Quoting so this moves to the newest post position.
This emphasizes a point thatâs gotten lost a bit here, and was the main thing I was trying to bring up with the poll I posted yesterday.
Americaâs opinion of the economy in general has fuck all to do with inflation, housing, or whatever you want. Itâs 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 wasnât for republicans.
I agree with the 2nd part, and think that most people arguing with you would as well.
Focus on manufacturing jobs yay.
Republicans putting kiddies to work nay.
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 coolersâ back to today manufacturing jobs etc. LFG
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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 elseâs 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 Iâll 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 USâs escape from the Israel relationship thatâs pretty much the best outcome that was available.
The mediaâs coverage is absolutely part of the problem, but thatâs bundled into âconsolidated corporate control of the mediaâ for me. They cover Democrats significantly more negatively than they cover Republicans and Iâm not going to pretend like that isnât the case. The standards of expected behavior are simply lower for the GOP the curve in their favor isnât even a little bit subtle. And Iâm talking about the NYT, Wapo, Bloomberg, every 24/7 channel, everywhere you look pretty much.
Eh, Iâm with @CaffeineNeeded . Yes, there are probably some people in @commonWealth âs position. However, the vast majority of people are just really fucking stupid like the people quoted in this article. âI want to vote for Biden because of abortion but Trump made prices come down.â 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. Itâs as simple as that.
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Hated that article.
- Too many Boomers profiled
- No one is pressed on how they think Trump will solve inflation
- Uses âlabor shortageâ unironically
Itâs like it was designed to piss me off.
Though I did appreciate one tidbit:
âYes, groceries are expensive and weâre making sacrifices,â she said, adding that her weekly grocery bill had jumped from $150 to $300 in the past few years. But, she stressed, she was more concerned about womenâs rights and other issues on the ballot than the price of food. âIâm voting Biden,â she said, âno matter what.â
HmmâŚI wonder if Bidenâs team should focus more on abortion and less on how awesome the economy is.
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Unfortunately, you canât see threads/replies any longer unless you have an account (and LOL Iâm not doing that).
I mean if you tell a truck driver, a teacher, a nurse, or anyone who works in tech that the economy is doing great youâre going to get a reaction somewhere between a frustrated scoff and a punch in the nose⌠and there are better things to run on like abortion, legalizing weed, forgiving student loans, literally almost any other topic. There are large industries that arenât doing great, the job market is both as good as it has ever been for some people and absolutely awful for others. And the polls say people donât agree with the economic stats and the economic stats that dwell literally one layer below the top line economic stats will tell you why that is.
The nice thing about a good economy is that it advertises quite well for itself. The people who are doing well generally are pretty happy about it and the people who arenât generally arenât. If youâre bragging about how great the economy is you need to be sure a large majority of the population agrees with you first. That incumbents do well when the economy is doing well isnât a messaging thing itâs like the salinity of a body of water. With any luck Biden has a few tricks up his sleeve to goose the lagging sectors before election day and make the environment even more favorable for Democrats, but thatâs not messaging thatâs concrete results.
Part of it is the media being owned by plutocrats who pretty violently disagree with the consensus among non plutocrats that we should actually tax rich people at the federal level to reduce debt and offer more and better government services particularly in healthcare, childcare, and education⌠and part of it is that if they treated the GOP like they treat Democrats it would be a lot less close and they think close drives ratings because it does. When the financial and political needs of the owners/funders of every media outlet with reach you donât need a conspiracy for some pretty weird shit to happen.
Still bad coverage or not the housing market is entirely broken, and a large portion of the population has seen their standard of living decline over the last 4-5 years, and by more than it usually did in the years prior to that. Income inequality is a big problem that is causing other problems like Biden not being able to take credit for what looks like a pretty good economy from space. The outcomes for different segments of workers have been diverging pretty rapidly for decades, and that rate has been accelerating since the pandemic.
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Building more is good and rent coming down is good - Austin rent still up 16% vs 2021, though. Roughly in line with overall inflation even with all the added supply, which demonstrates the magnitude of the problem in places that arenât building.
Austin is also massively growing. Rents holding stable against inflation is a massive win in that situation
Lame
https://x.com/dkthomp/status/1769712786647437469?s=46&t=N0_fcOKIYYmlCS2e4YShsQ
https://x.com/dkthomp/status/1769717681953943864?s=46&t=N0_fcOKIYYmlCS2e4YShsQ
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Yeah I suspect Austin rent is going to go back to being cheap here shortly. The tech workers getting the ever living shit beaten out of them has as much to do with that as anything though. Austin was a tech boom town, which means the return to gravity weâve seen in the tech industry had a disproportionate effect for sure. You throw building a shitload of units on top of that and I suspect weâre going to see a bunch of reit carnage in Austin.
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Not going to wade too deep in here but I think there is just a fundamental question or disagreement of what it means for an economy to be âgoodâ. And is a âgoodâ economy correlated strongly enough to the experience of individual people to be a useful foundation of a campaign.
I thought the Biden approach of saying well we doing better than rest of world was a pretty decent take from electoral standpoint.
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Yup plus we unmistakably are doing better than the rest of the world. Europe is really struggling between the war and higher interest rates.
China overstated their population by 100M workers which means that they are actually much further along the demographic collapse graph than they had previously admitted and a large fraction of their GDP was apparently substantially empty/imaginary apartment buildings sold as âinvestmentsâ (that soaked up most of their absolutely historic savings since they werenât legally allowed to invest in much besides local real estate). China is literally a case study in the hidden inherent terribleness of GDP as a metric. They got amazing GDP growth stats producing plastic shit for export and surplus construction they didnât need and couldnât afford to use/maintain.
Russia is finished. This phoenix isnât rising from the ashes theyâve incinerated the fig leaf that covered up the fact that all of their soft power was predicated on an air bluff. What they have left is oil and global consumption of that will go down significantly in the future. I wish them the best of luck holding onto Siberia as soon as China decides they want it because climate change has made it semi valuable real estate.
India is the other country whose overall position is improving. I wish they werenât fascists so I could be happier about it.
Japan is still in a demographic hole and is continuing to dig.
Korea has begun digging a Japan sized demographic hole for themselves and will also likely continue to dig. The Korean birth rates are so low itâs actually crazy.
Africa is like the United States in that the different outcomes are too divergent to generalize effectively⌠but high interest rates arenât great for them overall which is why growth for the continent is in the 3.3-3.8% range for 2023. 3.3% growth in an emerging economy is not a great time. In the parts of Africa that wouldnât classify as emerging you mostly got European/Asian numbers which is to say very low or slightly negative growth.
Well their salary gains are now outpacing the increases in the cost of food and they are bad at math and that teacher should do a better job of teaching math!
Here we go againâŚ
Teachers have very much not had their pay keep up with inflation. Which was shitty back when inflation was 2% when they also werenât keeping up with inflation lol. Now what we have is a full blown âteacher shortageâ situation where states are experimenting with letting people without even a college degree much less a degree in education teach public school. Theyâve literally lowered the pay on a job that required a masters degree when we were in school to the point where itâs not competitive with⌠really anything so now theyâre deprofessionalizing it.
Ok, I looked it up to double check and you are right about teachers. Not so much the other professions though.