons of gas. Or, assuming 16 hours of the boat moving for three days, 7 gallons an hour (48 total hours, which probably overstates the number of hours).

It's a lot of fuel, to be sure - but it's her money. Hopefully she showed the girls to others in the area as well...

Not a waste? What absolute gluttony is more like it.

There's a gigantic difference between spending thousands of dollars to go someplace you've never been like Ireland or Australia (which I can justify), and someone blasting through 300 gallons of gasoline because they wanted to sit out in the lake.

You could drive across the country, from Atlantic to Pacific, at least once on what this woman burned through sitting on a lake. It may be her money, but it's the rest of us who will pay in the long run, because of people like that.

No wonder the rest of the world hates us.

Go turn your thermostat to 90 like your Messiah told you to, to make up the difference.

What in the hell are you talking about?

I was responding to WilMac's worry that France is gonna hate us even more now because of that lady's boat. His fearless leader Obama already told him how to take care of this situation. Walk to work, eat fish heads and rice, and crank up the thermostat.

This is all a relative concept. Sure - I could drive across the country for less gas than that, but that doesn't mean I'd enjoy it any more than she enjoyed her weekend on the lake.

If you're attempting to make the green argument about not wasting gas, realize that what she did (while large in a specific sense) isn't what's truly wasteful overall. There are much bigger fish to fry in this - hell, owning an Xterra is likely a much bigger waste of fuel over the course of a year than her boat when one compares it to a 30mpg car. In fact, if she did this twice a year, you could personally make up the difference if you drove 24K miles in a 30mpg car vs your Xterra.

I don't know your personal situation as to whether or not this might directly apply, but look at the big picture rather than a specific incident.

And no - there is absolutely no moral difference between my trip to Ireland and her weekend. None.

Cool - that clears it up a bit. Though there is some merit to conservation (and even though I drive said Xterra, I'm all about it) both economically and financially, I'm all about the market. Until prices are high enough to force change, change isn't going to happen.

For all of you boat newbs out there, bigger party boats are NOT measured in "miles per gallon." I'm a paid charter/excursion captain for some of the 30 to 40 foot sailboats that tour the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior out of Bayfield Wisconsin. Trust me, we get the sails up on those bitches AS SOON AS we leave the harbor.

Your average 35 foot twin engine cabin cruiser gets MAYBE .6 (that's POINT SIX, as in 6/10) knautical miles per gallon of fuel. Usually, those boats have 300 gallon tanks. Your effective cruising range is less than 200 miles. My neighbor told me he'd be "doing a lot of drifting and anchoring this year."

When you consider that those boats cost somewhere in the $250,000 range (used), and another $1,000 to $2,000 per month to store it in a managed harbor or marina, then $1500 for gas to spend a day on the lake isn't too bad.

Unless you're Willmac... then all boat owners should sell their boats and pool the money into a fund that should feed more welfare babies and to give sterile needles to addicts, and to build more government to supervise such foolishness as "boating."

Holy crap dude! I'm so sorry, it must've slipped my mind: I didn't get a hall pass from you to see if I could drive my Xterra to the lake this weekend. Is that OK? Can you please justify my consumption of approximately 35 gallons of fuel over the next 4 days, or do I need to go some place that you've already certified as an appropriate travel destination?

Justification? Shit, my company spent $900 for an airline ticket and over $1,800 for hotel and expenses for me to travel to Seattle to teach ONE student a five day class. I lobbied against it, told them I'd be happy to stay at home and use WEBEX or something to take him through the class online. Nope, the justification was (with respect to Wilmac), "The customer wants it this way."

The customer paid 5k per student for the class, so my company made money. That's all the "justification" they needed.

Wilmac.... What the hell is wrong with you?

That woman has every right to buy and use as much fuel as she wishes. She's paying for it with HER money and using it on HER boat, paid for with HER money.

It's called FREEDOM. Are you saying you are against freedom? It sure seems that way.

