I’d love to see a chart showing disposable income. Something tells me the rosy picture of the economy is for a segment and overall things are worse.
I’m not sure this is the best metric, since someone who’s able to make it when before they couldn’t make it at all, is much better than someone at the top just having more disposable income now. The OP article goes into some metrics like wage disparity and unemployment that touch more directly on economic survival as opposed to wealth at the top. But if you want to see disposable income then sure. The little divot followed by resumption of the upward line after the Covid chaos is what OP’s article is talking about: Biden recovering the economy from Covid almost as if it hadn’t happened, which most first world countries haven’t been able to do.
Thanks for the graph. Shame it’s not broken down by age.
And this also looks like an average not the median.
Things are a lot better for people who are poorer than you and a little bit worse for people like you. And also probably a LOT better for people who are filthy disgusting rich.
Who cares how well the stock market is doing if we all got mass fired to make it happen
Who cares how well the stock market is doing if we all got mass fired to make it happen
People who hold large amounts of stock 😀 They don’t give a shit how many people get fired as long as their portfolio keeps increasing in value
so i read the article and all the coments here, as well as most of the cited links and some other articles i thought would help. im not an economist but i know most of you aren’t either.
are we just allergic to admitting the economy might just be mid?
why are we so horny to say JOE BIDEN GOOD or JOE BIDEN BAD? when really it’s quite clear that many many things are bad, many people lost jobs, people are struggling, people are scared AND ALSO it could be a lot worse, because we’ve seen it be a lot worse in recent history?
and everyone railing against Biden in these comments: so are we cool with voting third party? letting the spoiler effect spoil? shudder voting Trump? what are your intentions? the primaries are over. the time to set up a third line to the trolley problem is past.
what are we doing? maybe we should pick a better struggle.
go unionize your workplace. go help out your neighbors and friends, go and participate in local government. vote for biden to minimize the violence that will inevitably occur. plant a garden for your community. support local artists who might be disabled or unable to work. tip your waiter. be decent? be kind. i don’t know im literally just a girl. whatever
So many people consider any kind of nuance to be weakness and failure.
why are we so horny to say JOE BIDEN GOOD or JOE BIDEN BAD?
I’ll 100% agree with this – I actually feel pretty weird coming in and saying all good things about any establishment Democrat like some kind of faithful CNN viewer. For me I actually try to make a deliberate effort to air criticism of Biden where it’s due (bottom comment here or talking about his support for Israel), although I can kind of understand the desire to respond to “Biden bad Biden bad Biden bad” in this sort of endless drumbeat with saying he’s good on everything, just to sort of “counterbalance.”
But yeah there’s nothing wrong with just saying it the way it is, good or bad.
go unionize your workplace. go help out your neighbors and friends, go and participate in local government. vote for biden to minimize the violence that will inevitably occur. plant a garden for your community. support local artists who might be disabled or unable to work. tip your waiter. be decent? be kind.
1,000% agree. Internet is nice to be able to communicate about interests that maybe people in your real world environment don’t share. But nothing about real political and social change will happen from typing a comment.
For me I actually try to make a deliberate effort to air criticism of Biden where it’s due
You’re the very first person on many threads to accuse Biden’s critics of being Russian shills.
Those are not mutually exclusive statements.
I can believe in giving fair criticism of Biden, while believing also that the absolute tsunami of total bullshit criticism that comes in a very particular style of interaction that’s markedly different from organic comments, is probably exactly what it seems like it is.
I don’t think I ever accused any specific person of being specifically Russian, but yes I believe that most of the drumbeat of Biden-is-bad-for-this-made-up-reason-no-I-will-take-no-questions comments represent an organized shilling effort.
Removed by mod
Removed, rule 3, keep it civil.
Your support for genocide is indefensible, so you have to make up shit about people who oppose it.
Lemmy mods are indefensible. They remove any comment that calls you out rofl.
Have you ever considered not making baseless accusations at people who oppose genocide?
I consider my accusations against you to be very based.
why are we so horny to say JOE BIDEN GOOD or JOE BIDEN BAD?
I mainly object to one: people with that position seem to be ignoring data, trends, news from last week. But how do you discuss that people need to pay attention to the world instead of sticking to their beliefs, without appearing to be the other zealot?
