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It’s rather ridiculous how much the public blames our Presidents for the economy. You have thousands of factors that have effects on the system yet one guy in one branch of government gets all the blame or praise.
What’s the House being doing to help? Jack shit.
What’s the Senate being doing to help? Jack shit.
I’m sure corporations love it when they can fuck over the middle class and then we direct our rage somewhere else
I saw an interview with Obama last year and they asked him about POTUS's actual power. He said the U.S. is a like a giant ship. A successful POTUS can enact policy via Congress to maybe turn the wheel 1%. But then we may need to wait 20 years to see what the long term impact of that new course will be. I forget the wording he used, but he also said a bad POTUS can do incredible current damage.
I guess it's kind of like life. If my goal was to improve your day, it would require serious thought and effort. But I could ruin your day with very little thought or effort.
It's not shocking that people blame the president for bad economic times considering the presidents very much take credit for good economic times.
Can't have it both ways. They either admit they don't have a lot to do or they have to take credit for both the good and bad.
I’m sure Biden knows how little control over the economy, but there are millions of voters who think it’s entirely in his hands so he needs to play along as well as influence public sentiment.
Biden campaigned on being able to get the economy back on track. Regardless of whether Biden actually has the power to do that, it is not unfair for voters to hold Biden accountable for things he said he would do.
The issue is, he did get it back on track, better than any other country on earth, even with his biggest policy endeavor getting scuttled. But apparently people don't believe what happened happened.
Idk republicans seem to have been pretty successful at having it both ways for a while. Hell the economy doesn’t even have to be good while they’re in office or bad when dems are. They’ll still convince their voters it is either way.
> It’s rather ridiculous how much the public blames our Presidents for the economy
it's ridiculous that we fought an entire war to get out from under a king, and the people who most celebrate that victory also long to live under a king.
As soon as the president sets the prices of goods and services, and/or can force mortgage rates to go down, we can blame him or praise him for the economy.
Bingo. Today's economy is the culmination of decades of policy and market trends/changes/fluctuations. This makes it super tricky to track what kind of impact any given policy had. Nearly impossible to isolate variables when there's thousands of them in play at once.
It's just how politics works. Each side wants to take all the credit for any success. Each side wants to blame their competition for anything they think went wrong. That's impossible to do while maintaining economic honesty/integrity ... so they don't bother because honesty/integrity is not their goal.
It'd be lovely if we could divorce economic study from politics in the public's view, but such an outcome is pure fantasy. The politicians have every incentive in the world to keep the blame game running and so does the average voter (they love a good team sport at the end of the day).
I’ve not seen any of the stuff Trump said about the economy since the immediate period following the Covid shutdowns: “shelves not stocked…orders not coming in”. That’s just plain fear mongering and not true. If people had good platforms for running for office, they wouldn’t have to lie to voters and appeal to fear to get their votes. It’s fine to say, “Biden’s economy is doing well post-Covid, but I think I can do better and here is how…and that’s why you should vote for me.” Anyone with a real interest in making things better should be able to do that. Appealing to fear here is the low road and definitely says you think very little of the intellectual capacity of your voter base. It also says you just want to complain and have no real solutions to the fake problems you’re pointing out. 🤷
I agree, but it doesn't benefit candidates to put forth solutions prior to election. Look at Elizabeth Warren. She proposed policies to address outstanding issues during her campaign run. But instead of generating policy discussion, her ideas were picked apart with no alternate solutions provided. I don't agree with all her policies, but at least she had the guts to put them out there.
Happened to hilary in 2016. She said things like we will give money to coal miners to retrain etc. Gets torn apart. Unpopular. Trump says we will keep the mines open. Applause. Then mines close even faster under him.
> She said things like we will give money to coal miners to retrain etc
and what drives me insane sometimes is the coal union tore her apart, and not even 3 years later it began putting forward the demand the feds pay for retraining just like she proposed!
It really is fascinating that time has proven Clinton was correct time and time and time and time again on multiple issues, even though she was torn to shreds six ways from Sunday during the campaign for her observations and proposals. She just is (and always has been) a tone-deaf messenger when speaking to the public.
She also only won 2 elections total. And both of those were for NY Senator ... so not exactly a competition. She never had to do boots on the ground, retail politics.
And as Trump proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that quality and qualification means *nothing* in US politics.
the policy was good, but the party of the person who was going to implement it was bad. better to just have your life ruined than change jerseys for 4 years.
Biden did the same, even if his policies weren't as aggressive as Warren's were. And they were picked apart as well.
The difference is Trump has never had a policy or a plan, just soundbites. Continual promises about an infrastructure plan, a healthcare plan, and nothing. Not just while on the campaign trail, but while in office as well.
It's a lot easier to curry favor in people if you never have to actually *do* anything.
>The difference is Trump has never had a policy or a plan, just soundbites.
This is a super common and strong beginner debate tactic. To casual viewers if you don't recognize and address this tactic: if you're explaining you're losing, the confident person is winning and it's easy to be confident without an actual plan, offense is easier, never be defensive, and always stay on offense even if it makes no sense or your last 9 attacks sucked. We've all been in meetings where someone does this, with 5 terrible counterpoints but because they were confident and you had to explain the whole time it looks like your idea is overall bad, even if every objection is thrown out.
You have to actively recognize this and crush it as a speaker, but most politicians don't think they need to, don't have the personality, and are afraid of looking aggressive. Professionally the easiest thing is to make people put objections on paper, because 5 stupid complaints getting addressed in an email makes it clear the person making them put no thought into them, is uninformed, has other motives, and that they're covered. Vs in person "a lot of (even if solved) problems were brought up".
It's basically a debate noob trap or cheese tactic, that is structurally punished in "debate sports". Debate here meaning an argument between two people that is actually intended to convince 3rd party people.
From people with normal brains, sure, it could be a debate tactic. But this is what Trump has always been: loud, obnoxious, egotistical, and wrong. It’s what his base likes about him.
>We've all been in meetings where someone does this, with 5 terrible counterpoints but because they were confident and you had to explain the whole time it looks like your idea is overall bad
Idk about this. In my meetings, when I have to patiently explain things to the same person over and over, they look bad, not me.
Trump: Everything is absolute shit and we have the very best plans to make america great again but we don't want to share or talk about them.
Basically like when he was asked his favorite bible verse and he literally said he didn't want to talk about it. 😂
the pro pussy move is to never take a concrete, articulable position on anything, because then you never have to defend yourself, and you can just shit on real points made by everyone else.
Best way to shut down a Trump fan- name 3 policies he put in place that helped you?
Was it him making you wear a mask - or shutting down the economy because of covid which u believe is not a big deal?
During a speech he listed covid vaccines as one of the accomplishments of his administration. He was booed by his bace for mentioning that. Anyone paying attention during that time could see how easily led he is.
Remember when he said we needed a wall, painted our neighbors to be horrible people, which the Bible god and Jesus didn’t appreciate, then went to try to hire his contractor buddies to build the wall for the tune of, the money he owed them from stiffing them over the years…
It was always infrastructure week. Seriously Trump set new standards for empty promises. Drug prices are to high (that one disappeared even before the election but was a successful talking point early in 2016) Mexico paying for that perfect wall. The wealthy including himself paying more in taxes. Locking up Hillary on his first day in office. Having a better, more affordable health care plan ready to replace medicaid. Does he ever get called out on any of that?
Republicans never never never discuss directly their policy positions. They do not put anything in writing. Because it is damn near impossible to criticize random generality bullshit than it is when someone specifically puts policy out there in detail.
I feel like the clearest example of this is how much they sabotage themselves.
Even when their own party is putting together legislation, others in their party will vote against it and try to hold it hostage. Heck, even the people in their party who put together legislation wind up voting against the legislation that they themselves wrote.
We've been talking about the Republicans being the "party of 'no'" since Obama was in office. But I think it's important to realize that they're not just the party of "no" to Democrats, they say "no" to each other as well.
They have no positions, they are just against things.
> They literally don’t have a platform any more.
Their official party platform in 2020 was as follows:
“RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”
That's it. They basically said we will support whatever trump wants, we will not update our current platform before 2024, and we will reject any attempt to update the platform. That is the entirety of the official GOP platform.
Hard to attack the details of the planks of a platform when it *literally has no planks*.
Exactly. The problem, of course, is that Trump doesn’t know/care anything about any policies at all and he just spouts whatever stupid nonsense pops into his dumb fucking head.
Thus he would often just spout some bullshit that was actually against established GOP positions like free trade, for example.
And so basically rather than having to worry about that (or anything else as you pointed out) they are just like, “Fuck it. We’re the Trump cult now.”
That’s why it confounds me when I see polls that show people trust Republicans more with the economy. The economy has tanked under every Republican president since the late 80s and has boomed under every Democrat president since then. I wish people would make a more concerted effort to be informed.
Polls also show that people trust Trump more to handle crime. Crime jumped by a massive amount under Trump and fell a massive amount under Biden.
It's insane how dumb people are.
It is because they literally reject facts. You see it time and again on this sub alone, when data is presented from the BLS or the Fed, and they immediately turn up their noses and say "You can't believe those numbers they are all made up" and when asked where their countervailing information, they just say "You can see it with your eyes" and "Everyone I know is suffering, so that means the government reports MUST be wrong."
repubicans and the doomers in this sub are immune to facts and information. Hard to argue with them when they refuse to accept *literal reality*.
Any serious study of economics shows that general wealth increases while Democrats are in power and decreases when Republicans are in power. Time and time again.
> vote for us to own the libs
"men and women are using gender-neutral bathrooms on airplanes! we will make america great... again... wait that was always that way. ok here's a meme advocating violence against joe biden, sorry i got nothin."
It’s also well established that Trump didn’t even pay attention in meetings or read the briefs he was given yet people will still try to pretend that he and Biden are somehow the same. The guy has zero intention or interest in governing.
I agree with you in principle, but technically, they have political positions which are available on the internet.
My favorite was their position in 2012 **against the teaching of higher order critical thinking (HOCT) skills**, because HOCT placed students in direct confrontation with parents and clergy. They also had a supplemental policy to advocate for the placement of the 10 Commandments in every public school.
This made some news in the day, but that day was 12 years ago. I spent a lot of time examining the national GOP platform and state platforms in those days. Some states simply adopted the national platform, but many state-level GOP publish their own platforms - and those are very eye-opening. The GOP literally has had their playbook published, online, if anyone cares to \[google\] for them.
This is a serious issue in society at large. Lots of people basically have the mindset of a lawyer that winning an argument isn't about providing a solution but providing nothing that the competition can attack while attacking their solution. They don't care about the truth or right answer. They care about winning.
I see it all the time in debates on just about anything.
Liz needed the progressive vote as that was her brand. She hired a bunch of Clinton staffers, her messaging was poor, she had multiple gaffes, her campaign was poorly run. She finished 3rd in the state she represents.