Should people be "rationed" fuel according to whatever crazy justifications your totalitarian mindset dreams up?

You sound like a liberal fascist. An "Obamunist".

Gotta go with the mad one here. I noticed Moab isn't on your list of approved destinations.
You going to boycott Nissan for GONE? FUCKSTICK!!!

Listen up tweedledicks:

I never said the woman didn't have a right to do as she pleased.

I was just amazed that someone could blast through that much gasoline in a weekend.

She has every right to do what she wants to do. And I have every right to call her a glutton. End of story.

And we have every right to point at that you aren't much different than her, just spreading your usage out over a bit longer time.

I walk to work.

I take the X out only maybe once a month anymore, BECAUSE of gas prices.

I'm doing my part. What are you doing?

Uhmm, let's review this thread. You came in, jumped on your high horse, called her a glutton, etc. I defended her right and showed that it's absolutely no different than any other use of money. I don't have to prove that I'm doing a damn thing as I'm not the one with the position to defend.

Having an Xterra, and driving it maybe once a month.

Tsk, tsk.

Talk about wasteful.

I am looking at getting an Excursion soon. Woot!

--My wife and I each work about 15 miles from home.
--In fact, my wife's office is 2 miles from my office.
--I spend my entire day in a cubicle, in front of a computer.
--If I needed to, I could ride in to work with my wife, spend the day like normal, and ride home with her, using only one car and half the fuel.

But I don't.

You are the great ex-Canadian Satan!

In that instance, I might think about commuting together, assuming that the work schedule allows it.

Personally, I'm thinking of getting a bike or an older motorcycle and riding that to work most days. It'd likely pay for itself within a year (definitely for the bike, potentially for the cycle). What makes the pay-off slower is that I only live 4 miles away.

However, my reasons for doing this are (and in this order):

• economic
• convenience
• health related (I play soccer, lift weights, jog, etc., so this is just one more piece to help keep me in shape)
• environmental

This doesn't mean I hate the environment. What it does mean is that I realize there are much better ways for me to help the environment than reducing my commute.

I am at that.

Pardon me, I need to drive to the Walgreens across the street and idle my vehicle for about 15 minutes whilst I go in and buy something to make me overly flatulent, thereby generating more than my fair share of methane.

BIAB.

Warning: Thread chock full of liberal douchebaggery.

Boy, am I looking forward to a week long houseboat trip to Lake Mead in September, 2009 with 11 of my closest friends. Better call OPEC ahead of time and make sure the spigots are on full blast before we go and drive several V6 and V8 powered vehicles up there to take the week off.

In all seriousness I would like to get a more fuel efficient vehicle for the commute. I am trying for a bike, but the wife is not going for it.

It depends on the commute. If you've got a bunch of highway driving or you're in the north, it might not be worth it. Too much bad can come from meeting a semi or soccer mom that didn't see you. Or the weather kills the pay-back.

The cycles I'm looking at are all under $1K. A bike will probably be around $300-500, but I don't know if that's a workable solution yet.

Don't forget to throw the plastic shopping bag out the window into the street on your way back.

Plus, if you smoke, empty your ashtray out the window while the vehicle is moving. The carbon ash is good for the environment and the drivers behind you are very appreciative.

Also don't forget...on that commute, be sure to gun the engine when starting out.

None of this gradual acceleration pansy shit.

Ok, so you don't take the X out because of gas prices and you see that as doing your part. That's like the ugly kid saying he's not getting laid because he's ugly, which is how he's doing his part to prevent teen pregnancy. What you're saying is YOUR part in this is not having enough money to drive your truck. Wow, thanks for your help! For my part, I'm carpooling - three of us in a Polaris Ranger racing our way down Broad Street to get to work. We don't use the A/C (no doors, no A/C anyway) and we are wearing helmets to keep tax payer costs down in case of a crash. We also don't drive over 25 MPH. You can thank me later.