In this thread: “Biden did not have a 1-on-1 conversation with my manager that resulted in a massive raise, so I declare these statistics invalid!”
This seems to happen a lot on Lemmy, makes me miss the Economics subreddit.
I know that not everyone has had the opportunity to take classes in economics, but the amount of people who are unable to see past their own nose is incredible.
How would we prefer our leaders to make policy decisions? Should they pick a random 10 people and ask what they think, or would it be better to gather a wide range of data on the topic to build an understanding of the economic impacts for 300M+ people? I’d argue that it would be irresponsible for policymakers to ignore the aggregate statistics, but commenters in this thread seem dead set on asserting that because their personal circumstances don’t follow the narrative, the statistics must be a lie.
Good luck trying to explain to working-class people that the struggle they’re feeling is only because they don’t understand economics well enough.
Good luck trying to explain to tech-savvy upper-income Lemmy users that average income adjusted for inflation, at the bottom end of the scale, has actually been rising faster than the grocery prices, and that that’s a good thing.
I’ve been trying for a couple of days now with apparently no success.
All these tech bros on Lemmy making over 6 figures calling themselves “working class” is really funny
Working class doesn’t mean poor, it means you don’t own business assets and generally that you don’t profit off the labour of others. It’s a convenient method of control to keep working class people so divided that the fight remains amongst ourselves instead of it being focused on improving things for everyone.
Working class doesn’t mean poor,
No, but a lot of upper middle class people are sure happy to exploit the connotation of poverty from the phrase.
People making $30k/yr and people making $300k/yr have nothing in common except they both hate they people making $1m/yr. They don’t belong to the same class. They just have a mutual enemy.
Workers with higher incomes are definitely buffered from a lot, but they easily have more in common with people making 30k than with people who are set up for life. Further, people making 30k have more in common with higher income workers than they do with people with no current income who are struggling with being unhoused. Also, everyone living as part of a community suffers together from the increased crime, health issues, and lack of opportunities promoted by economies with extreme class hierarchies.
Between my wife and I we make a little over 200k USD a year.
I do not own the fruit of my labor. If I am unemployed for an extended period of time I will lose my home. Sure I am not struggling to pay my bills (for now, but I could be hot with a layoff at any time), and sure the numbers that flow through my bank account are unmanageable for a lot of people. But at the end of the day I have a lot more on common with someone making federal minimum wage then I have with someone who owns the means of production.
True, but I think they were referring to the broader topic of the OP post, “Americans.” Not just the ones on Lemmy.
Don’t need the luck, I don’t chase fool’s errands.
Sorry, but Lemmy is full of libertarian chodes. They got no clue, just a sense of moral superiority.
I’m not a Libertarian nor a chode. Big words from someone that has to leave the basement to count as socializing.
What a chode thing to say.
You’re a taint!
So you socialize in your basement?
I don’t have a basement ;)
Fascinating that you took that personally when you first admit that you don’t self-identify as one of those. Someone might think that your comment is actually disingenuous.
I’m just communicating how you choose to. Guess it isn’t effective.
They should ask
TwoRandom_english_words_usernamewhether that particular person is spending more at the grocery store than they were in 2019.That seems to be the metric, a lot of people feel very strongly about it
It feels like lots of people holding their breath until “prices go back down”, passing out from a lack of oxygen, waking up, asking why the prices are still so damn high, then holding their breath again when they’re told, “this is just the price now, deal with it”.
I mean don’t get me wrong, it would be neat if we could go back to 1990 prices, but that just isn’t how this works, nor should it be our goal.
Lmao.
Yet more people who make too much money to be connected to reality wondering why the commoners are complaining.
It’s because the economy is not good for them. It’s really that simple. Shit is expensive and most people did not get pay raises. Most of the ones that did get raises haven’t gotten enough to tackle the increases in food, rent, and utility prices. People are working full time and slipping into homelessness through no fault of their own.
And we have this gaslighting bullshit blasted at us every day like we don’t have eyes of our own and brains to think with.
Pretty obvious you didn’t read the article.
Oh I did. And it’s the same gaslighting that CNBC does. Of course unemployment is down, you need 3 jobs to afford rent. Of course the economy expanded, that’s GDP, that’s what it does unless we’re really fucked.