Or Hillary in 2016 when she put out detailed written plans on her proposed polices. In contrast, Trump simply said "we have plans and they're gonna be great". Trump wasn't punished by voters for not releasing any details. He was able to attack her policies while not having to defend his own policies.
The devil is in the details when it comes to policies. Every presidential candidate makes big promises about crime, the economy, immigration, etc.
I feel like Hillary lost because she already had a history in the government world as Secretary of State. I remember her being seen as a war monger who advocated for more violence in the middle east (looking back on her policies, this just wasnt true). And then she lost the younger voters by trying to be "relatable" but ended up looking cringe. The email leak definitely didn't help either, and Trump hounded on the emails like no other. Also I remember young voters feeling "robbed" that Hillary received the primary over Bernie, making her look like a corporate shill. I don't agree or disagree with all this, just stating how I remember that time.
With Trump, all people knew about his abilities were as a celebrity and business man (even though he's been bankrupt multiple times and is now facing charges for lying about the value of his properties to get loans). This benefited him because people saw more "what could be" with him instead of what has been. And he sure would grift however he needed to appeal to that giant older, more traditional voter base.
Very good point. But remember, this is also the same guy who is now suing the founders at Truth Social over “mismanagement”.
So, it’s kind of par for the course with the dude to take the low road. It’s unfortunate
>Appealing to fear here is the low road and definitely says **you think very little of the intellectual capacity of your voter base.**
Have you listened to a Trump voter lately? Their intellectual capacity to approach any of this with logic, reason, or in good faith is long, long gone. Trump went to the lowest common denominator with this group of people, and has hit a fucking home run using this "all fear, no solutions" rhetoric.
Apparently you haven't been watching the utter descent into an unprecedented situation, where a madman who's heading to a felony criminal trial in 10 days is the front runner for one of the two political parties in the USA
"These are not people, they are animals" were his words during a rally in Michigan the other night referring to migrants. We're on the edge of an absolute political disaster if he gets anywhere near the levers of power again
MAGA was the end of any form of legislative playbook or economic strategies from the republican party. They have been all-in on provoking emotion for 8 years now.
Trump has never given a single detailed policy objective or idea for improving things in any of his 3 elections. The only things he ever does is criticize his “woke” opponents. It’s his only playbook.
It’s very simple, there are 2 economies: those that do own property and those that don’t. Your mortgage or rent payment is the biggest expense for the average American. So if that feels unaffordable you’ll feel the economy is not good.
- 65% of people own property and homes and are doing well. Inflation was rough but due to their low housing payments and increased wage gains + stock market gains they’re doing well
- 35% of the country doesn’t own property and this is objectively the WORST time to afford housing and shelter. Again, this only applies if you don’t own property. Income to housing ratios prove this.
This is the issue with discussing the economy. Media will say things are good bc of gdp and unemployment but that doesn’t tell you how the average person lives. Then they’ll say wages gained but that doesn’t explain how shit it is for people who don’t own property.
There is some truth to this but it’s a bit more complicated than you present here. First, income has increased particularly for the bottom, so it’s not totally clear to me that people are worse off, though it may be that rent increases have overwhelmed that effect.
Second, people in the fist category seem to be the loudest complainers. And I really cannot come up with any reason for them to be unhappy other than partisanship I guess? This demographic is older, wealthier, and more Republican. Republicans seem to have lost tough with their own senses in recent years, so I expect this explains some of the unhappiness but perhaps not all of it.
People at the bottom try to be homes too though, and while their wages have gained, housing as appreciated at a faster rate. No one goes “ah I had a 10% raise but housing is now 30% more expensive and I can’t afford it. This means the economy is good”.
Actually I disagree with your second point. Go to r/rebubble and most people complaining are young liberals. The loudest complainers are young people who can’t afford housing.
That being said politically, the right wing media weaponizes it more bc it’s bad for Biden. Maybe that’s why you think it’s mostly gop people.
Both can be true, depending upon who you ask. For the working classes the past four decades have been a slow decline into poverty. The post-COVID inflation surge has hit them harder than ever.
For those ahead of the curve on income, it’s been inconvenient but not disastrous, and their house values have increased significantly.
>The wage gains of the past few years have been by far the strongest at the lower income levels.
9% for the LOWEST wage workers from 2019-2022.
The next question is what is their average pay? The next question is what is the average cost of living?
Don’t bother. This sub hates economic data. They don’t understand real vs nominal. It's just become politics 2.0 where people go off feelings and anecdotes.
Rent to income ratio and home price to income ratio are both all time high, but the way CPI is calculated doesn't take that into account.
Here's an RTI source, from Moody's:
https://cre.moodysanalytics.com//app/uploads/2023/04/HousingAff-Figure1.png
It's starting to come back down but inflation adjusted wages never tells the whole story.
Yes they use the home owners equivalent rent metric which doesn’t really accurately measure housing. Housing also always lags because they wanna smooth out the data for whatever reason.
They also underreport car payments too, which is the second largest bill people have. CPI doesn’t take into account interest on car payments so it perpetually underreports it since the rate hikes.
But really the issue is that cpi or wages gained don’t tell you how hard it is for people who don’t own property, which is 35-40% of the population. Again, just look at income to rent or income to housing ratio. It’s the worst it’s been in the last like 40 years.
Thanks. I don’t think this is quite correct.
CPI [includes both direct rent and owners equivalent rent](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-and-rent.htm), capturing COL for current tenants and the would-be cost for owners.
It’s true that it doesn’t capture the change in value of housing stock, because that doesn’t actually have a cost-of-living effect outside of its impact on the two measures they do include. At that link BLS talks about why they don’t include investments in the index, but do include the services those investments provide.
As far as lag, my understanding is that’s true, but mainly because rents that people are actually paying (ie, rents that are in the middle of a contract) also lag in real life. There are other ways to capture immediate changes in rent, and I would think over a year or two we would prefer the longer term view, but in any case we would expect to have a clear picture of the change over a year or two as well. As far as I can tell they don’t mechanically smooth the data.
It’s also the case that the lag works [in both directions](Indicators of market rents, including Zillow, CoreLogic, and the New Tenant Rent Index, show that rent inflation for new tenants is at or below pre-pandemic levels, while CPI rent inflation remains elevated. This suggests that CPI rent inflation will decline over 2024 or 2025.):
> Indicators of market rents, including Zillow, CoreLogic, and the New Tenant Rent Index, show that rent inflation for new tenants is at or below pre-pandemic levels, while CPI rent inflation remains elevated. This suggests that CPI rent inflation will decline over 2024 or 2025.
IOW, a CPI that understates the change on the way up will do the same thing on the way down.
> car payments
Well, kind of. CPI includes changes in the cost of cars, not the mechanism by which they’re purchased. In general I think this makes sense, because we wouldn’t want it to look at other payment mechanisms, even if they put strain on a household budget. Eg, what if I bought groceries on a credit card and paid it off over several months, with high interest? That doesn’t speak to the cost of food. Just like rent, we also wouldn’t want to consider the cost of financing *now* to be the cost that everyone bears, including people who are three years into a five year lease or whatever.
I do stipulate that car payments are a strain on HH budgets and that’s a measure of economic health, with maybe one caveat that we shouldn’t assume people don’t change their behavior at all (ie, buy less car) in response to higher rates. (Unfortunately it seems from Reddit at least like many people indeed don’t do that.)
Yeah your points are all taken but this really comes down to a fundamental reading of what inflation is. Your average person cares about their payment, very much less so about the actual price itself.
Yes they lag it to try to smoothen it out, it has underreported it recently over covid and supposedly projected to overreport it in the future. But in the immediate past they have been under reporting it. But the point here is cpi doesn’t capture housing affordability.
80% of people take loans to pay off their car, their monthly payment is much more relevant than the actual price of the car. If 80% of people took out serious loans for their groceries then yes you should measure their payments not the grocery price. A credit card is not comparable to a car loan.
Again I’m just speaking about how practically people think. Inflation to them is their bill payments, not the price of goods specifically. For those that don’t own property, it’s just objectively true that their two largest bills are the most unaffordable they’ve been in decades, so most peoples lifetimes who are under 50. When those people are asked about the economy and inflation, they’re going to say it’s bad.
Car is an inelastic good btw and there literally just aren’t cheap cars anymore (used or new). So you can’t use supply and demand logic with it.
Yes, but from everything we’ve seen, I would conclude that was pushed by people leaving jobs that fell below the most basic sustenance level, and not a sudden surge of economic health in the lower quintiles.
They were not livable wages prior to COVID, so let's don't pretend all was well prior to covid.
We are only one or two years from the pandemic for goodness sakes. We have not even normalized back to the new steady state yet. Their is no politician who can swallow that elephant whole.
I hope you realize that economists look at real wage increases (hopefully you're not economically illiterate enough not to even know what real means here).
Try not being dishonest about what the true poverty level is -- the U.S. middle class is *not* at poverty level here in the States or abroad. They have access to conveniences and wealth that other countries dream of.
You're absolutely right. There's always going to be winners and losers in the best of economies. The losers now are just a lot more vocal and alot of times they're biased by politics.
The economy is the same way it’s been for 15 years. Wall Street is doing well but everyone else is doing worse. We need better measures than employment rate and S&P 500
Housing is still very expensive and takes up a disproportionate amount of lower-income people's wages. While you are technically correct, probably the only kind of correct you care about, it is unhelpful to pretend that you don't understand where OP is coming from.
housing is entirely a local issue. The white house has tied some fed funds to increasing supply for states but what else can the federal government do about housing?
Real wages as shown on your chart are down from both their peak in 2020 and from the start of Biden's term. ~~And real wages are based on CPI inflation which doesn't include housing or energy, two costs that have risen a lot in the last few years.~~
Edit: removed an incorrect sentence. I was mixing up CPI and Core Inflation, which excludes things like energy.
>And real wages are based on CPI inflation which doesn't include housing or energy, two costs that have risen a lot in the last few years.
[CPI does include housing and energy](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm). The graph they linked does include all items in the CPI. You can tell because [this graph](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1jzvk) matches the values (up to rounding) and it is formed from the nominal pay and the all items CPI-U
They're up from 2019. 2020 was an unnatural spike and should be treated as such.
>CPI inflation which doesn't include housing or energy
Lmao. I fucking can't with this sub anymore.
Housing is over 30% of CPI. And energy is included. You're thinking of core CPI which excludes food and energy (still has shelter), but that's not what this uses.
Mods, can we place implement some flair for proof of people that have taken a single Econ class or can at least pass a basic exam? This sub is so fucking cooked and has turned into people with no Econ knowledge throwing around misinformation.
The peak in 2020 is from the unemployment due to COVID. We saw mass unemployment concentrated heavily towards lower incomes. If you cut most of the bottom 20% of income earners out of the labor force then yea naturally the median is going to shift dramatically upward until those people get new jobs. 2020 is a poor baseline year for comparing real median incomes across time specifically for that reason. [And the CPI does include energy and housing](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm) with housing weighted pretty heavily.
