I’m oddly curious about identifying how these filter through the right-wing derposphere into statements made by the former and possibly future POTUS.
If anyone is more economically minded than me, I can’t tell which of these FRED stats might track the actual measurement of “how much money do Americans have saved, in total”. The plain “personal saving” one might actually track what he’s saying, but what does that measure?
I guess I’m surprised if the effect of “wealthier people saving a shitload of money because they couldn’t spend it during the pandemic” (and then took all that money they saved and…spent it all in 2021???) so completely dwarfed “shitloads of people were put out of work and still had to pay rent on no income”, which thus makes me wonder if this is actually the right stat, but maybe that’s America for you.
He’s likely just pulling it out of his ass because facts don’t matter. For example, the guy is just casually referring to basically all Muslims as terrorists, saying Israel should level Gaza, and we have clowns clutching their pearls and withholding votes for Kamala.
I’m not having much luck figuring out how “Personal Savings” is calculated, but it tracks with the “Personal Savings Rate” so it’s probably just something like “Savings Rate” x “Total Income” = “Total Savings”.
I was able to find out where the “385%” stat comes from. They’re taking the Personal Savings data (the same chart you posted earlier) and looking specifically at the values for January 2017 (762.6) and January 2021 (3699.8).
Note that these values were fluctuating pretty wildly during the last year of the Trump administration, and January 2021 happened to be a local peak. Moving just a single month on either side of that peak would have produced a significantly lower value.
I found this analysis from October 2022. It has a bunch of charts and includes a section “Decomposition of Excess Savings across Income Quartiles” but I don’t really understand much of it.
Residents who live at a set of properties at the center of claims of Venezuelan gang takeovers in Aurora say that the real crimes and dangers come from their landlord, who has neglected problems like rat infestations and threats from strangers.
"They’re lying about us being criminals to the whole world in an attack, " said Moises Didenot, a Venezuelan immigrant and resident at the Edge of Lowry apartments at 1208 Dallas Street. “We’re fathers with families, mothers with families, hardworking people. The only criminal, in my opinion, is the landlord.”
Residents at the Edge say that strangers have been threatening them since the viral video. Another resident of the complex showed texts he allegedly received from a stranger who found their phone number on social media. In the text, the stranger called them “illegals” and “fucking animals,” and threatened that “Colorado residents are building a militia,” adding, “We got your number now everyone who hates illegals know where you live fucking animals.”
Jefferson Medina and Christopher Sanchez, Venezuelan immigrants who live at the Edge, tell Westword that strangers have been driving around the apartment and making threats. Medina says that on Monday, a car of three or four men drove through the apartment parking lot, with one of the men flashing “a large gun” and yelling “ugly things” like “get out of here, nutless Venezuelan. Lousy shit, leave.”
I go to work at five in the morning, and I’m already afraid for my life that someone is going to do something — because I’m Venezuelan, they’re going to do something," Didenot says. “We’ve all already been threatened with a flier saying we’re all criminals. I’m afraid someone is going to do something out of hate.”
These assholes are going to have some innocent people killed.