It’s obvious to me with your pattern of posting that you’re trying to post pro Biden stuff without regard to reality.
It’s obvious to me that what you’re claiming the article is happy about, is the exact opposite of what the article is happy about.
The point of the article is, wage inequality is down, unemployment is down, wages adjusted for inflation are up.
The fact that you’re gaslighting what the article says, in order to be able to argue against things that aren’t what’s in it, indicates to me that you probably don’t have a real strong argument against what’s actually in the article.
The article is asking why are people unhappy with the economy when X Numbers are good. God forbid someone answer that question.
You said the reason people are upset is that
the economy is not good for them. It’s really that simple. Shit is expensive and most people did not get pay raises. Most of the ones that did get raises haven’t gotten enough to tackle the increases in food, rent, and utility prices.
The article states however that
Even accounting for inflation, wages are higher today than they were before the coronavirus pandemic, and the biggest wage gains have accrued among the lowest-paid workers, resulting in a dramatic reduction in overall wage inequality.
Are you saying that the author is lying? Can you provide any evidence to support this one way or the other? Because your position and the article can’t coexist, only one can be true. One is an investigative report and one is a Lemmy comment. You must understand how this looks?
Biden sometimes deserves criticism for sure, but not here.
Yes I am. It’s a fun bit of disingneous writing. They heavily cite everything around that claim, but not that claim. Because all of that other stuff can be true while people are still struggling. And it’s not that he hasn’t done good things. It’s that his campaign is gaslighting the country. 63% of Americans reported they still weren’t able to buy as much as they used to in January.
This is what I posted elsewhere-
Here’s Gallup actually asking the people and not an economist quoting the most generalized of statistics to cover up real conditions on the ground. It is entirely possible for the economy to grow, for unemployment to drop, and inflation to be less, while the working class is evicted en masse.
63% of U.S. adults say recent price increases have caused financial hardship for their family. This includes 17% who say it is a severe hardship affecting their ability to maintain their standard of living and 46% who report it is a moderate hardship but does not jeopardize their standard of living. Another 37% of Americans say inflation is not a hardship at all.
The current 63% saying rising prices are a personal hardship reflects a continuation of peak concern on this measure since Gallup started monitoring it in November 2021. In that initial reading, 45% reported a severe or moderate hardship. The rate inched up in 2022 even as inflation ebbed, perhaps reflecting the cumulative effect of higher prices rather than the rate itself.
Those in lower-income households (76%) are more likely than those in middle-income households (64%) and higher-income households (54%) to say price increases are causing them hardship. However, income differences are even more pronounced when looking just at those saying the impact is severe. Lower-income Americans (30%) are three times as likely as high-income adults (10%) and almost twice as likely as middle-income adults (16%) to characterize high prices as a severe hardship.
63% of people reporting something like that means that’s their lived experience. Right or not, they don’t want to see the president whining about people not understanding what he’s done. And when the number is that high there’s a very good chance the top level numbers are hiding things. Furthermore, wages would have had to go up a crazy amount this year to cover the inflation from the last few years. The last year the Census has data available for, 2022, reports a 2 percent decrease in wages against inflation. We get the 2023 numbers from them around September. This is all preliminary numbers from BLS which shows an increase of about 4.3 percent in the “working class”. (production and nonsupervisory) Meaning they just barely broke past the 4 percent CPI inflation last year. The two years preceding were 8 and 4.7. And CPI doesn’t include food purchases where there’s been wild inflation for the last 3 years.
Tl;Dr - Yeah Zach Carter lied. He lied about that sentence and did a professional job of wondering why people could possibly be angry.
I don’t really think that the Gallup poll you linked refutes Carter’s point, actually. Gallup and Carter are examining completely different data, and honestly, Gallup doesn’t make a claim about what the cause is for these findings.
The poll states that 68% of Americans thought in December that the economy was worsening. But looking a little further, actually 64% of Democrats thought it was getting better, compared to only 8% of Republicans. It kind of feels like this is the actual information we should be concerned with in the poll, and that you’re only giving me part of the information for some reason.