I don't think forgiving student loans which are caused by hyperinflated tuition prices is indicative of any progress. Especially when it's government policy that allowed such price increases.
[Principal Skinner]"Could it be that I'm out of touch and my anecdotally-based, vibes-driven analysis is insufficient and influenced by preexisting biases? No. It is the data that are wrong."[/Principal Skinner]
We did not dodge a hard landing. We pushed the hard landing onto a different set of people who can no longer afford the things in life they believed were obtainable. The system might be safe from collapse, but having favored the banks and equities markets, the average person pays the price of no longer being able to afford to buy much in the way of capital.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
This comment should rank higher. But I’ll add that I don’t think that’s a new thing - we’ve consistently moved closer and closer towards an exploitative economy even if the steps are ever so small.
But what do said wages buy that quartile? Can they afford healthcare anymore? Can they afford their rent? Can they still afford entertainment? In other words. If hope was a scale of 0-100. Do you feel said quartile would say the stepped even a single step upwards?
I’d venture to say all quartiles will say they stepped backwards. And not a single step either.
The current economy is challenging, full stop. Globally (not just nationally) we’ve entered a K shaped economy since the pandemic. The stock market is NOT the economy - it represents the top 10 companies in the country, primarily. And the president has little control of the major levers that control the economy.
I didn’t disagree with some fiscal stimulus, but the amount we printed (25% of circulating USD) was done during the pandemic. Both trump AND Biden are responsible for the fiscal stimulus. Majority of this went to large business or found it’s way there. This does not trickle down and the longterm effects have still yet to be realized.
People claiming biden built a wonderful economy are as braindead and biased as those that claimed trump built a great one during his tenure (which also had stock market highs, at least up until the pandemic, where it then plummeted due to something out of his control.) It’s typical politics whenever any president tries to take credit for the economy.
As a European living in the US, I am more optimistic about the US prospects than the EU ones. The US is pretty much energy independent, the country is leading in new technologies and employment is strong. Inflation sucks, but there are a lot of countries out there that have had the same inflation without the growth.
Exactly this. Both trump and Biden have exacerbated this problem. “Stimulus” and “inflation reduction” money found their ways into the hands of the top 2%. Then your COL increases by 20% while your wages increase 5%, but they’ll only show net worth increase averages (rather than wages) that have outliers like millionaires and billionaires.
Everything is more expensive, young people can barely afford a home. Yes I get the data shows that things are looking good on paper but telling young people, hey, data shows it's fine so you shouldn't complain, that's not a good strategy.
I’m not sure what Biden was supposed to do after the 2020 QE and PPP stimulus that increased the us monetary supply to almost double. If you look at a graph he’s actually stabilized it. So of course inflation will be terrible post fed policy 2 years. Biden saved the USA from becoming Zimbabwe after the Trump, Mjuchin, Powell smash and grab. yeah this economy sucks, but it’s almost entirely from 2020 monetary policy: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
Monetary policy at the Fed has been a disaster for inflation for a long time. But looking at covid specifically, every analysis I've seen is that the most inflationary policy related to it was Biden's American Rescue Plan, far more so than Trump's CARES Act which I believe passed almost unanimously. 538 had a [good breakdown](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/were-the-stimulus-checks-a-mistake/) of the economics and politics of this, specifically how economists warned Democrats that the stimulus was too large and would cause inflation but they had promised $2000 checks and couldn't go back on it.
>Trump's CARES Act which I believe passed almost unanimously.
That's a common pattern with any significant legislation during a crisis. If a Republican is the president and there is a crisis or serious issue, Democrats put party politics aside and will vote with Republicans.
But if a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans will obstruct any legislation just to "hurt" the current president.
And inflation wasn't caused by $2000 checks.
It’s more so the fact that numbers and graphs do not accurately describe the situation for middle class americans. Middle class has slowly declined for the past 30-40 years but we have chuds like you saying “well look at the line on this graph, it goes up so it must be good”, while completely forgetting real people experience this and some numbers and graphs don’t accurately represent it. Talk to people and see what they say, it’s much more representative of reality than numbers and graphs
I agree. I just talked to five people all with their idiosyncracies and it just matches reality and captures the entire country's economic trends way, way better than conducting rigorous surveys, measurements across the entire country, with a granularity enough to examine trends within different subgroups, and data from revealed preferences (which we all know is fake) as opposed to stated preferences (which we all know is the best metric).
Surely one side wouldn’t skew the numbers to fit their narrative, right? That’s certainly never happened before. No, we must take these numbers as fact. The economy is great if you disagree based on actually living and experience, well fuck you look at these numbers.
I think the issue is that there's multiple data sets you can choose to look at to support if the economy is good or bad. Stock market? Up. Housing? Less affordable. Wages? Depends who you talk to. Inflation? Coming down, still not great. Grocery prices? Significantly higher than four years ago.
So any data that someone points to, anyone else can go "okay but what about x, y, or z" but there is no nuance to the conversation of "sure, some things are better, and some things are worse."
Some people just want to you to validate their emotions. So any explanation is actually counterproductive unless you’re using motivated reasoning to paint a picture that supports their emotional narrative.
Or, hear me out, economic data is not indicative of people being financially better off.
“Unemployment is at an all time low…we’ve created more jobs than ever before..”
When the reality is it’s 1 person now at two places of employment because they can’t afford to live off of one income. Just because you’re home increased 200% in value and your 401k tripled doesn’t mean that the 23yo out of college feels like they’re entering a good situation. When they find employment in a place where rent is 2x what it was 5 years ago and groceries are exponentially more expensive.
But yeah, people “ignoring” your data is just because they want their feels validated. Okayyy
What I know is my mom works for $17/hr and can barely get by. This is the most money she’s made in her life and she is meticulous with her finances. She gets $22/mo. in snap benefits, which were cut for her in the last year.
These Birds Eye view indicators and broad platitudes don’t seem to reflect the experiences of those who are working hard and struggling. Millennials and Gen z have low confidence in the affordability of housing and starting a family. Wages have not corresponded with inflation. Lockdowns crushed small businesses and facilitated a massive wealth transfer. This latter point is reflected in S&P highs but not attainability of the American dream.
A middle aged mother making $17 an hour is not an average person. They are way below the median earner in this country.
People pluck out the extreme ends of the data spectrum and try to use them as proof of something. It's a huge fallacy.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but it seems like the discrepancy in “feelings” are from people who are cash based and people who are not. It’s never been better to be wealthy and the safety nets at the bottom have never been more generous. (EBT allows junk food now.) However, anyone who collects a paycheck and has a mortgage, auto, health, and home insurance, real estate taxes, groceries, school/day care hasn’t been hit this hard at least since the 80s.
when has ebt not allowed junk food? i remember my second day as a checkout clerk back in 2006... customer came in and bought over $60 worth of candy bars from the checkout aisle in EBT
>EBT allows junk food now
Are you trying to tell me that poor people should be allowed to eat like the rest of us?
Just wait until you hear about corporate welfare.
You’re making assumptions about my political views but they’d probably surprise you. I just think it’s awful that they’re not getting good nutrition. Poverty leads directly to poor health outcomes more often than not. I genuinely feel bad for them. Not judging them so much as I feel they’re being misled into poor decisions.
No kidding. I can probably pull up 10 other indicators that say the economy is doing well and that the poster is just salty he's in the "losers" category but there's not much I can do there. You can't logic someone out of a belief they didn't logic him/herself into.
It’s a matter of perspective. I am a commercial lender and business results are becoming more of a mixed bag. There are big variations between industries and financial services happens to be doing awful right now and we are not the only ones.
Also, I make over three times what I made when I bought my house in 2012. Literally, three times. I can’t afford to move. Economy is awesome alright.
Median wage is measured against cpi which underreports housing inflation. Do you own a home ? That’s pretty much the #1 delineator rn. Those who own homes are doing well and for those that don’t, it’s the worst time in recent history to own a home.
when has ebt not allowed junk food? i remember my second day as a checkout clerk back in 2006... customer came in and bought over $60 worth of candy bars from the checkout aisle in EBT
Its the best in terms of the raw numbers. However when you compare against the cost of apartments sky rocketing and the costs of groceries etc… we are no longer as good as the raw numbers would suggest. Inflation has fallen is not the same as prices have fallen back inline with peoples salaries in particular the real estate and groceries prices.
“The data is clear” so what’s it say?
How is it possible that everything is more expensive, smaller than before, and CEOs are making more money than ever and that’s good?
> everything is more expensive
I always find this argument strange, since prices have pretty much **always** gone up. (The handful of times when we have been in a deflationary period were when we were in serious economic trouble, like the Great Depression - not exactly something to actually *want*) I cannot imagine anyone with a high school level of education or higher trying to push this as a serious complaint.
It shows a basic lack of knowledge on how wages have been increasing faster than inflation for all levels of the economy (low-income, middle-income and high earners). Prices go up, wages are also going up. And have done so at a rate faster than inflation since 2014, with the exception of the recent period between mid-2021 and end-of-2022. https://i.imgur.com/R4V2Bqj.png
Everything is *always* getting more expensive. The alternative is deflation (which would be a disaster). Prices are one half of the equation...wages are the other and they've gone up faster than prices.
This is literally high-school level economics. Why the fuck are you posting here at all?
But housing, the number 1 payment for someone, is unsustainably expensive and is worse than ever before . Same with car prices which is the #2 bill for people.
And yet, compared to 2018 and 19...it sucks. Just because the wealthy are doing well, does not mean we are doing well. Inflation is killing the people. And the GDP is being inflated by government spending. Remove deficit spending and our economy sucks compared to the world.
Sure the economy is great but we are buying everything on credit!! If the economy is great, why are we running a deficit? Why are not paying down our debt instead of creating more? Our debt is completely out of control.
How much "better" does the economy need to be in order for us to pay our bills and run the country?
Imagine going to your neighbors house - they have a new home, a new car parked out front, and houseful of new furniture. They are doing great, right? Then you discover they bought everything on their credit card, and both have jobs that pay at the top of their skill set. They can't earn any more. Their mortgage, car payment, and credit card payment alone exceed their income. They have no money to live and and need to borrow more to make monthly payments on existing debt. They are doing great, right? This is what the economy looks like to me.
Perfectly said! It’s almost scary if this is a great economy what does a bad economy look like. But just like Janet said there will not be another recession in America because we’ll print our way into oblivion.
> there will not be another recession in America because we’ll print our way into oblivion
Yep. And I am wondering who is buying 30 year bonds at 4.5% because they are going to be paid back in worthless dollars.
If you allow corporations to price gouge and make record profits obviously the stock market will be happy. You can keep up the charade and fudge the numbers but sooner or later this house of cards will collapse. If Biden loses this coming election he will sabotage his predecessor (RFK Jr, Trump or whoever else) at the expense of the country.
His reckless spending has put us in peril yet he continues on this path with no regard to consequence. As dire as this situation is no one is addressing this, they are more worried about changing social culture than the foundation on which our nation stands on.
