Nearly 3 in 5 people believe what they see, hear, and experience over the ever-changing bullshit lines that economists use.
this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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Everyone feels like the economy sucks. But stock buybacks and ai have been great for the 1% who have the means to manipulate the stock market. Everyone else should just buy less avocado toast or something, I guess.
Honestly, this article, like many other articles just like it, is just gaslighting.
my food budget when down to 200$ from 400, fast food is so expensive i stop going. I am growing my own food now and its taking off. screw the man.
People will stop believing a country is in recession when it starts to feel like they can actually afford to do the things they want to do, like live in a home and eat food once in a while. They are incorrect to believe that it's a recession causing their current dire circumstances, but they're entirely correct to believe that something is amiss when they're just barely keeping themselves alive. It appears to be due to Biden's mismanagement only insofar as Biden has opted for largely continuity neoliberalism, which is how things have been mismanaged for the last 40 years or so.
Economists don't call something a recession until rich people start feeling the squeeze. The definition of a recession, while vague, is really designed around that fact. So even if they're not doing it on purpose, their analytical blinders prevent them from recognizing other conditions that are at least as meaningful to many more people.
Yep. An awful lot has to go badly wrong in an economy before rich people start feeling it, and that's the only point they start caring.
Blaming the current economic issues on Biden is wholly ignoring the shit-show that preceded him. He’s not perfect, but he didn’t directly cause this bullshit — he’s just not done much to combat it except for college debt, the Inflation Reduction Act, and a few more actions like stimulus. As an aside, I personally have lost $25000+ now solely due to Trump’s tax changes.
It’s also wholly ignoring the unfettered greed that the US seems to have a fetish for. One prime example: soda is literally 4 times as expensive now than it was just 5 years ago. It still costs pennies to make a 12-pack of soda, but $10 for that 12-pack is now the norm. The supply chain woes of the pandemic no longer apply, yet they decided to just keep the prices at that level.
It’s time to blame the real reason the 99% are fucked — corporate greed, and a spineless, useless Congress unwilling to do anything about it.
Hence why I said "it appears to be due to Biden's mismanagement only insofar as Biden has opted for largely continuity neoliberalism". He didn't create the situation and he's tried to combat it, but there is so much more he could have done, given that the underlying problem is neoliberalism.
Is there so much more he could have done without an act of Congress? We saw from Trump's presidency that most executive orders do not hold up in court and Congress controls the power of the purse.
Yeah. Inflation is real (Covid aftereffects and corporate greed), and in 2022 it hit this huge spike so prices are still high. As far as I can see the reasons for that had nothing to do with Biden, but I get it; it's painful to people directly, so it's the part of the equation that's easy to focus on, and it's easy to blame the guy who's "in charge" because he's supposed to take responsibility for things being good, whether they're his fault originally or not.
At the same time Biden actually has done a ton of things (boosting domestic manufacturing and supporting unions through an actually-pro-labor NLRB) which have been boosting wages. A lot of it is at the lower end of the scale, so I think it's largely invisible to Lemmy people who my guess is are largely tech workers or students or etc (as opposed to truck drivers), but the wages at the bottom have actually outpaced even the huge inflationary level.
Blaming Biden for the inflation, and pretending the wage gains didn't happen, and pretending that Biden's policies are neoliberal is... I mean, I get how it could look that way (again especially if you exist at the white-collar end of the scale in a tech job), but it's definitely not what happened.
(boosting domestic manufacturing and supporting unions through an actually-pro-labor NLRB) which have been boosting wages
That's good, I didn't know that. However, that hasn't had any affect on me, personally, as you have suggested, being a tech worker. In fact, I had to take a wage cut just for the business to survive. This whole economy is screwed in one way or another. And anytime the economy is screwed like this, it usually benefits some (typically the rich), and destroys others.
This is all considerably too complex to boil down to any one real thing to point to, but the notion of corporate greed still nags at me every single time I go to the grocery store. If prices can rise, they surely can also fall -- and they simply haven't, all while record profits are continually posted, and not for just luxury items -- but for basic needs as well (groceries, etc).
This is as large a cost-of-living swing as I've ever seen in my many decades on this Earth. And it worries me greatly for my kid's future.
It doesn't help that wage growth has largely been in the "unskilled" sectors (I hate that term, every job is skilled), but inflation reduction has largely been in non-essential goods. Which means that upper-middle to upper income people have been noticing their wages not increasing with inflation despite inflation overall being lower, and lower to low-middle income people have been noticing inflation impacting their budgets despite their wage increases.
But in aggregate, "everyone" is being paid more and "inflation" is down. So at a macro level everyone "should" be happy with how things are going. But human beings don't live at the macro level.
Do you have numbers for this? Like what’s the inflation number for one of those nonessential goods? Because I suspect you literally just made all of this up as a way of saying, okay sure inflation dropped last year and low-income wages are way up but here’s why none of that counts. Although, I’m open to being proved wrong.