Regarding the CPI, it does track food and beverage as a core category.
https://bls.gov/CPI/questions-and-answers/
The CPI represents all goods and services purchased for consumption by the reference population (U or W). BLS has classified all expenditure items into more than 200 categories, arranged into eight major groups (food and beverages, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education and communication, and other goods and services). Included within these major groups are various government-charged user fees, such as water and sewerage charges, auto registration fees, and vehicle tolls.
I agree we have a lot of work to do still, but I’m sure we can also agree that a significant portion of Americans are also not very informed and generally make poor financial choices.
You live in Wall St or in reality?
Because in reality the proletariat are fucked rn, regardless of what Wall St says is happening
And what pattern would that be?
The posts and comments you make.
Such as? Am I being singled out because of my dislike of Trump? Because I can assure you it’s a trait shared by a lot of people.
Lol no. You don’t just dislike trump. You’re trying to spin everything to look great for Biden too. Even this you can’t help but throw Trump’s name in here. And no you’re not being singled out. I’m not following you around Lemmy. I just take your stuff as I find it and it’s clearly biased.
Well it’s nice to be followed I guess, and I appreciate your perception but I think you are discounting that I may have a liberal bent that falls in line with Biden. It doesn’t look like you have anything specific.
Seriously? That’s your rebuttal? 🤦🏼♂️
like we don’t have eyes of our own and brains to think with.
You sound like a campaign commercial with an angry-eyebrowed white woman looking straight into the camera.
Oh? I was going more for the 1984 reference but maybe that’s the problem.
Good? I’m definitely not making what I should be, adjusted for inflation (23.6%). I’m not even asking to make MORE just literally what I made in 2018, adjusted. I was fine right there.
If the company doesn’t pay you fairly for your work, you throttle down your work.
Well, yes and no. The work is easy, my manager is great, I have complete control of the code and two juniors to do shit I don’t want to. So, it has perks. But…. They’re gonna have to step it up, because after another year or two here I’ll have quite an impressive list of accomplishments as a lead developer, and that could easily move me up and out.
I’m gonna wait until November to see if I have to jump ship to Canada though.
No, that’s a total shit attitude. You jump ship if you’re not fairly compensated. I went from $14 -> $18-22 -> $39 (+mad benefits with each move, 10-years).
Build your skills and education, JUMP. FFS, young people act like they’re being used by these companies. Instead, use them.
Young and old, we all know lifetime careers at the same company is a thing of the past. Fuck. Them. Use them for resume ammo and jump if you’re not happy.
I’m already doing negative work.
Spoken like a true C-Suite-er.
I guess the economy really is doing great. Which is somehow worse, because if this is what a good economy looks like I don’t want to imagine what a bad one looks like.
Two thirds of people can’t handle a $500 expense. Three quarters don’t have a month of expenses saved. And a third of people making over $100,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck. (Source 2023)
So maybe the problem isn’t that the economy is broken and needs fixed, but that it’s working correctly and needs replaced.
I think the problem is lemmy is so privileged that none of you have ever known any actual poor people, which is the group benefiting most from Bidens economy. The middle class (which is what all you people are, no you’re not “working class”, that’s not a thing, you’re middle class) is about the same. The upper class is slightly worse off, but they started so far ahead it’s difficult to tell that without looking at the stats.
Oh please, do get off your high horse. My entire family is poor as shit and everyone is struggling. Also, “upper”, “middle”, “lower”, all just words meant to divide this working class you disavow against itself against the capitalist class.
If you work to earn your living instead of letting your investments do it for you, you’re working class.
Exactly, so the single mom struggling on $12k/yr and the corporate executive making $5 million/yr are both “working class”. It’s such a broad category it’s useless, except to provide cover for people making a lot of money who want to pretend they’re poor.
no you’re not “working class”
Please explain this to my boss.
Easy:
Dear Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod’s boss. There is no such thing as “working class”. It’s a useless distinction. Thank you.
maybe i am dumb so please help me out here but
35% of people making more than $100k per year are living paycheck to paycheck
how is this an indication of a significant struggle? $100k is a shit ton of money, no? that’s the fabled six figures? and that includes people making more? could not “living paycheck to paycheck” be chalked up to maxing out IRAs and 401ks followed by a decent chunk of using disposable income?
edit thanks 4 the downvotes to my genuine question you guys are truly amazing 😻😇😎 my time on this website is better because of you ✨💫🤩
Because many ppl that earn that kind of cash live in high col area…where ur expenses eat up everything unless u are dual income. In bay area u pay 3k a month for an apartment…and food/gas bills easely add up to 2k…its rough…
thanks for the response this makes a lot of sense
i guess my mind cannot comprehend the finances of someone making more than i’ll ever hope to see 😭 so i have a hard time feeling bad for that population segment but maybe that’s something i should self reflect on
It’s one of those things where the money sounds good until you realize you also have to live somewhere expensive to get it.