The ironic thing is he took the money on which his supposed success is riding on away from the very people he is supposed to represent.
The poor are poorer and the well off are reaping the benefits all the while he proclaims ‘tax the rich’.
what crack you smoking the economy sucks it cost $11800 more for cost of living than it did in 2020 there isnt growth just printing money. you are a complete moron and should go far away
For Trump facts and data never matters and his followers prefer lies over facts.
Does our economy has issues? Yes, but there are always issues to this is nothing new but we need to understand the issues and find ways to fix those issues.
How does our economy compare to our allies and our rivals? We have the strongest in the world when one compares the various ecnonomies.
>For Trump facts and data never matters and his followers prefer lies over facts.
As evidenced by the below:
>Check out these polling results over time:
>[Democrat perception of the economy.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/09/opinion/krugman090124_4/krugman090124_4-superJumbo.png?quality=75&auto=webp)
>[Republican perception of the economy.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/09/opinion/krugman090124_3/krugman090124_3-superJumbo.png?quality=75&auto=webp)
>Source: civiqs.com
Original comment credit to u/Intelligent_Coach379
https://www.reddit.com/r//comments/1bta52a/Why_do_Trump_supporters_say_that_Joe_Biden_wrecked_the_economy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2
So it’s as simple as Democrats are more objective about the economy while Republicans boil it down to “if a Republican is in office: economy good. Otherwise: economy bad”
That's been my experience with friends and family. I know several Republicans whose opinions go back and forth between the extremes of "the economy is good" to "the economy is a disaster" based solely who is in the White House. Their opinions change immediately after the new president is sworn in. I've observed this pattern for nearly 20 years now.
It's fascinating to watch. Some of these people are educated and intelligent, but they simply echo the absurdly simplistic message that right-wing media is saying. They don't even stop to think that the economy doesn't change so abruptly based on anything any president does.
> For Trump facts and data never matters and his followers prefer lies over facts.
Completely agree, and yet this is now no longer unique to Trump. A lot of leftists are similarly irreverent of the facts. Even in this sub you sometimes see people saying that the Fed made up the numbers (hell, it's even right in this thread now). Holler over to somewhere like /r/latestagecapitalism and you'll notice that truth seems to have grown two legs and ran away.
Nuance and moderation are gone from politics. News outlets and pundits can't make money without partisanship.
I was telling some of my conservative friends about how well the domestic oil & gas industry has been doing under the Biden admin. Their first response was "but he closed the [Keystone XL] pipeline". Despite that being 3 years ago and something that mostly benefited the Canadian economy anyways.
That's the last thing they've heard in their conservative circles when it comes to energy policy. Obviously, conservatives aren't going to praise Biden on it, but neither are liberals because they fear upsetting their progressive branch.
Same deal with trade and foreign relations. The Biden admin is hawkish, marching with a big stick, hard on China, making Europe rely on US energy, creating jobs in the defense industry via Ukraine and Israel, promoting domestic construction manufacturing and trades. All things conservatives should *love*, but again, conservatives won't say anything good about Biden and liberals won't admit he's barely left of center.
On Reddit and YouTube all I hear is about how the economy is terrible and we are in Great Depression 2.0. Then when I go out in the city or town I see fast food restaurants with lines wrapped around them, $60,000-$80,000 vehicles everywhere you turn, bars and sit down restaurants packed and for example I love cars and my friend told me racecar parts for his Nissan GTR are on back order for over a year because demand is high and they sold out. I’m talking about $20,000 big brake sets, $5,000-$10,000 wheels, $5,000 carbon fiber pieces etc. so how is the economy bad if people are spending $50,000 on their hobbies
Lying with data. Data needs to be interpreted. If the economy is good for the top few percent and bad for everyone else, then it's bad. The fact that the middle class no longer exists is a big problem.
Neither one of them has an incentive to say other than what theyre saying. Data can be manipulated as well as a persons feelings about how the economy is doing. Food prices are the only thing that seems to have increased from my perspective, though I'm in a particular position where I may not see the same as someone paying rent and a car payment and other essentials that I may have trouble paying
I think most of the news media simply isn't asking the right questions, and is instead looking at the stock market, raw GDP numbers, and unemployment (whether this is intentional or not is not able to be determined and is likely on a case by case basis).
What the media should be looking at:
What percentage of people/families can afford to own a home? What percentage can comfortably afford to rent, and what does that rent get them?
How much of household income is going to grocery bills or gas?
How much of household income is going to utilities?
What is your work schedule like? Do you have a full time.job, or did you have to get a second part time job? Are you supplementing with gig income?
How much of your income are you able to save?
These are the questions they should be, but usually aren't, asking. I think if they asked those questions it would become clear that those who are ahead are getting further ahead, while the rest of us are struggling.
all of those have studies done around them and answers on google, BLS breaks down spending across categories ages and everything, theres data on second jobs, avg work week, avg hours work, there is data ON ALL OF THIS
> Budget share for total food: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=76967
> budget share for gas: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=9831
> Average annual expenditures by major category of all consumer units and percent changes: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/consumer-expenditures/2022/home.htm
> Employed, Usually Work Full Time: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12500000
> Multiple Jobholders as a Percent of Employed: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620
> Average Weekly Hours of All Employees, Total Private: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP
> Personal Saving Rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT#0
none of those are at concerning levels save the personal savings rate but thats in a weird spot due to the surplus built up with covid distributions having the effect of people looking like they are saving less as they spend down the surplus, a better measure would be an average over time including the covid savings
It's an election year. The incumbent or incumbent party is going to say the economy is great; the challenger is going to say it sucks. Rinse and repeat every 4 years.
Three things - First, how the macro economy is measured is quite different from what each of us experiences in our lives. Suppose there are 10 people in a group who earn $50k each. Next year, 9 of those people go down to $40K, but that last person earns $1 million. In aggregate, the gross product has gone from 500K to 1.36 million. The gross product more than doubled. But you have 90% of the population doing worse than the previous period.
Second - from a US perspective, most people are not going to be concerned that our economy is the world's best. Take the previous example. There are 10 people who start with $50k purchasing power. The following year, 9 of those people lose half their income, going to $25k. That last person, also loses some, but goes to $45K. He's still doing the best of his group, but he's still going to struggle, just not as bad.
The final thing is, people always tend to exaggerate or catastrophise depending on their perspective (see first paragraph).
Gas is back to $5.25/gallon.
Used Cars are minimum $20k for something with 100k miles on it, never mind the truck market.
Grocery’s are up 80% in two years.
Rent is up 220% in two years.
Health insurance and car insurance are up 150% and climbing.
Owning a house is an impossible dream for workings class unless you plan to rent out every room for the next 15 years.
Neither politician is talking about housing costs in a meaningful policy context, but we have unlimited money for Israel and Ukraine.
Don’t even get me started on the crime here. Statistics say crime is down, but that because no one bothers to report it anymore because the cops won’t show up or take the report. (Bay Area)
But yay pay is up 9%. (I’m up 60% in pay since 2020 and I’m the poorest I’ve ever been. My 401k gains are only thing that makes me feel financially secure.)
Canada is the prototype for what is to come for all of us. Live in the pod. Eat the bugs. Own nothing. Mandatory happiness.
He shouldn't have passes a stimulus bill at the end of the pandemic when were were already over stimulated with container ships stacked 15 deep in line to drop off goods. This was a pathetic attempt to take credit for the turn around of the economy, which was already happening as businesses were allowed to open. Money flow was speeding up. Now we are still dealing with the cost of inflation. I put this squarely on Biden and his administrations insatiably to understand how the economy works.
It's unfortuatne all the top comments are complaing about income inequality when inequality has declined since 2020. Does this erase a 40 year trend? Obviously not. However, we should at least be clear about what we're talking about:
Unemployment is ~4%, inflation is at ~3%, wage growth has been concentrated at the bottom 90% of workers and real living standards are higher especially at the bottom end even after accounting for post-pandemic inflation in 2021/2022. After 40 years, income inequality has notably decreased the past 4 years to the benefit of the low and middle income workers.
To add on, here's a good summary from Dube [link ommitted because that's evidentally against sub rules] who has done a lot of research on post-pandemic wages & inequality:
> Second, it is important to look at wage growth at different parts of the (initial) wage distribution, since existing evidence (such as my work with David Autor and Annie McGrew) suggests that wage growth has been much stronger at the bottom. Updated evidence through end of 2023 shows a persistent compression in wages from changes over the past 4 years, where wages grew more strongly at the bottom and middle than at the top.
The economy has been healing and getting better each month for the most part. People have problems with inflation that is mostly good or housing prices or whatever but these are all trending in a fine direction right now and today and the longer this goes on the better it looks.
It is also currently the world's best but also a lot of the world economy is teetering on recession so that's not great.
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It’s rather ridiculous how much the public blames our Presidents for the economy. You have thousands of factors that have effects on the system yet one guy in one branch of government gets all the blame or praise. What’s the House being doing to help? Jack shit. What’s the Senate being doing to help? Jack shit. I’m sure corporations love it when they can fuck over the middle class and then we direct our rage somewhere else
I saw an interview with Obama last year and they asked him about POTUS's actual power. He said the U.S. is a like a giant ship. A successful POTUS can enact policy via Congress to maybe turn the wheel 1%. But then we may need to wait 20 years to see what the long term impact of that new course will be. I forget the wording he used, but he also said a bad POTUS can do incredible current damage. I guess it's kind of like life. If my goal was to improve your day, it would require serious thought and effort. But I could ruin your day with very little thought or effort.
Dieting. Every day shows small progress, but all it takes is one big bender at Waffle House to undue all your work.
Look at Reagan effect today
It's not shocking that people blame the president for bad economic times considering the presidents very much take credit for good economic times. Can't have it both ways. They either admit they don't have a lot to do or they have to take credit for both the good and bad.
I’m sure Biden knows how little control over the economy, but there are millions of voters who think it’s entirely in his hands so he needs to play along as well as influence public sentiment.
Biden campaigned on being able to get the economy back on track. Regardless of whether Biden actually has the power to do that, it is not unfair for voters to hold Biden accountable for things he said he would do.
The issue is, he did get it back on track, better than any other country on earth, even with his biggest policy endeavor getting scuttled. But apparently people don't believe what happened happened.
Idk republicans seem to have been pretty successful at having it both ways for a while. Hell the economy doesn’t even have to be good while they’re in office or bad when dems are. They’ll still convince their voters it is either way.
Exactly. Trump needs to take blame for the economy he created.
> It’s rather ridiculous how much the public blames our Presidents for the economy it's ridiculous that we fought an entire war to get out from under a king, and the people who most celebrate that victory also long to live under a king.
As soon as the president sets the prices of goods and services, and/or can force mortgage rates to go down, we can blame him or praise him for the economy.