When metrics become targets they cease to be useful metrics.
Question, why are we linking fox 59, when the hill has the same article word for word?
Second, why are we being told we are wrong? By what metric are we incorrectly measuring?
Forty-nine percent of respondents say unemployment is at a 50-year high, though it’s actually close to a 50-year low at less than 4 percent.
Please stop pretending that just because people are employed that they are not working harder then ever before to stay afloat. It is disingenuous at best.
The NBER said the most recent recession coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the U.S. hasn’t been in one since.
Getting out of a recession does not mean people did not have to make hard choices with their finances during that time.
Just because we are pulling out of the Covid craze, does not mean that the average household has rebounded.
People had to uproot their lives and won't feel the effect of good policy until well down the line.
- Dude fuck the hill
- IDK why inflation-adjusted wages at the main quartiles isn't the main metric and the first significant metric everyone looks at. If I had to pick one set of numbers for "the economy," that would be it.
Worth adding that “unemployment” in this context just means people who are claiming unemployment benefits, a things that runs out, and when they run out, they no longer are counted by it.
Also difficult to claim unemployment if you lose a gig economy job. So many people who lost their “job” doing something like uber eats are not represented.
A better metric is workforce participation rate which is at an all time low. There are a lot of factors to that, including a higher rate of retirement, but that alone does not account for the record low number.
Worth adding that “unemployment” in this context just means people who are claiming unemployment benefits, a things that runs out, and when they run out, they no longer are counted by it.
✋ This is where I've been for the past year and a half.
A better metric is workforce participation rate which is at an all time low
This is the opposite of true - it's not at a historic high, either, but it's climbing. And, it's notable that it blipped back up to as if Covid hadn't happened, which most countries haven't been able to do. (Also worth noting that all this is taking place within a tiny range of 4% on the full size graph; even the "big" Covid dip was only a drop of 3%.)
Unemployment as it's defined on the charts is actually sort of a bad metric, yes. For whatever reason the story picked a bunch of not really all that good metrics (economic expansion, stock market) and then asked people about them. I do think it would have been a much better story if they'd asked about wages instead of these corporate-friendly metrics.
Yet again I'm asking the Fediverse: What do they think a good economy should look like?
A good economy serves the needs of the people. As soon as you have a situation where people are effectively ground into paste to feed the economy, it's not a good economy.
Lots of healthy, happy people with disposable income.
Less wealth inequality and a strengthening middle class would be a great indicator.
I don’t care how the economy is doing for big businesses and rich people. It’s not doing well for me.
It’s interesting to me that the reaction is so unanimous
Like practically every single person’s reaction is “fuck the metrics, economy only works for big business, don’t they know I’m hurting.” It’s not like a variety of different thoughts or reactions or anything related to the disparity between the polling that was the content of the article. Literally it could be any story about “economy of US” and most of the comments in this article would apply to it exactly equally as well.
(Actually one person did criticize the fact that it was Fox that wrote the story)
Anyway I just thought it was a little interesting. Also look at the main page; most stories have like 0 comments, or 3 or something, and then all the “Biden” or “economy” stories have a big bunch of comments, with pretty much the exact identical conversations going on in them
It is interesting, to me
I mean it is a common sentiment that has been measured:
Beyond that if you are insinuating that it is a coordinated campaign of people doing this, I mean yeah that's probably true to some extent. But the reason why they are targeting that is because they know it is a weak point.
So posting an article showing that the cost of living is going down would make that kind of sentiment less justified.
It’s interesting to me that the reaction is so unanimous
That should tell you that it's not some politicized reaction, it's the actual lived experience of the Average Joe. Go out on the street and ask people, and you'll get the same reaction. If humans are all unanimously telling you one thing, and your metrics say something else, is it more likely that the humans are all collaboratively lying, or that the metrics are wrong?
Also look at the main page; most stories have like 0 comments, or 3 or something, and then all the “Biden” or “economy” stories have a big bunch of comments, with pretty much the exact identical conversations going on in them
Right now on front page I see only 3 posts with 20+ comments, and none are about Biden or the economy:
- Bing outage
- Microplastic in balls
- Scientist harassment
(actually, it looks like this comment pushed this post to 20 technically)
That should tell you that it's not some politicized reaction, it's the actual lived experience of the Average Joe.
That's one interpretation, yes. There are others.
Right now on front page I see only 3 posts with 20+ comments, and none are about Biden or the economy:
- Bing outage
- Microplastic in balls
- Scientist harassment
(actually, it looks like this comment pushed this post to 20 technically)
So I actually meant the /c/politics "front page"; I should have used some other type of word.