I could conceivably move to somewhere like ND and save a ton of money on housing and the necessities, but the limited job market could also mean that I would be unable to continue in the same career.
And switching jobs sound great, unless you’re in an industry seeing large changes post-pandemic. It’s certainly kept me from jumping ship. At least until I see my area of work stabilize.
To add to it, I am doing alright overall. But my student loans kicked back in, food prices have climbed, even my monthly utilities have increased as of a few months ago. So I might not be worried about keeping the lights on, I do feel the pinch and it doesn’t make me feel overjoyed about the economy.
I live in San Francisco. Things are so expensive here $100k/yr is considered “low income” and qualifies you for government assistance programs.
WOW
yep i am seeing the point here, thank you! 😊
Once you get that fabled six figures you start doing things like getting married, buying a house, and starting a family. Child care is expensive. Health care for children is expensive. Houses are expensive, especially maintenance.
If someone has a family of four and is making $100,000 a year I can definitely see them living paycheck to paycheck.
my opinion has already been swayed by other comments but this is not one of them, sorry haha
i know many people with families, children, and houses who make less than half of six figures, who may never hope to get six figures
I also think it’s not as good an income as you expect. While every place has a range of incomes, in general, you’ll get six figure incomes in high cost of living areas. Sure it’s a higher income, sure it’s probably better but after accounting for how much extra everything costs, it’s not that much better
Where I live, plenty of people are making six figures, but the cheapest single family home will be well over $500k and even older run down houses are approaching $1M. Combine that with higher interest and my point is that $100k income may sound like a lot to many of you, that income level is common here but you can’t buy a house on it. Given how expensive cars are, you probably aren’t driving a new car. You’re probably not buying the latest electronics. You’re probably not going out to eat very often. You’re not hiring a house keeper or yard guy. And if you do any of these, you no longer have disposable income. It may be well over median income but you’re not getting any of the trappings of “well off”
And a third of people making over $100,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck.
Okay. That’s their fault, lol.
You can literally buy a house for <$100k. These people just feel entitled to live in major cities and cook none of their meals.
Biden doesn’t get the credit because from a purely pocketbook perspective, prices are still going up.
Telling the average citizen “Hey, you know, inflation is only 3%, not 9.9% like it was…”
They’re going “Yeah, but it’s an extra 3% ON TOP of the 9%.”
And yeah, there’s a lot of factors… corporate greed, bird flu raising the price of eggs, etc. etc. The average person doesn’t care about that, all they care is their weekly grocery bill keeps going up and there’s no sign of it coming back down.
“Average annual food-at-home prices were 5.0 percent higher in 2023 than in 2022. For context, the 20-year historical level of retail food price inflation is 2.5 percent per year.”
Good time to buy pork though I guess!
I encourage you to read the article
I did, there was zero mention of how food prices went up 9.9% in 2022, another 5% in 2023 and are still going up.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings/
It’s no surprise Biden doesn’t get credit for “the economy”, it’s because your average American is spending more, getting less, and not seeing the benefit.
You can’t talk about the economy without talking about pocketbook issues and this article bends over backwards to avoid saying anything about that.
not to mention housing still is unaffordable.
The economy currently has an outlier problem where a few very rich people are posting massive gains. As soon as you remove them from the analysis the portrait is a grim picture of austerity and price fixing.
It’s actually the total opposite of that. Inflation-adjusted income is falling for the top 10%, while it’s rising for enough of the lowest-wage earners to boost the overall average picture to inflation-adjusted wage growth every single year, even during monster inflation caused by Covid + supply chain issues + corporate greed.
daily costs for most people have risen and rich people tend to have less of their income spent on the things actually going up in price so my guess is wages are a response.
