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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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Leopards Ate My Face
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The economy moves slowly. The impacts on your pocketbook over the last 4 years were a direct result of the tariffs trump imposed during his previous stint in the White House, his absolutely abysmal reaction to Covid, and several other things he and his cronies did during that time.
Biden fixed much of that, and as a result, inflation in the US slowed so it was less than in other countries that were impacted by many of the same market forces. It was already too much to completely reverse, but it was far better than it would have been otherwise.
But instead of understanding what actually happened, loads of people seem to think the president can just flip a lever and the whole economy will turn on a dime – despite decades and decades that show that the economy is always better under democrats. Because democrats fix things, so the next republican administration looks good for a few years, then republicans break things, so the next democrat administration looks bad for the first few years. The economy is as nimble as the Titanic.
So now, the US has voted the same guy back in who wrecked the economy that we’re still feeling the effects of, so he can reverse Biden’s improvements and instead make it far, far worse.
People’s inability to learn the absolute basics of how the economy works is about to fuck us all.
e: formatting
Fixed it how, exactly?
What precisely did Biden do that affects the working class and poor, who from where I'm sitting, are convinced they've been abandoned. They're convinced of this because their expenses have doubled and tripled, and if they've gotten better pay at all, it hasn't kept up with the cost-of-living increases.
You can discuss economic theory until you're blue in the face. Biden had a mandate for real change and failed in the most basic way, and Americans are working 2-3 jobs to scrape by in this country.
8 Ways the Biden Administration Is Improving the Lives of Service Workers
Biden’s Unheralded War on Poverty
And previously:
The Biden Boom: Economic Recovery in 2021
And more recently:
Bidenomics Is Starting to Transform America. Why Has No One Noticed?
I don’t have time right now to go through and create a short bullet list from these, but I highly suggest you read them. The information is there. I have many more lesser-reported policies, and I can make a summary list tomorrow.
I'll do that, thanks for the info.
I'm going to be hard to convince. I had to loan my car to my 80 year-old parents in April, because if they don't drive for DoorDash they'll be homeless. Further, at least in my social circle, most of the people I know have cut back tremendously due to this economy.
That's hard for me to digest, especially after seeing the Federal Government come down hard on people who created scarcity and then overcharged for PPE during COVID. It's just no secret they can do more.
Please do, and thanks for being open-minded. I’m going to copy part of a comment I made from the other day so you know where I’m coming from:
I’m fully disabled, and most of my friends and family died within the last few years, so I have no support network.
I’m already struggling to survive, having to choose between food and medicine, and am overdrawn every month. All my savings are gone. I have literally no money to my name, and have been barely staving off homelessness for months. I rely completely on social services now, which trump has vowed to cut.
I will not survive this administration. My fellow Americans have voted for me to die.
I’ve spent a lot of time truly learning about how all of this works, because it affects me more than most people. I am not kidding that I’m pretty sure I won’t survive another trump administration. That’s based on objective fact. Things will be getting a lot worse for your parents soon, too, and I’m very sorry for that. We were on track to actually recover and improve our conditions, and that progress will now be reversed.
I really wish US voters weren’t so susceptible to misinformation and propaganda, but here we are.
That all tracks. I'm sorry we're a country that doesn't take care of its people. I'm used to doing the good that I can with my own two hands, in full knowledge that this country won't, but I was pleasantly surprised that my state (Missouri) voted down an abortion ban and to approve a $15 minimum wage in the election last week, so at least here it isn't all bad. (Yet.)
I'm a Green Party voter, so both sides hate me and generally blame me no matter how the election goes, and I've found myself vehemently disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans, particularly over the last 30 years as both parties have become proxies for monied American business interests. Growing up the son of a self-employed roofing contractor taught me a lot about how little this country will do to help you, being part of a family that did well half the year and was dirt poor the other half.
I’m not in love with democrats, either, don’t get me wrong. I’m far to the left of them.
