Apparently the United State’s economy isn’t doing any better. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is done, which is used by most economists as a measuring stick for a country’s economic performance. Of course I have a hard time believing such metrics are useful when I read things like this:
The economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the last three months of 2012, the worst quarter since the economy crawled out of the last recession, hampered by the lower military spending, fewer exports and smaller business stockpiles, preliminary government figures indicated on Wednesday. The Fed, in a separate appraisal, said economic activity “paused in recent months.”
Emphasis mine. Did you get that? The reason the economy is in a slump is because the United States government isn’t spending enough money bombing brown people overseas. If we only spent more on bombs, missiles, and other implements of war things wouldn’t be this bad. This is why GDP is asinine, it includes government and private spending. Any measure of a country’s economic performance that includes government spending should be dismissed outright as there is no way to know whether or not government spending is actually productive.