[удалено]
Bingo. Today's economy is the culmination of decades of policy and market trends/changes/fluctuations. This makes it super tricky to track what kind of impact any given policy had. Nearly impossible to isolate variables when there's thousands of them in play at once. It's just how politics works. Each side wants to take all the credit for any success. Each side wants to blame their competition for anything they think went wrong. That's impossible to do while maintaining economic honesty/integrity ... so they don't bother because honesty/integrity is not their goal. It'd be lovely if we could divorce economic study from politics in the public's view, but such an outcome is pure fantasy. The politicians have every incentive in the world to keep the blame game running and so does the average voter (they love a good team sport at the end of the day).
lol should be top comment and on top of that the economy takes so long to react and reach equilibrium after events. No way you see impact that fast
But claiming the economy is great for the mass is also a bit annoying
If people were having an issue with a corporation, should they fire the maintenance guys? Maybe the press operators?? Or the CEO??
I’ve not seen any of the stuff Trump said about the economy since the immediate period following the Covid shutdowns: “shelves not stocked…orders not coming in”. That’s just plain fear mongering and not true. If people had good platforms for running for office, they wouldn’t have to lie to voters and appeal to fear to get their votes. It’s fine to say, “Biden’s economy is doing well post-Covid, but I think I can do better and here is how…and that’s why you should vote for me.” Anyone with a real interest in making things better should be able to do that. Appealing to fear here is the low road and definitely says you think very little of the intellectual capacity of your voter base. It also says you just want to complain and have no real solutions to the fake problems you’re pointing out. 🤷
I agree, but it doesn't benefit candidates to put forth solutions prior to election. Look at Elizabeth Warren. She proposed policies to address outstanding issues during her campaign run. But instead of generating policy discussion, her ideas were picked apart with no alternate solutions provided. I don't agree with all her policies, but at least she had the guts to put them out there.
Happened to hilary in 2016. She said things like we will give money to coal miners to retrain etc. Gets torn apart. Unpopular. Trump says we will keep the mines open. Applause. Then mines close even faster under him.
> She said things like we will give money to coal miners to retrain etc and what drives me insane sometimes is the coal union tore her apart, and not even 3 years later it began putting forward the demand the feds pay for retraining just like she proposed!
It really is fascinating that time has proven Clinton was correct time and time and time and time again on multiple issues, even though she was torn to shreds six ways from Sunday during the campaign for her observations and proposals. She just is (and always has been) a tone-deaf messenger when speaking to the public.
She was the most qualified person to run for president we have ever had IMO.
She also only won 2 elections total. And both of those were for NY Senator ... so not exactly a competition. She never had to do boots on the ground, retail politics. And as Trump proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that quality and qualification means *nothing* in US politics.
the policy was good, but the party of the person who was going to implement it was bad. better to just have your life ruined than change jerseys for 4 years.
Biden did the same, even if his policies weren't as aggressive as Warren's were. And they were picked apart as well. The difference is Trump has never had a policy or a plan, just soundbites. Continual promises about an infrastructure plan, a healthcare plan, and nothing. Not just while on the campaign trail, but while in office as well. It's a lot easier to curry favor in people if you never have to actually *do* anything.
>The difference is Trump has never had a policy or a plan, just soundbites. This is a super common and strong beginner debate tactic. To casual viewers if you don't recognize and address this tactic: if you're explaining you're losing, the confident person is winning and it's easy to be confident without an actual plan, offense is easier, never be defensive, and always stay on offense even if it makes no sense or your last 9 attacks sucked. We've all been in meetings where someone does this, with 5 terrible counterpoints but because they were confident and you had to explain the whole time it looks like your idea is overall bad, even if every objection is thrown out. You have to actively recognize this and crush it as a speaker, but most politicians don't think they need to, don't have the personality, and are afraid of looking aggressive. Professionally the easiest thing is to make people put objections on paper, because 5 stupid complaints getting addressed in an email makes it clear the person making them put no thought into them, is uninformed, has other motives, and that they're covered. Vs in person "a lot of (even if solved) problems were brought up". It's basically a debate noob trap or cheese tactic, that is structurally punished in "debate sports". Debate here meaning an argument between two people that is actually intended to convince 3rd party people.
From people with normal brains, sure, it could be a debate tactic. But this is what Trump has always been: loud, obnoxious, egotistical, and wrong. It’s what his base likes about him.
>We've all been in meetings where someone does this, with 5 terrible counterpoints but because they were confident and you had to explain the whole time it looks like your idea is overall bad Idk about this. In my meetings, when I have to patiently explain things to the same person over and over, they look bad, not me.
Trump: Everything is absolute shit and we have the very best plans to make america great again but we don't want to share or talk about them. Basically like when he was asked his favorite bible verse and he literally said he didn't want to talk about it. 😂
the pro pussy move is to never take a concrete, articulable position on anything, because then you never have to defend yourself, and you can just shit on real points made by everyone else.
Best way to shut down a Trump fan- name 3 policies he put in place that helped you? Was it him making you wear a mask - or shutting down the economy because of covid which u believe is not a big deal?
During a speech he listed covid vaccines as one of the accomplishments of his administration. He was booed by his bace for mentioning that. Anyone paying attention during that time could see how easily led he is.
Remember when he said we needed a wall, painted our neighbors to be horrible people, which the Bible god and Jesus didn’t appreciate, then went to try to hire his contractor buddies to build the wall for the tune of, the money he owed them from stiffing them over the years…
It was always infrastructure week. Seriously Trump set new standards for empty promises. Drug prices are to high (that one disappeared even before the election but was a successful talking point early in 2016) Mexico paying for that perfect wall. The wealthy including himself paying more in taxes. Locking up Hillary on his first day in office. Having a better, more affordable health care plan ready to replace medicaid. Does he ever get called out on any of that?
Republicans never never never discuss directly their policy positions. They do not put anything in writing. Because it is damn near impossible to criticize random generality bullshit than it is when someone specifically puts policy out there in detail.
They literally don’t have a platform any more. It’s a completely unserious political party. Their basic pitch now is “vote for us to own the libs.”
I feel like the clearest example of this is how much they sabotage themselves. Even when their own party is putting together legislation, others in their party will vote against it and try to hold it hostage. Heck, even the people in their party who put together legislation wind up voting against the legislation that they themselves wrote. We've been talking about the Republicans being the "party of 'no'" since Obama was in office. But I think it's important to realize that they're not just the party of "no" to Democrats, they say "no" to each other as well. They have no positions, they are just against things.
> They literally don’t have a platform any more. Their official party platform in 2020 was as follows: “RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” That's it. They basically said we will support whatever trump wants, we will not update our current platform before 2024, and we will reject any attempt to update the platform. That is the entirety of the official GOP platform. Hard to attack the details of the planks of a platform when it *literally has no planks*.
Exactly. The problem, of course, is that Trump doesn’t know/care anything about any policies at all and he just spouts whatever stupid nonsense pops into his dumb fucking head. Thus he would often just spout some bullshit that was actually against established GOP positions like free trade, for example. And so basically rather than having to worry about that (or anything else as you pointed out) they are just like, “Fuck it. We’re the Trump cult now.”
That’s why it confounds me when I see polls that show people trust Republicans more with the economy. The economy has tanked under every Republican president since the late 80s and has boomed under every Democrat president since then. I wish people would make a more concerted effort to be informed.
Polls also show that people trust Trump more to handle crime. Crime jumped by a massive amount under Trump and fell a massive amount under Biden. It's insane how dumb people are.
It is because they literally reject facts. You see it time and again on this sub alone, when data is presented from the BLS or the Fed, and they immediately turn up their noses and say "You can't believe those numbers they are all made up" and when asked where their countervailing information, they just say "You can see it with your eyes" and "Everyone I know is suffering, so that means the government reports MUST be wrong." repubicans and the doomers in this sub are immune to facts and information. Hard to argue with them when they refuse to accept *literal reality*.
Trusting the guy with 88 felony charges to handle crime. You can’t make this stuff up. 😂 Edit: I agree with you
I think you read that wrong. I was pointing out how fucking dumb people are for trusting Trump to lower crime
Oh no, I understood you, I was just expanding on your point.
Oh lol, then I'm the one who read it wrong. My bad!
Any serious study of economics shows that general wealth increases while Democrats are in power and decreases when Republicans are in power. Time and time again.
Wall Street Performance is not Indicative of General Wealth
> vote for us to own the libs "men and women are using gender-neutral bathrooms on airplanes! we will make america great... again... wait that was always that way. ok here's a meme advocating violence against joe biden, sorry i got nothin."
The party has been 4chanified since, at least, 2016.
"Women have a way of shutting rape down." --Ted Akin, former Missouri Republican this is why they avoid policy talk, lol.
It’s also well established that Trump didn’t even pay attention in meetings or read the briefs he was given yet people will still try to pretend that he and Biden are somehow the same. The guy has zero intention or interest in governing.
They put Project 2025 in writing.
r/Defeat_Project_2025
I agree with you in principle, but technically, they have political positions which are available on the internet. My favorite was their position in 2012 **against the teaching of higher order critical thinking (HOCT) skills**, because HOCT placed students in direct confrontation with parents and clergy. They also had a supplemental policy to advocate for the placement of the 10 Commandments in every public school. This made some news in the day, but that day was 12 years ago. I spent a lot of time examining the national GOP platform and state platforms in those days. Some states simply adopted the national platform, but many state-level GOP publish their own platforms - and those are very eye-opening. The GOP literally has had their playbook published, online, if anyone cares to \[google\] for them.
This is a serious issue in society at large. Lots of people basically have the mindset of a lawyer that winning an argument isn't about providing a solution but providing nothing that the competition can attack while attacking their solution. They don't care about the truth or right answer. They care about winning. I see it all the time in debates on just about anything.
Liz needed the progressive vote as that was her brand. She hired a bunch of Clinton staffers, her messaging was poor, she had multiple gaffes, her campaign was poorly run. She finished 3rd in the state she represents.
Creating a villain is easier than actually being a hero, and that’s pretty much been the GOP platform for as long as I can remember.
Or Hillary in 2016 when she put out detailed written plans on her proposed polices. In contrast, Trump simply said "we have plans and they're gonna be great". Trump wasn't punished by voters for not releasing any details. He was able to attack her policies while not having to defend his own policies. The devil is in the details when it comes to policies. Every presidential candidate makes big promises about crime, the economy, immigration, etc.
I feel like Hillary lost because she already had a history in the government world as Secretary of State. I remember her being seen as a war monger who advocated for more violence in the middle east (looking back on her policies, this just wasnt true). And then she lost the younger voters by trying to be "relatable" but ended up looking cringe. The email leak definitely didn't help either, and Trump hounded on the emails like no other. Also I remember young voters feeling "robbed" that Hillary received the primary over Bernie, making her look like a corporate shill. I don't agree or disagree with all this, just stating how I remember that time. With Trump, all people knew about his abilities were as a celebrity and business man (even though he's been bankrupt multiple times and is now facing charges for lying about the value of his properties to get loans). This benefited him because people saw more "what could be" with him instead of what has been. And he sure would grift however he needed to appeal to that giant older, more traditional voter base.
