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Biden's key voting blocs stressed about money, poll shows
(www.axios.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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politics
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Stressed because we dont have any. They keep telling us things are ok, but we can see in our everyday lives that we are struggling.
Because data is reality and vibes are a feeling. Times may be tough for a lot of people, but unemployment is at a ridiculously low level and more investments keep getting made to add more jobs, further driving up wages. Wages are up even accounting for inflation, which has eased. Grocery prices are still increasing, but not as quickly as they used to. And they’re not going to decrease. That’s called deflation, and that only happens when the economy is bad… which it isn’t and demand is still high.
Housing prices are really high, but the federal government can’t do much about that when the part of the government that provides their funding is currently having a civil war over whether or not it would be better to shut down the government and create a recession or “succumb to Biden”. What would help housing prices is increasing the supply, which is hard to do when municipal zoning laws are so fucking assbackwards.
Times fuckin suck for a lot of people but a lot of industry experts kept predicting that we’d be dealing with a recession. That hasn’t happened and it won’t happen no matter how hard they keep saying it. Sure, prices would come down then but only because we’d have double digit unemployment and rising crime rates. We’re gonna have to hang in there. It’s not just the US. Show me one developed country where inflation hasn’t wrecked shit
And you are leaving out record low personal and household net worth levels (and their accompanying debt service payments) entirely from that analysis, which far far more than nullifies any gains from a bit less inflation, and I am pretty sure you are just speculating about any significant raises in wages after adjusting for inflation.
So yep, great analysis.
Oh and the knock on effects from the Panama Canal being utilized under capacity due to Climate Change related damages and the Suez Canal being basically totally unusable due in very large part to entirely predictable consequences of an Israeli genocide of Palestinians, which Biden seems so far unwilling to you know do anything meaningful about... the effects of these major shipping lanes being screwed up are actually pretty likely to break any tepid recovery of the economy, and that will become apparent even by your own non comprehensive method of economic analysis within 1 to 3 quarters.
Dont get me wrong, Trump is an insane maniac and I would obviously vote for Biden over Trump, but it would probably be better for everyone who is not an insane MAGA tard if we can all collectively, just as a first step, realize the situation we are actually in.
There’s two ways of looking at the facts, and I don’t think either of us are particularly wrong. The average American family did see their wealth increase but that doesn’t mean that people who aren’t as established in their careers yet aren’t having a really shitty time. What it does mean is that all the factors are pointing to a better economic future for everyone as more boomers retire and more jobs become available
Uh, as you can see by actually using the source of your source, going to the interactive charts button, checking net worth and displaying by either mean or median, 80% of Americans by income percentile have barely seen their net worth rise, if at all.
See when you just rely on one big mean or median for everyone, this means /nothing/ in a society like America that /has the greatest wealth disparity of all societies in all of recorded human history/.
The Fed chart there doesnt even allow for net worth below zero, and right now, via other, more accurate ways of counting net worth than what the Fed uses, roughly 25% of Americans have significantly negative net worth, and another roughly 25% have 0 to slightly negative.
Yes thats right the New York Times is being misleading by saying the Fed numbers are the 'gold standard', theyre a good way to get a general overview of things, a jumping off point to do more detailed analysis from.
So yeah, it is not just 'vibes' as you so callously dismissed the person you were replying to.
People generally interact with people, and live near people who are roughly economically similar to them in the sense of overall wealth.
So if you are poor and/or in more debt than you are worth, and as established, roughly 80% of people are poor, and roughly 50% of them have more debt than wealth, there's pretty good chances most people around you are in similar situations.
If you're well off, you live in a gated community or high priced condo and only interact with the poors when you tell them you would like them to make you a latte, or fix your car, etc.
You know, like the author of this New York Times article.
For the top percentile and the next highest percentile, it certainly jumps up but we also aren’t seeing the numbers of the lowest fall. Theyre not just steady. Theyre slowly rising across the board. Unemployment hasn’t been this low in quite a long time. The gains won’t end here. Especially if the Dems can flip the House and impose higher taxes on the percentiles that can obviously afford it
I don't trust unemployment statistics because of how they count people. If everyone looking for a job gave up tomorrow the unemployment rate would go to zero.
But we know it’s extremely low because there’s a labor shortage across multiple industries. Unemployment is low no matter how bad the vibes are
Maybe the vibes are bad because people are working too much
I agree, but they are working, and wages are up. There’s reason to be optimistic. The issue is how fucking expensive housing is compared to 10 years ago, when rent was already unaffordable in many major cities. Tackling housing costs and passing legislation that increase pay and reduce hours is a must. No one should be working more than 40 hours a week without fair compensation, and the pandemic revealed just who exactly is deemed an essential worker, and they should be paid as such.
Yeah, vibes are probably a trailing economic indicator. People won't feel better until they feel better.
Then again, power concedes nothing without struggle so we'll probably have guillotines before a four day work week. I'm looking forward to the general strike of '28.
I’m just hoping that the GOP collapses and the Democratic Party stops drifting to the right. Once it effectively pushes out the Sinemas, Manchins, and Liebermans, we could actually see what a more progressive government could accomplish. And I wouldn’t even call myself a progressive. I’m a liberal who just thinks that maybe we should pay essential workers enough so that they can afford to save for retirement and not just sort of skate by