Okay, let me be a little more complete since “inflation adjusted” seems to be confusing and I feel like maybe you’re not the only one.
Per capita income, current dollars:
- 2019: $55,311
- 2020: $53,811
- 2021: $59,905
- 2022: $64,984
Now that’s not a fair comparison, because exactly in 2022 was when post-Covid and supply chain and corporate greed fueled inflation to its peak. So, what we do is correct it down to constant dollars, which gives us inflation adjusted income in constant 2015 dollars:
- 2019: $52,070
- 2020: $50,024
- 2021: $53,417
- 2022: $54,274
… i.e. even after accounting for the factor you’re claiming means we’re making less, we’re making more.
Income for the top 10% of wage earners actually went down by about 5% from 2020 to 2022, and income at the bottom tiers (again inflation adjusted) actually went up by enough to counterbalance it and result still was a net gain.
Leftists: yeah I’m not gonna read all that. Biden bad! returns to licking walls
But, if a Republican who encouraged austerity through the pandemic, or a centrist who did not provide as much stimulus were in office, then it would have been more likely a repeat or worse than '08 with 10% unemployment… Which shitty situation would you rather have?
“Losing slowly is the same as winning” -democrats and their useful idiots
I’ve actually seen price softening on some of the items that went up the most during last year. I know because they were items I used to be buying and then stopped because of price increase, and then now they’ve dropped. Not quite as low as they used to be, but definitely lower than their wish-flation pricing strategy.
Luckily for my life expectancy, double stuff Oreos are still sky high, even with shrinkflation
Well it looks like there’s a recent drop for normal Oreos down to $5.49 from $5.99: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B078PDK5B5
Doesn’t seem to have transferred to Double yet, but there’s hope for your pancreas’s demise yet!
I mean, I like pork, but we haven’t been having a lot of bacon. I could go for some beef.
They had to put a sign up at my local grocer in the bacon section “Please note the increased price of bacon” because so many people were gasping at the register and deciding they didn’t want it. Perishable things can’t go back after it’s been in someone’s cart for an unknown amount of time so it was getting thrown out.
That’s 100% on the grocery execs, not “the economy”.
Because the economy sucks for everyone who isn’t a landlord or investor.
Please close this thread. Our corporate overlords assure us the economy is quite healthy and vibrant. Please maintain your spending on consumer goods, vote Biden, live long and prosper.
I honestly doubt the headline of this article so much, id sooner believe it was intentionally written as a psyop to get people to complain about the opposite position
Fortunately you don’t have to limit yourself to the headline; there’s a whole article with a whole set of statistical links that make the case
You’re free to disagree of course, but just the fact that it doesn’t match your preconceptions doesn’t at all mean that it’s wrong
The stock market is doing well not the economy. The BLS statistics are bullshit. They are reporting explosive job growth when in reality full time jobs are down and there are more part time jobs, contributing to that bullshit statistic. You can scroll through more of my posts if you want to see more of my political/economics commentary
I study economics, math, Physics, AI engineering, and more. I was poly maths major. Please don’t condescend to me as if I don’t understand statistics, it’s a really easy math to lie with.
You are welcome to join the conversation here then. We looked at quite a bit of data and I think I did a pretty good job at defending the idea that the poor are, in fact, getting substantially better-off over time under Biden even under pretty challenging economic conditions. My interlocutor, for whatever reason, refused at every turn to just say “oh okay the data seem to agree with you,” and kept throwing stuff at the wall until he eventually claimed that it didn’t actually matter if a typical person was better off or not, at which point I decided we didn’t need to talk anymore. But if you want to pick that up and have a data-based disagreement with any of it, we can rap.
And yeah I was a little bit of a dick about it. I apologize (for real). I’ve been speaking with people who haven’t been real reasonable, and it’s made me rude when talking about it, but if you wanna have a polite factually-based discussion I’m up for that. If you plan to ignore all of that detailed sourcing and analysis and just make again the absolutely unjustified claim that I or the OP article are looking for some reason at the fucking stock market, then I’m going to be rude to you. Up to you though; I’m happy being reasonable if we’re being reasonable.
