Ok I think I will die on the hill of the economy is good and it’s messaging. Quinnipiac Michigan poll:
Thirty-five percent of voters describe the state of the nation’s economy these days as either excellent (6 percent) or good (29 percent), while 65 percent describe it as either not so good (28 percent) or poor (37 percent).
Nearly half of voters (47 percent) think the nation’s economy is getting worse, 28 percent think it’s staying about the same, and 23 percent think it’s getting better.
A majority of voters (61 percent) describe their personal financial situation these days as either excellent (9 percent) or good (52 percent), while 38 percent describe it as either not so good (25 percent) or poor (13 percent).
It’s funny that this type of nittery demonstrates exactly what’s wrong with economics. In econ 101 you’re absolutely right. In real life supply begins being created the second anyone demonstrates there is money in meeting that demand. From the person who first tried it if no one else.
Econ 101 is full of counter intuitive shit like this. The whole discipline has a terrible case of unnecessary contrarianism. It’s not enough to be right, they desperately want their findings to be something that only they could have seen through their great mathematical reasoning. It’s honestly kind of nauseating at a certain point.
Personally I’m not interested in parlor tricks and impressively overcomplex (yet somehow also they’ve always hacked the p value into orbit around Saturn) equations. I want to know how to build human systems that work.
I’m honestly not sold that academia will ever have the incentives necessary to do this kind of scientific work in the tangible/important work that takes place at the corner of psychology, economics, and sociology… which is a problem because there are plenty of incentives to do and exploit that work in the private sector.
Lines up pretty squarely with @commonWealth 's theory that view of the economy is very much tied to whether you owned a home before 2022 or not, and with the lived experiences of all of us who do not currently own.
And that whole thing started the first time because I said Biden may struggle to get votes from people on the wrong side of that situation if he doesn’t address the issue - especially if he brags a lot about the economy without addressing the issue.
He did address it in the SOTU, hopefully he makes that a big part of his campaign.
And you’ll be shocked to find out that the article also cited a Harvard University analysis, Census Bureau data, Obama’s Secretary of HUD, and the chief economist at Redfin.
The lack of housing has caused a record number of renters to devote an excessive amount of income to housing, according to a Harvard University analysis.
In fact, the Census Bureau reported that homeownership fell slightly at the end of last year in an otherwise solid economy.
the housing affordability challenge is the worst I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Shaun Donovan, a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama years
“Even as incomes are going up and the economy is doing well and inflation is coming down, people can’t buy homes,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at the brokerage Redfin.
No one denies these as problems. The entirety of support for voters being frustrated by the US economy is supported by a randomly reported (likely) republican. Despite all of these facts decidedly not changing, US voter impression of the economy has drastically improved over the past several months, strongly suggesting it’s not the problem.
This emphasizes a point that’s gotten lost a bit here, and was the main thing I was trying to bring up with the poll I posted yesterday.
America’s opinion of the economy in general has fuck all to do with inflation, housing, or whatever you want. It’s largely based on political preference (which is insane) and media narrative. Democrats should really push the narrative the economy is doing well as the incumbent party, and point to the things they could do better if it wasn’t for republicans.
No way the normies can handle that US>>most everyone in GDP and inflation.
Open scene: a republican says ominously about how things were better 4 years ago. Then put the date in the screen- no TP on shelves, bodies piled up in coolers— back to today manufacturing jobs etc. LFG
I do have to say the US is in a much better spot relative to the rest of the world than we were in 2020. Economically our inflation is lower than anyone else’s and while things are getting worse for the 30-90% of income range things are actually going relatively worse everywhere else. It truly is a cause of us catching a cold and the rest of the world getting pneumonia, except China is probably going to spend the next decade or so in the ICU recovering from the various things it did to juice its economy the last couple of decades.
And of course on foreign policy I’ll give Biden an enormous amount of credit for playing his hand super well. If he manages to get out of this Israel fiasco with <100k dead and either tangible progress or the US’s escape from the Israel relationship that’s pretty much the best outcome that was available.
The media’s coverage is absolutely part of the problem, but that’s bundled into ‘consolidated corporate control of the media’ for me. They cover Democrats significantly more negatively than they cover Republicans and I’m not going to pretend like that isn’t the case. The standards of expected behavior are simply lower for the GOP the curve in their favor isn’t even a little bit subtle. And I’m talking about the NYT, Wapo, Bloomberg, every 24/7 channel, everywhere you look pretty much.
Eh, I’m with @CaffeineNeeded . Yes, there are probably some people in @commonWealth ’s position. However, the vast majority of people are just really fucking stupid like the people quoted in this article. “I want to vote for Biden because of abortion but Trump made prices come down.” Ok dude. This is decades in the making and goes back to right wing infiltration of our education system and making our education system terrible, so that the populace is really fucking stupid when it comes to civics, so that the rich can lie about what people are really voting for. It’s as simple as that.