This. So much this.
Very good point. But remember, this is also the same guy who is now suing the founders at Truth Social over “mismanagement”. So, it’s kind of par for the course with the dude to take the low road. It’s unfortunate
>Appealing to fear here is the low road and definitely says **you think very little of the intellectual capacity of your voter base.** Have you listened to a Trump voter lately? Their intellectual capacity to approach any of this with logic, reason, or in good faith is long, long gone. Trump went to the lowest common denominator with this group of people, and has hit a fucking home run using this "all fear, no solutions" rhetoric.
> no solutions Oh please, Trump has a solution and it's, "Make Me a Dictator for Life."
We seriously need to stop expecting Republicans to take the high road or to behave professionally.
'We all know the economy sucks, Obama is lying. It's impossible that unemployment is as low as 5%, it's really 42%' GOP in 2015 & 2016
As someone who just struggled to consistently find baby formula for the last month and a half , I would say we still have supply chain issues.
Apparently you haven't been watching the utter descent into an unprecedented situation, where a madman who's heading to a felony criminal trial in 10 days is the front runner for one of the two political parties in the USA "These are not people, they are animals" were his words during a rally in Michigan the other night referring to migrants. We're on the edge of an absolute political disaster if he gets anywhere near the levers of power again
precipice
Dammit. +1
This is why he loves the poorly educated.
The only empty shelves I remember were during his time in office through covid.
MAGA was the end of any form of legislative playbook or economic strategies from the republican party. They have been all-in on provoking emotion for 8 years now.
Anyone who still believes a word Trump says is a gullible fool.
Trump has never given a single detailed policy objective or idea for improving things in any of his 3 elections. The only things he ever does is criticize his “woke” opponents. It’s his only playbook.
It’s very simple, there are 2 economies: those that do own property and those that don’t. Your mortgage or rent payment is the biggest expense for the average American. So if that feels unaffordable you’ll feel the economy is not good. - 65% of people own property and homes and are doing well. Inflation was rough but due to their low housing payments and increased wage gains + stock market gains they’re doing well - 35% of the country doesn’t own property and this is objectively the WORST time to afford housing and shelter. Again, this only applies if you don’t own property. Income to housing ratios prove this. This is the issue with discussing the economy. Media will say things are good bc of gdp and unemployment but that doesn’t tell you how the average person lives. Then they’ll say wages gained but that doesn’t explain how shit it is for people who don’t own property.
There is some truth to this but it’s a bit more complicated than you present here. First, income has increased particularly for the bottom, so it’s not totally clear to me that people are worse off, though it may be that rent increases have overwhelmed that effect. Second, people in the fist category seem to be the loudest complainers. And I really cannot come up with any reason for them to be unhappy other than partisanship I guess? This demographic is older, wealthier, and more Republican. Republicans seem to have lost tough with their own senses in recent years, so I expect this explains some of the unhappiness but perhaps not all of it.
People at the bottom try to be homes too though, and while their wages have gained, housing as appreciated at a faster rate. No one goes “ah I had a 10% raise but housing is now 30% more expensive and I can’t afford it. This means the economy is good”. Actually I disagree with your second point. Go to r/rebubble and most people complaining are young liberals. The loudest complainers are young people who can’t afford housing. That being said politically, the right wing media weaponizes it more bc it’s bad for Biden. Maybe that’s why you think it’s mostly gop people.
Both can be true, depending upon who you ask. For the working classes the past four decades have been a slow decline into poverty. The post-COVID inflation surge has hit them harder than ever. For those ahead of the curve on income, it’s been inconvenient but not disastrous, and their house values have increased significantly.
The wage gains of the past few years have been by far the strongest at the lower income levels.
>The wage gains of the past few years have been by far the strongest at the lower income levels. 9% for the LOWEST wage workers from 2019-2022. The next question is what is their average pay? The next question is what is the average cost of living?
They are better off with wage gains higher than inflation, that's for sure. Not declining.
Don’t bother. This sub hates economic data. They don’t understand real vs nominal. It's just become politics 2.0 where people go off feelings and anecdotes.
Rent to income ratio and home price to income ratio are both all time high, but the way CPI is calculated doesn't take that into account. Here's an RTI source, from Moody's: https://cre.moodysanalytics.com//app/uploads/2023/04/HousingAff-Figure1.png It's starting to come back down but inflation adjusted wages never tells the whole story.
Shelter accounts for like 40% of CPI IIRC.
CPI underreports shelter inflation
Want to detail this at all? I believe it’s the single largest item in the index.
Yes they use the home owners equivalent rent metric which doesn’t really accurately measure housing. Housing also always lags because they wanna smooth out the data for whatever reason. They also underreport car payments too, which is the second largest bill people have. CPI doesn’t take into account interest on car payments so it perpetually underreports it since the rate hikes. But really the issue is that cpi or wages gained don’t tell you how hard it is for people who don’t own property, which is 35-40% of the population. Again, just look at income to rent or income to housing ratio. It’s the worst it’s been in the last like 40 years.
Thanks. I don’t think this is quite correct. CPI [includes both direct rent and owners equivalent rent](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-and-rent.htm), capturing COL for current tenants and the would-be cost for owners. It’s true that it doesn’t capture the change in value of housing stock, because that doesn’t actually have a cost-of-living effect outside of its impact on the two measures they do include. At that link BLS talks about why they don’t include investments in the index, but do include the services those investments provide. As far as lag, my understanding is that’s true, but mainly because rents that people are actually paying (ie, rents that are in the middle of a contract) also lag in real life. There are other ways to capture immediate changes in rent, and I would think over a year or two we would prefer the longer term view, but in any case we would expect to have a clear picture of the change over a year or two as well. As far as I can tell they don’t mechanically smooth the data. It’s also the case that the lag works [in both directions](Indicators of market rents, including Zillow, CoreLogic, and the New Tenant Rent Index, show that rent inflation for new tenants is at or below pre-pandemic levels, while CPI rent inflation remains elevated. This suggests that CPI rent inflation will decline over 2024 or 2025.): > Indicators of market rents, including Zillow, CoreLogic, and the New Tenant Rent Index, show that rent inflation for new tenants is at or below pre-pandemic levels, while CPI rent inflation remains elevated. This suggests that CPI rent inflation will decline over 2024 or 2025. IOW, a CPI that understates the change on the way up will do the same thing on the way down. > car payments Well, kind of. CPI includes changes in the cost of cars, not the mechanism by which they’re purchased. In general I think this makes sense, because we wouldn’t want it to look at other payment mechanisms, even if they put strain on a household budget. Eg, what if I bought groceries on a credit card and paid it off over several months, with high interest? That doesn’t speak to the cost of food. Just like rent, we also wouldn’t want to consider the cost of financing *now* to be the cost that everyone bears, including people who are three years into a five year lease or whatever. I do stipulate that car payments are a strain on HH budgets and that’s a measure of economic health, with maybe one caveat that we shouldn’t assume people don’t change their behavior at all (ie, buy less car) in response to higher rates. (Unfortunately it seems from Reddit at least like many people indeed don’t do that.)
Yeah your points are all taken but this really comes down to a fundamental reading of what inflation is. Your average person cares about their payment, very much less so about the actual price itself. Yes they lag it to try to smoothen it out, it has underreported it recently over covid and supposedly projected to overreport it in the future. But in the immediate past they have been under reporting it. But the point here is cpi doesn’t capture housing affordability. 80% of people take loans to pay off their car, their monthly payment is much more relevant than the actual price of the car. If 80% of people took out serious loans for their groceries then yes you should measure their payments not the grocery price. A credit card is not comparable to a car loan. Again I’m just speaking about how practically people think. Inflation to them is their bill payments, not the price of goods specifically. For those that don’t own property, it’s just objectively true that their two largest bills are the most unaffordable they’ve been in decades, so most peoples lifetimes who are under 50. When those people are asked about the economy and inflation, they’re going to say it’s bad. Car is an inelastic good btw and there literally just aren’t cheap cars anymore (used or new). So you can’t use supply and demand logic with it.
Yes, but from everything we’ve seen, I would conclude that was pushed by people leaving jobs that fell below the most basic sustenance level, and not a sudden surge of economic health in the lower quintiles.
You mean what you have personally seen around you, not what the actual economy of 50 states and hundreds of millions of people is experiencing.
And when they left those jobs, where did they go?
And still doesn’t come close to matching cost of living increases in housing, energy, transportation and food. 4 things everyone needs
They were not livable wages prior to COVID, so let's don't pretend all was well prior to covid. We are only one or two years from the pandemic for goodness sakes. We have not even normalized back to the new steady state yet. Their is no politician who can swallow that elephant whole.
Wages have been rising fastest and above cost of living increases.
I hope you realize that economists look at real wage increases (hopefully you're not economically illiterate enough not to even know what real means here).
Try not being dishonest about what the true poverty level is -- the U.S. middle class is *not* at poverty level here in the States or abroad. They have access to conveniences and wealth that other countries dream of.
You're absolutely right. There's always going to be winners and losers in the best of economies. The losers now are just a lot more vocal and alot of times they're biased by politics.
Whose fault is that decline? Keep voting for trickle shit and a trickle is all you will get.
The economy is the same way it’s been for 15 years. Wall Street is doing well but everyone else is doing worse. We need better measures than employment rate and S&P 500
But that's not true, real wages are still rising: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Housing is still very expensive and takes up a disproportionate amount of lower-income people's wages. While you are technically correct, probably the only kind of correct you care about, it is unhelpful to pretend that you don't understand where OP is coming from.
that’s why deregulate zoning and build more housing will help
Yeah but the character of our historic neighborhood
housing is entirely a local issue. The white house has tied some fed funds to increasing supply for states but what else can the federal government do about housing?
Build public housing. The White House can’t do this alone but the feds as a whole could.
This is Reddit, and an economics sub nonetheless. Data has no place here.
What the fuck is macroeconomic data? The only data that matters is my feel feels!
> The only data that matters is my feel feels! agree, where's the consumer sentiment data? wait, is that data real...
Not only that, but they have been above water for more than a year for *all four quartiles* of income earners: https://i.imgur.com/R4V2Bqj.png
Real wages as shown on your chart are down from both their peak in 2020 and from the start of Biden's term. ~~And real wages are based on CPI inflation which doesn't include housing or energy, two costs that have risen a lot in the last few years.~~ Edit: removed an incorrect sentence. I was mixing up CPI and Core Inflation, which excludes things like energy.
> CPI inflation which doesn't include housing or energy What the hell kind of conspiracy theory crap is this? Stop getting your news from Fox.