My interlocutor, for whatever reason, refused at every turn to just say “oh okay the data seem to agree with you,” and kept throwing stuff at the wall until he eventually claimed that it didn’t actually matter if a typical person was better off or not, at which point I decided we didn’t need to talk anymore. But if you want to pick that up and have a data-based disagreement with any of it, we can rap.
The reason is he started with a conclusion and worked backwards. Any data you provide to the contrary is “fake news” from Democrats, irrelevant, etc. You can’t use reason on the unreasonable. That’s why they “gish gallop” from topic to topic, just trying to see if something sticks.
So, that comment section is heavily nested and hard to read on mobile
I read through that article and to be honest, I think it’s trash. I’ve already mentioned why the BLS statistics are deceiving, but even the article doesn’t hide that the economy isn’t doing better, it’s just the US is doing better than all the other countries. It doesn’t emphasize that we’re all dropping in performance, but justifies our economy is good because we aren’t suffering as hard.
But the rest of the world is suffering worse than we are, because they depend on our currency, and we have policy control over that. It was a decision to make ourselves relatively better off than our competition by making policy that harms them more.
I’m not saying anything nice about Trump, and he’s a more extreme version of the following, but Bidens policy is still “America First with a finger up to the rest of the world if that’s what it takes”
Lol, fair. Sorry and thanks.
Edit: also, it’s not like most people would expect something intelligible form my username
Yeah, whatever, please vote Biden because FFS do we really need to explain what happens if he loses?
Bash on him all you want starting 2025, force his hand to do better, but right now is NOT the time for this crap.
Everything is going to get a fuck of a lot worse if Biden loses. If Biden wins, things won’t get better but at least things won’t get worse at a more rapid rate. I’m sorry but if not wanting to send marginalized groups to concentration camps makes me a radical liberal then I guess I’m a radical liberal 🤷
Housing was not mentioned, and it is shit, what else was not included here?
A lot. A lot wasn’t mentioned. Like how that low inflation doesn’t erase previous inflation.
How many times do we need to spell it out for you finance bros before you get it? The working class does not care about how Wallstreet is performing. The working class does not care about your cherry-picked misrepresentations of macroeconomic issues, nor do they trust them. The working class cares about the price of their grocery bill and the cost of housing, both of which have seen record increases in the last 4 years. You can shake your heads all you want and blame social media but until we dont have to chose between paying for medication or paying for groceries we are not going to buy any of the BS you are selling.
In norway we have a word called “kjøpekraft” or purchasing power. It is basically how much goods you can buy for your salery. And about the only statistic that is relevant for normal people. Tried to find something similar in that article, but did not.
Americans, in our typical way, have a system of economic reporting that allows those in power to sort of hide that elegant metric in a combination of other statistics.
Here, you’d have to compare the rate of change of the Consumer Price Index against wage growth. And also find some way to factor in the cost of gasoline (which has more volatile price changes and as such isn’t included in CPI figures).
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How has the Lorenz curve shifted over the past 30 years?
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What percentage of people’s income is going on housing?
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What percentage of people :
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are living with food insecurity, or are reliant on food banks and other charities?
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are living with their parents as adults?
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need second jobs in order to afford basic necessities?
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are in casual, gig or otherwise insecure employment?
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cannot afford adequate healthcare?
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will never own their own home?
All broken down by percentile, please. And how have those numbers shifted over the last 30 years?
All broken down by percentile, please.
These would be good numbers for you to collect to support your argument.
Yup we’ll get right on that. Got a few million dollars we can use to fund that?
The govt chooses to ignore those numbers, and everyone that believes the numbers lap it up like gospel
Our country is doing great on paper
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. 🤣
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I’m sorry… did Biden magically end late-stage capitalism?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
These articles are starting to annoy me. There’s no yardstick that says “Economy: terrible <-> great”. It depends on who you are, how much income you make, what kind of assets you hold, what kind of debt you hold, etc. Ask different people and you will get different answers.
If you poll congressmen regarding the health of the economy and then poll the next 100 people that walk out of your local Dollar General, you’ll probably get a lot different answers.
We can talk specifics like inflation, rates of household saving, etc. but just trying to say “the economy is great/terrible” is overly reductive and doesn’t really take into account the country as a whole.
Slate is not known for its nuance. Not that it doesn’t have a lot of company in that regard, but since this OP is a Slate article, well…
