"Jay Honeck" wrote:

Personally, our hotel business is up 30% over last year. Now part of that
is the fact that we were brand new -- but do you REALLY think a luxury
suites hotel would be doing so well if the U.S. economy was doing poorly?

I see it too, in one of the areas of the country where unemployment is
still relatively higher (it's what you get for tacking the minimum
wage to COLA, IMO.)

I have a friend who is a jeweler. He's doing much better this year
than last year. That tells me that people are spending discretionary
income. Poor people don't buy gold and diamonds, or get their settings
repaired.

In my own business (we supply a niche of the manufacturing industry
with vertically aligned software) our cash flow is up quite a bit.

Don't believe everything you read. Anyone who is unemployed right now in
the U.S. probably have a reason to be unemployed.

No, there are still areas of the economy where we're struggling. IS/IT
workers in the Pacific Northwest and California, especially
"contractors", whose rates are half now what they were just four years
ago. After all those dotcoms (and Y2K) died off, unemployed middle
management and executives were a dime a dozen. Manufacturing, too,
though I've got it on pretty good authority that pattern shops and
such have seen an increase in business in the last year or two, which
usually means there will be an increase in manfacturing.

Even so, we can't forget that overall in the last 30 years there is a
*lot* more wealth than ever before, and the U.S. safety net is very
strong, IMO.

Rob