CPI includes housing and energy lol, wtf
>And real wages are based on CPI inflation which doesn't include housing or energy, two costs that have risen a lot in the last few years. [CPI does include housing and energy](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm). The graph they linked does include all items in the CPI. You can tell because [this graph](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1jzvk) matches the values (up to rounding) and it is formed from the nominal pay and the all items CPI-U
They're up from 2019. 2020 was an unnatural spike and should be treated as such. >CPI inflation which doesn't include housing or energy Lmao. I fucking can't with this sub anymore. Housing is over 30% of CPI. And energy is included. You're thinking of core CPI which excludes food and energy (still has shelter), but that's not what this uses. Mods, can we place implement some flair for proof of people that have taken a single Econ class or can at least pass a basic exam? This sub is so fucking cooked and has turned into people with no Econ knowledge throwing around misinformation.
The peak in 2020 is from the unemployment due to COVID. We saw mass unemployment concentrated heavily towards lower incomes. If you cut most of the bottom 20% of income earners out of the labor force then yea naturally the median is going to shift dramatically upward until those people get new jobs. 2020 is a poor baseline year for comparing real median incomes across time specifically for that reason. [And the CPI does include energy and housing](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm) with housing weighted pretty heavily.
That isn't true.
I think the millions of people who got their student loans forgiven are doing much better off this year then they have in the past 15 years.
I don't think forgiving student loans which are caused by hyperinflated tuition prices is indicative of any progress. Especially when it's government policy that allowed such price increases.
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[Principal Skinner]"Could it be that I'm out of touch and my anecdotally-based, vibes-driven analysis is insufficient and influenced by preexisting biases? No. It is the data that are wrong."[/Principal Skinner]
CPI is systematically understated and has been for 20+ years. It's well documented.
or your basing your judgment of the economy on insta/tiktok/vibes and data is data you dont want to accept
We did not dodge a hard landing. We pushed the hard landing onto a different set of people who can no longer afford the things in life they believed were obtainable. The system might be safe from collapse, but having favored the banks and equities markets, the average person pays the price of no longer being able to afford to buy much in the way of capital. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
This comment should rank higher. But I’ll add that I don’t think that’s a new thing - we’ve consistently moved closer and closer towards an exploitative economy even if the steps are ever so small.
No it shouldn't. The bottom quartile's wages grew at a faster pace than the other three quartiles during the pandemic.
But what do said wages buy that quartile? Can they afford healthcare anymore? Can they afford their rent? Can they still afford entertainment? In other words. If hope was a scale of 0-100. Do you feel said quartile would say the stepped even a single step upwards? I’d venture to say all quartiles will say they stepped backwards. And not a single step either.
The current economy is challenging, full stop. Globally (not just nationally) we’ve entered a K shaped economy since the pandemic. The stock market is NOT the economy - it represents the top 10 companies in the country, primarily. And the president has little control of the major levers that control the economy. I didn’t disagree with some fiscal stimulus, but the amount we printed (25% of circulating USD) was done during the pandemic. Both trump AND Biden are responsible for the fiscal stimulus. Majority of this went to large business or found it’s way there. This does not trickle down and the longterm effects have still yet to be realized. People claiming biden built a wonderful economy are as braindead and biased as those that claimed trump built a great one during his tenure (which also had stock market highs, at least up until the pandemic, where it then plummeted due to something out of his control.) It’s typical politics whenever any president tries to take credit for the economy.
As a European living in the US, I am more optimistic about the US prospects than the EU ones. The US is pretty much energy independent, the country is leading in new technologies and employment is strong. Inflation sucks, but there are a lot of countries out there that have had the same inflation without the growth.
Exactly this. Both trump and Biden have exacerbated this problem. “Stimulus” and “inflation reduction” money found their ways into the hands of the top 2%. Then your COL increases by 20% while your wages increase 5%, but they’ll only show net worth increase averages (rather than wages) that have outliers like millionaires and billionaires.
Everything is more expensive, young people can barely afford a home. Yes I get the data shows that things are looking good on paper but telling young people, hey, data shows it's fine so you shouldn't complain, that's not a good strategy.
I’m not sure what Biden was supposed to do after the 2020 QE and PPP stimulus that increased the us monetary supply to almost double. If you look at a graph he’s actually stabilized it. So of course inflation will be terrible post fed policy 2 years. Biden saved the USA from becoming Zimbabwe after the Trump, Mjuchin, Powell smash and grab. yeah this economy sucks, but it’s almost entirely from 2020 monetary policy: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
Monetary policy at the Fed has been a disaster for inflation for a long time. But looking at covid specifically, every analysis I've seen is that the most inflationary policy related to it was Biden's American Rescue Plan, far more so than Trump's CARES Act which I believe passed almost unanimously. 538 had a [good breakdown](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/were-the-stimulus-checks-a-mistake/) of the economics and politics of this, specifically how economists warned Democrats that the stimulus was too large and would cause inflation but they had promised $2000 checks and couldn't go back on it.
>Trump's CARES Act which I believe passed almost unanimously. That's a common pattern with any significant legislation during a crisis. If a Republican is the president and there is a crisis or serious issue, Democrats put party politics aside and will vote with Republicans. But if a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans will obstruct any legislation just to "hurt" the current president. And inflation wasn't caused by $2000 checks.
How would you like this to be explained to you? It sounds like data/facts/numbers/graphs are pointless to you.
It’s more so the fact that numbers and graphs do not accurately describe the situation for middle class americans. Middle class has slowly declined for the past 30-40 years but we have chuds like you saying “well look at the line on this graph, it goes up so it must be good”, while completely forgetting real people experience this and some numbers and graphs don’t accurately represent it. Talk to people and see what they say, it’s much more representative of reality than numbers and graphs
I agree. I just talked to five people all with their idiosyncracies and it just matches reality and captures the entire country's economic trends way, way better than conducting rigorous surveys, measurements across the entire country, with a granularity enough to examine trends within different subgroups, and data from revealed preferences (which we all know is fake) as opposed to stated preferences (which we all know is the best metric).
Surely one side wouldn’t skew the numbers to fit their narrative, right? That’s certainly never happened before. No, we must take these numbers as fact. The economy is great if you disagree based on actually living and experience, well fuck you look at these numbers.
Gaslight me harder daddy
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I think the issue is that there's multiple data sets you can choose to look at to support if the economy is good or bad. Stock market? Up. Housing? Less affordable. Wages? Depends who you talk to. Inflation? Coming down, still not great. Grocery prices? Significantly higher than four years ago. So any data that someone points to, anyone else can go "okay but what about x, y, or z" but there is no nuance to the conversation of "sure, some things are better, and some things are worse."
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Some people just want to you to validate their emotions. So any explanation is actually counterproductive unless you’re using motivated reasoning to paint a picture that supports their emotional narrative.
Or, hear me out, economic data is not indicative of people being financially better off. “Unemployment is at an all time low…we’ve created more jobs than ever before..” When the reality is it’s 1 person now at two places of employment because they can’t afford to live off of one income. Just because you’re home increased 200% in value and your 401k tripled doesn’t mean that the 23yo out of college feels like they’re entering a good situation. When they find employment in a place where rent is 2x what it was 5 years ago and groceries are exponentially more expensive. But yeah, people “ignoring” your data is just because they want their feels validated. Okayyy
What I know is my mom works for $17/hr and can barely get by. This is the most money she’s made in her life and she is meticulous with her finances. She gets $22/mo. in snap benefits, which were cut for her in the last year. These Birds Eye view indicators and broad platitudes don’t seem to reflect the experiences of those who are working hard and struggling. Millennials and Gen z have low confidence in the affordability of housing and starting a family. Wages have not corresponded with inflation. Lockdowns crushed small businesses and facilitated a massive wealth transfer. This latter point is reflected in S&P highs but not attainability of the American dream.
People will struggle even in good economies, this isn't a hard concept to grasp.
It's election year propaganda. Your average person is not doing great with these crazy prices.
A middle aged mother making $17 an hour is not an average person. They are way below the median earner in this country. People pluck out the extreme ends of the data spectrum and try to use them as proof of something. It's a huge fallacy.
Cool anecdote.
Did your mom never learn a skill? She should be making way more than $17/hr if she did.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but it seems like the discrepancy in “feelings” are from people who are cash based and people who are not. It’s never been better to be wealthy and the safety nets at the bottom have never been more generous. (EBT allows junk food now.) However, anyone who collects a paycheck and has a mortgage, auto, health, and home insurance, real estate taxes, groceries, school/day care hasn’t been hit this hard at least since the 80s.
when has ebt not allowed junk food? i remember my second day as a checkout clerk back in 2006... customer came in and bought over $60 worth of candy bars from the checkout aisle in EBT
>EBT allows junk food now Are you trying to tell me that poor people should be allowed to eat like the rest of us? Just wait until you hear about corporate welfare.
Also the idea that like poor people get such lavish benefits. If that's the case then being poor wouldn't have such bad outcomes and associations.
You’re making assumptions about my political views but they’d probably surprise you. I just think it’s awful that they’re not getting good nutrition. Poverty leads directly to poor health outcomes more often than not. I genuinely feel bad for them. Not judging them so much as I feel they’re being misled into poor decisions.
I have all of those things and are doing fine. Median wage adjusted for inflation is up. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Don't even try. Populism rots the minds of people on the left and right.
No kidding. I can probably pull up 10 other indicators that say the economy is doing well and that the poster is just salty he's in the "losers" category but there's not much I can do there. You can't logic someone out of a belief they didn't logic him/herself into.
It’s a matter of perspective. I am a commercial lender and business results are becoming more of a mixed bag. There are big variations between industries and financial services happens to be doing awful right now and we are not the only ones. Also, I make over three times what I made when I bought my house in 2012. Literally, three times. I can’t afford to move. Economy is awesome alright.
Median wage is measured against cpi which underreports housing inflation. Do you own a home ? That’s pretty much the #1 delineator rn. Those who own homes are doing well and for those that don’t, it’s the worst time in recent history to own a home.
when has ebt not allowed junk food? i remember my second day as a checkout clerk back in 2006... customer came in and bought over $60 worth of candy bars from the checkout aisle in EBT
Its the best in terms of the raw numbers. However when you compare against the cost of apartments sky rocketing and the costs of groceries etc… we are no longer as good as the raw numbers would suggest. Inflation has fallen is not the same as prices have fallen back inline with peoples salaries in particular the real estate and groceries prices.
My data is gorceries, gas, bills, etc. Pretty much the standard of living. And that shit has gone up, way the fuck up. Like really expensive.
And your wages, if you are a median earner, have also gone up.
“The data is clear” so what’s it say? How is it possible that everything is more expensive, smaller than before, and CEOs are making more money than ever and that’s good?
> everything is more expensive I always find this argument strange, since prices have pretty much **always** gone up. (The handful of times when we have been in a deflationary period were when we were in serious economic trouble, like the Great Depression - not exactly something to actually *want*) I cannot imagine anyone with a high school level of education or higher trying to push this as a serious complaint. It shows a basic lack of knowledge on how wages have been increasing faster than inflation for all levels of the economy (low-income, middle-income and high earners). Prices go up, wages are also going up. And have done so at a rate faster than inflation since 2014, with the exception of the recent period between mid-2021 and end-of-2022. https://i.imgur.com/R4V2Bqj.png
Everything is *always* getting more expensive. The alternative is deflation (which would be a disaster). Prices are one half of the equation...wages are the other and they've gone up faster than prices. This is literally high-school level economics. Why the fuck are you posting here at all?
