The nation’s economy expanded at a robust 4.9% annual rate from July through September as Americans defied higher prices, rising interest rates and widespread forecasts of a recession to spend at a brisk pace.

The Commerce Department said the economy expanded last quarter at the fastest pace in nearly two years — and more than twice the 2.1% annual rate of the previous quarter.

Thursday’s report on the nation’s gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — showed that consumers drove the acceleration, ramping up their spending on everything from cars to restaurant meals. Even though the painful inflation of the past two years has soured many people’s view of the economy, millions have remained willing to splurge on vacations, concert tickets and sports events.

  • @Nobody@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    751 year ago

    Rich people get richer. When the recession comes, they’ll buy up smaller competitors with our tax money given to them as “bailouts.” It’s all bullshit. Always has been.

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
      link
      fedilink
      201 year ago

      If the lowest income is zero and the highest income goes from ten billion to a hundred billion, then the median income went up.

      Also, if the GDP goes up then GDP per capita goes up, and how it’s distributed doesn’t matter.

      This is the madness economists want us to believe.

      • @aaaantoine@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        111 year ago

        That’s the mean (average), not the median (middle).

        Median is the one where half the numbers are smaller and half are bigger. If only the top income changes, the median stays the same. The mean goes up.

    • @CmdrShepard
      link
      English
      3
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Not only with our tax money but they’ll also be buying everything up at a discount. Just like in 2008 when millions lost their homes, the rich fucks were able to buy them all up for pennies on the dollar in foreclosure sales instead of the market rate, sit on them for a few years, and then sell them back to us at 2-3x what they paid.