I wasn’t always disabled, and had a couple of good decades as a firmware and software developer and UXD, and I built my career from nothing in the late 90s, teaching myself and staying ahead of the curve. I was doing pretty well until about 15 years ago when autoimmune issues started attacking my nervous system, causing seizures and massive GI issues, to the point I literally can’t eat food anymore.
I HATE not being able to work, and would do literally anything to have my career back.
But despite how much disdain I have that the democrats aren’t what I wish they would be, fascism is objectively worse in every conceivable way. For me, it’s a matter of life and death.
I’d rather not have to vote against fascism, but that’s how far the Overton window has shifted, and there were only two choices. We chose wrong.
Are you one of the ones responsible for making Donald Trump president by voting for Jill Stein? Because all available metrics indicate that we're in for way harder economic times under Trump (or even just Republicans in general). Anyone actually paying attention to Biden's policies knew we were slowly climbing out of a hole the pandemic and the Trump presidency left us in. And we were climbing out of that hole faster than other countries affected by the pandemic. Now you can kiss that goodbye. Not to mention, Democrats are historically better for our economy than Republicans.
So if you voted for Jill Stein you really have no room to complain about the economy. You just helped make it worse.
Dems had the presidency and Congress and you didn't hear a single one of them talk about raising wages or addressing corporate corruption after campaign time apart from Bernie Sanders. They certainly didn't use their power to make the lives of the working class and poor better in any meaningful way either.
You and the other Democratic partisans do not support workers apart from speeches and soundbytes. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what they said. It matters that they didn't do anything meaningful.
When and for how long? Because they had a majority for a short time at the beginning of Biden's presidency but two "Democrats" kept voting against Democrat legislation, destroying their very slight majority. One of them has since declared themselves independent and has been voted out of Congress.
Biden had to use exectutive order to raise the minimum wage of federal contractors, because he can do that without Congress, because they're federal employees. Another Biden accomplishment that went right over your head. It's also largely up to states to determine minimum wage. In California we just voted on raising the minimum wage higher than it already is, which I believe is $15, which is higher than a federal minimum wage increase would be anyways.
Democrats introduced an anti-corruption bill in 2019. Again, when they actually held a majority for a short period in Biden's presidency, those two pesky "Democrats" kept voting their legislation down. One of them was making big money from the oil industry. Again, it was a majority, but an ultra-slim majority. Can't get much done with that.
You need to understand that your opinions are formed from a place of ignorance. You are commenting, and voting, from a standpoint of ignorance. Which is largely why you are a Green Party voter. A party that cannot, and will not, win an election, because they haven't done the national canvassing necessary to build a coalition that can actually win federal elections.
I was angry about Biden in 2020, but between the infrastructure act, the chips act, and the soft landing, while I’ve had a difficult few years I actually liked his leadership (for what it was). I saw him as an old centrist who did a lot of bad things in the senate, and yeah that’s probably what’s in his heart of hearts. And while his pushes towards American sustainability were not as good as I wanted but better than we’ve had in a long time. He focused on long term and stabilizing policies to prevent recession, something we all expected that never came. He also put a lot of emphasis on not ignoring the things that needed done but had been put on the back burner for years like the bridges that former DOT officials refused to use. There’s also his FTC, with Lena Kahn being an aggressive advocate for the American people and being the only person in his administration that brought the energy that we needed.
I don’t think Biden will be remembered highly. His economic strategies were of the “build long term stability through slow and methodical action” variety in a country devastated by decades of short term economic thinking. But more than that, he repeatedly insisted on an outdated style of governance, one based on the assumption that bipartisan cooperation was possible. He didn’t commit Ford’s sin, but he was too soft handed with the J6ers. More than anything, as the nation crumbled he acted as though sound economic policy and diligent justice that prioritized appearing nonpartisan would save us. Also his waiting to step down and placing his VP who did just terribly in the primaries he only won by mass dropout as his replacement was not good.
I suspect he will be remembered alongside the likes of Calvin Coolidge and Andrew Johnson. But yeah, I was surprisingly impressed by his economic and infrastructure policies, even though they were more slow than ideal.