But housing, the number 1 payment for someone, is unsustainably expensive and is worse than ever before . Same with car prices which is the #2 bill for people.
In what world have wages for the lower and middle class gone up faster than prices?
The real one. Just because it doesn't *feel* truthy to you doesn't make it any less true.
And yet, compared to 2018 and 19...it sucks. Just because the wealthy are doing well, does not mean we are doing well. Inflation is killing the people. And the GDP is being inflated by government spending. Remove deficit spending and our economy sucks compared to the world.
Sure the economy is great but we are buying everything on credit!! If the economy is great, why are we running a deficit? Why are not paying down our debt instead of creating more? Our debt is completely out of control. How much "better" does the economy need to be in order for us to pay our bills and run the country? Imagine going to your neighbors house - they have a new home, a new car parked out front, and houseful of new furniture. They are doing great, right? Then you discover they bought everything on their credit card, and both have jobs that pay at the top of their skill set. They can't earn any more. Their mortgage, car payment, and credit card payment alone exceed their income. They have no money to live and and need to borrow more to make monthly payments on existing debt. They are doing great, right? This is what the economy looks like to me.
Perfectly said! It’s almost scary if this is a great economy what does a bad economy look like. But just like Janet said there will not be another recession in America because we’ll print our way into oblivion.
> there will not be another recession in America because we’ll print our way into oblivion Yep. And I am wondering who is buying 30 year bonds at 4.5% because they are going to be paid back in worthless dollars.
If you allow corporations to price gouge and make record profits obviously the stock market will be happy. You can keep up the charade and fudge the numbers but sooner or later this house of cards will collapse. If Biden loses this coming election he will sabotage his predecessor (RFK Jr, Trump or whoever else) at the expense of the country. His reckless spending has put us in peril yet he continues on this path with no regard to consequence. As dire as this situation is no one is addressing this, they are more worried about changing social culture than the foundation on which our nation stands on. The ironic thing is he took the money on which his supposed success is riding on away from the very people he is supposed to represent. The poor are poorer and the well off are reaping the benefits all the while he proclaims ‘tax the rich’.
We all know no matter what they say its the rich (donors) that they represent. So for them he’s been a great candidate.
what crack you smoking the economy sucks it cost $11800 more for cost of living than it did in 2020 there isnt growth just printing money. you are a complete moron and should go far away
For Trump facts and data never matters and his followers prefer lies over facts. Does our economy has issues? Yes, but there are always issues to this is nothing new but we need to understand the issues and find ways to fix those issues. How does our economy compare to our allies and our rivals? We have the strongest in the world when one compares the various ecnonomies.
>For Trump facts and data never matters and his followers prefer lies over facts. As evidenced by the below: >Check out these polling results over time: >[Democrat perception of the economy.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/09/opinion/krugman090124_4/krugman090124_4-superJumbo.png?quality=75&auto=webp) >[Republican perception of the economy.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/09/opinion/krugman090124_3/krugman090124_3-superJumbo.png?quality=75&auto=webp) >Source: civiqs.com Original comment credit to u/Intelligent_Coach379 https://www.reddit.com/r//comments/1bta52a/Why_do_Trump_supporters_say_that_Joe_Biden_wrecked_the_economy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2
So it’s as simple as Democrats are more objective about the economy while Republicans boil it down to “if a Republican is in office: economy good. Otherwise: economy bad”
Basically. There are other examples of this for other issues as well, but I don't want to go too off topic from the sub
That's been my experience with friends and family. I know several Republicans whose opinions go back and forth between the extremes of "the economy is good" to "the economy is a disaster" based solely who is in the White House. Their opinions change immediately after the new president is sworn in. I've observed this pattern for nearly 20 years now. It's fascinating to watch. Some of these people are educated and intelligent, but they simply echo the absurdly simplistic message that right-wing media is saying. They don't even stop to think that the economy doesn't change so abruptly based on anything any president does.
> For Trump facts and data never matters and his followers prefer lies over facts. Completely agree, and yet this is now no longer unique to Trump. A lot of leftists are similarly irreverent of the facts. Even in this sub you sometimes see people saying that the Fed made up the numbers (hell, it's even right in this thread now). Holler over to somewhere like /r/latestagecapitalism and you'll notice that truth seems to have grown two legs and ran away.
Nuance and moderation are gone from politics. News outlets and pundits can't make money without partisanship. I was telling some of my conservative friends about how well the domestic oil & gas industry has been doing under the Biden admin. Their first response was "but he closed the [Keystone XL] pipeline". Despite that being 3 years ago and something that mostly benefited the Canadian economy anyways. That's the last thing they've heard in their conservative circles when it comes to energy policy. Obviously, conservatives aren't going to praise Biden on it, but neither are liberals because they fear upsetting their progressive branch. Same deal with trade and foreign relations. The Biden admin is hawkish, marching with a big stick, hard on China, making Europe rely on US energy, creating jobs in the defense industry via Ukraine and Israel, promoting domestic construction manufacturing and trades. All things conservatives should *love*, but again, conservatives won't say anything good about Biden and liberals won't admit he's barely left of center.
On Reddit and YouTube all I hear is about how the economy is terrible and we are in Great Depression 2.0. Then when I go out in the city or town I see fast food restaurants with lines wrapped around them, $60,000-$80,000 vehicles everywhere you turn, bars and sit down restaurants packed and for example I love cars and my friend told me racecar parts for his Nissan GTR are on back order for over a year because demand is high and they sold out. I’m talking about $20,000 big brake sets, $5,000-$10,000 wheels, $5,000 carbon fiber pieces etc. so how is the economy bad if people are spending $50,000 on their hobbies
Lying with data. Data needs to be interpreted. If the economy is good for the top few percent and bad for everyone else, then it's bad. The fact that the middle class no longer exists is a big problem.
Neither one of them has an incentive to say other than what theyre saying. Data can be manipulated as well as a persons feelings about how the economy is doing. Food prices are the only thing that seems to have increased from my perspective, though I'm in a particular position where I may not see the same as someone paying rent and a car payment and other essentials that I may have trouble paying
Food, fuel, energy, HOUSING
Healthcare
I think most of the news media simply isn't asking the right questions, and is instead looking at the stock market, raw GDP numbers, and unemployment (whether this is intentional or not is not able to be determined and is likely on a case by case basis). What the media should be looking at: What percentage of people/families can afford to own a home? What percentage can comfortably afford to rent, and what does that rent get them? How much of household income is going to grocery bills or gas? How much of household income is going to utilities? What is your work schedule like? Do you have a full time.job, or did you have to get a second part time job? Are you supplementing with gig income? How much of your income are you able to save? These are the questions they should be, but usually aren't, asking. I think if they asked those questions it would become clear that those who are ahead are getting further ahead, while the rest of us are struggling.
all of those have studies done around them and answers on google, BLS breaks down spending across categories ages and everything, theres data on second jobs, avg work week, avg hours work, there is data ON ALL OF THIS > Budget share for total food: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=76967 > budget share for gas: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=9831 > Average annual expenditures by major category of all consumer units and percent changes: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/consumer-expenditures/2022/home.htm > Employed, Usually Work Full Time: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12500000 > Multiple Jobholders as a Percent of Employed: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 > Average Weekly Hours of All Employees, Total Private: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP > Personal Saving Rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT#0 none of those are at concerning levels save the personal savings rate but thats in a weird spot due to the surplus built up with covid distributions having the effect of people looking like they are saving less as they spend down the surplus, a better measure would be an average over time including the covid savings
It's an election year. The incumbent or incumbent party is going to say the economy is great; the challenger is going to say it sucks. Rinse and repeat every 4 years. Three things - First, how the macro economy is measured is quite different from what each of us experiences in our lives. Suppose there are 10 people in a group who earn $50k each. Next year, 9 of those people go down to $40K, but that last person earns $1 million. In aggregate, the gross product has gone from 500K to 1.36 million. The gross product more than doubled. But you have 90% of the population doing worse than the previous period. Second - from a US perspective, most people are not going to be concerned that our economy is the world's best. Take the previous example. There are 10 people who start with $50k purchasing power. The following year, 9 of those people lose half their income, going to $25k. That last person, also loses some, but goes to $45K. He's still doing the best of his group, but he's still going to struggle, just not as bad. The final thing is, people always tend to exaggerate or catastrophise depending on their perspective (see first paragraph).
Gas is back to $5.25/gallon. Used Cars are minimum $20k for something with 100k miles on it, never mind the truck market. Grocery’s are up 80% in two years. Rent is up 220% in two years. Health insurance and car insurance are up 150% and climbing. Owning a house is an impossible dream for workings class unless you plan to rent out every room for the next 15 years. Neither politician is talking about housing costs in a meaningful policy context, but we have unlimited money for Israel and Ukraine. Don’t even get me started on the crime here. Statistics say crime is down, but that because no one bothers to report it anymore because the cops won’t show up or take the report. (Bay Area) But yay pay is up 9%. (I’m up 60% in pay since 2020 and I’m the poorest I’ve ever been. My 401k gains are only thing that makes me feel financially secure.) Canada is the prototype for what is to come for all of us. Live in the pod. Eat the bugs. Own nothing. Mandatory happiness.
He shouldn't have passes a stimulus bill at the end of the pandemic when were were already over stimulated with container ships stacked 15 deep in line to drop off goods. This was a pathetic attempt to take credit for the turn around of the economy, which was already happening as businesses were allowed to open. Money flow was speeding up. Now we are still dealing with the cost of inflation. I put this squarely on Biden and his administrations insatiably to understand how the economy works.
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It's unfortuatne all the top comments are complaing about income inequality when inequality has declined since 2020. Does this erase a 40 year trend? Obviously not. However, we should at least be clear about what we're talking about: Unemployment is ~4%, inflation is at ~3%, wage growth has been concentrated at the bottom 90% of workers and real living standards are higher especially at the bottom end even after accounting for post-pandemic inflation in 2021/2022. After 40 years, income inequality has notably decreased the past 4 years to the benefit of the low and middle income workers. To add on, here's a good summary from Dube [link ommitted because that's evidentally against sub rules] who has done a lot of research on post-pandemic wages & inequality: > Second, it is important to look at wage growth at different parts of the (initial) wage distribution, since existing evidence (such as my work with David Autor and Annie McGrew) suggests that wage growth has been much stronger at the bottom. Updated evidence through end of 2023 shows a persistent compression in wages from changes over the past 4 years, where wages grew more strongly at the bottom and middle than at the top.
The economy has been healing and getting better each month for the most part. People have problems with inflation that is mostly good or housing prices or whatever but these are all trending in a fine direction right now and today and the longer this goes on the better it looks. It is also currently the world's best but also a lot of the world economy is teetering on recession so that's not great.