Here's the list of stories currently on the politics sub:
- Economics, 23 comments, 56% are repetitions of basically exactly the same comment
- Housing, 0 comments
- Biden is out of touch, 30 comments, comments are a big shitshow of "Biden's the worst" "Trump is worse" "Biden's the worst" "Trump is worst"
- Palestine protests, 0 comments
- Brexit / Trump, 0 comments
- Restrictions on voting, 0 comments
- Israel, 0 comments
- Rudy Giuliani, 4 comments
- Biden + economy, 12 comments most of whom are calling out the OP article for being shit
That’s one interpretation, yes. There are others.
Just say you think it's all a psyop campaign when people disagree with you. 🙄
It is interesting! I wonder if it’s due to different definitions of what economy means. To me the economy includes cost-of-living.
Too many people watch fox entertainment and believe it as news.
I start to check out once someone starts talking about "the economy". It's just a rich person circlejerk about "line goes up". It doesn't really impact me at all unless I get laid off. I guess, technically, I have a 401k but I doubt I'd ever truly be able to retire.
Besides, I'm barely making ends meet. Any praise of the economy is going to ring hollow in my ears, because I sure as hell am not seeing any of the windfall.
I don't know why this isn't talked about more, but the reason for the disconnect is that USA has become a petrostate. As a petrostate, the rich get wildly rich and makes the economy look good, while the citizens are fed a bunch of religion to keep them from protesting.
Yup, the megarich owns, what, 99% of the wealth? 99% of people are just negligible errors in statistics, depending on how you measure the economy.
The top 10% own almost exactly ⅔ of all US wealth. (66.9%)
No need for hyperbole when 90% of the population controls ⅓ of the wealth and the bottom 50% only controls 2.5% of the country's wealth. (Same source as above).
The rest of the wealth is just temporarily in transit from one rich person to another.
THE ECONOMY IS DOING GREAT, PEOPLE, STOP SAYING IT ISN'T
homelessness on the rise
people living paycheck-to-paycheck on the rise
cost of living increasing faster than income growth
corporations doubling prices for no reason other than they realized they can, thus resulting in record profits for huge companies
Oh right, that's what it means.
Big businesses are making more money.
The Poors don't factor into such things, so their problems aren't real economic problems.
homelessness on the rise
True (to a really shocking and unusual degree)
people living paycheck-to-paycheck on the rise
? Where is this from
Looks to me like adults who have 3 months of emergency savings was 55% in 2020, is now 54%
cost of living increasing faster than income growth
Not true in the average, and especially notably not true for the bottom end of wage earners. It's highly unusual but even under some pretty punishing inflation the bottom end of wage earners are making more.
Every time I say this there is at least one person who gets very upset and says more or less, how dare you show me numbers when I'm hurting, don't you understand that me hurting cancels out the numbers? And I'm not sure how to respond to that
I think maybe it's largely invisible to Lemmy users (who I'm gonna assume overlap heavily with tech job people) because for top wage earners and especially in tech jobs it actually is true -- but for the most vulnerable people, they're making way more than they were, comfortably outpacing even a very high level of inflation. I think most people who do manufacturing or drive a truck are not on Lemmy at this stage, when those are most of the people who have been gaining from the way the labor market's been changing.
corporations doubling prices for no reason other than they realized they can, thus resulting in record profits for huge companies
Absolutely true, and real fucked up. It cancels out a lot of the growth in wages that would otherwise have just been money that people got to keep which they pretty fucking badly needed.
Oh right, that's what it means.
Big businesses are making more money.
The Poors don't factor into such things, so their problems aren't real economic problems.
The article I linked was pretty focused on things that do work this way (recession / shrinking vs growing). Those metrics are a bunch of crap. But if you look at the more meaningful metrics, they're actually getting surprisingly better also. (Although, it's still shit, yes. A few years of progress doesn't erase decades of continuous steady collapse. I'm just talking about how it's been changing.)
There's an interesting little thing that happens with this: If you ask people how the US economy is, they say it's shit. If you ask how their state is doing, they say it's beating the average by quite a bit. There are a few different ways to interpret that, but one is that their picture of the country is formed by news, and their picture of their state is formed by experience, and their experience doesn't match the news.
I’m not in tech, I’m in manufacturing, and I’ve become trapped in my job because wages in the industry have gone down by about 10% in the last year. Thankfully I’m grandfathered in from the relatively high wage I got in the post covid wage rises, but my raises have been sub inflation two years in a row. Even going by the entirely bullshit official government inflation numbers, my real wage has gone down since I started.
Prices on housing and food are so sky high, that I can’t even get approved for a one bedroom apartment or studio despite making $60k, because they’re charging 55% of my after tax wage per month. I don’t live on the coasts, either. The job I came from before this was paying me $21/hr, and is now offering $16/hr, which is literally less than Taco Bell and just above minimum wage. Food and other transient monthly costs are so high now that after feeding my family and paying my bills, I’ll be able to save about $3k this year, down from 8.5k last year.
Just saw a different story saying that the average age of a US car is 12 years plus.
The cost of a nice night out for the family, like dinner and a movie for four is a week's salary if you're making the official minimum wage.