I’d love to see a chart showing disposable income. Something tells me the rosy picture of the economy is for a segment and overall things are worse.
I’m not sure this is the best metric, since someone who’s able to make it when before they couldn’t make it at all, is much better than someone at the top just having more disposable income now. The OP article goes into some metrics like wage disparity and unemployment that touch more directly on economic survival as opposed to wealth at the top. But if you want to see disposable income then sure. The little divot followed by resumption of the upward line after the Covid chaos is what OP’s article is talking about: Biden recovering the economy from Covid almost as if it hadn’t happened, which most first world countries haven’t been able to do.
Thanks for the graph. Shame it’s not broken down by age.
And this also looks like an average not the median.
Things are a lot better for people who are poorer than you and a little bit worse for people like you. And also probably a LOT better for people who are filthy disgusting rich.
Who cares how well the stock market is doing if we all got mass fired to make it happen
To be fair to the article, they don’t talk much about stocks or GDP. They’re mostly focused on unemployment, wages, and inflation. It’s worth questioning how effective those metrics are given how the data is collected tho.
Seriously. Just an example off the top of my head: people stop being counted as unemployed if they’ve been unemployed for long enough. That’s just one way they manipulate the numbers for whatever narrative they’re trying to spin.
Just to clarify for others who had to look into this like myself, this is true for unemployed individuals who have not actively sought a job within the last four weeks. If you’ve filled out a job app in the last 30 days you’re being counted.
Who cares how well the stock market is doing if we all got mass fired to make it happen
People who hold large amounts of stock 😀 They don’t give a shit how many people get fired as long as their portfolio keeps increasing in value
Lmao.
Yet more people who make too much money to be connected to reality wondering why the commoners are complaining.
It’s because the economy is not good for them. It’s really that simple. Shit is expensive and most people did not get pay raises. Most of the ones that did get raises haven’t gotten enough to tackle the increases in food, rent, and utility prices. People are working full time and slipping into homelessness through no fault of their own.
And we have this gaslighting bullshit blasted at us every day like we don’t have eyes of our own and brains to think with.
Pretty obvious you didn’t read the article.
Oh I did. And it’s the same gaslighting that CNBC does. Of course unemployment is down, you need 3 jobs to afford rent. Of course the economy expanded, that’s GDP, that’s what it does unless we’re really fucked.
It’s obvious to me with your pattern of posting that you’re trying to post pro Biden stuff without regard to reality.
It’s obvious to me that what you’re claiming the article is happy about, is the exact opposite of what the article is happy about.
The point of the article is, wage inequality is down, unemployment is down, wages adjusted for inflation are up.
The fact that you’re gaslighting what the article says, in order to be able to argue against things that aren’t what’s in it, indicates to me that you probably don’t have a real strong argument against what’s actually in the article.
The article is asking why are people unhappy with the economy when X Numbers are good. God forbid someone answer that question.
You said the reason people are upset is that
the economy is not good for them. It’s really that simple. Shit is expensive and most people did not get pay raises. Most of the ones that did get raises haven’t gotten enough to tackle the increases in food, rent, and utility prices.
The article states however that
Even accounting for inflation, wages are higher today than they were before the coronavirus pandemic, and the biggest wage gains have accrued among the lowest-paid workers, resulting in a dramatic reduction in overall wage inequality.
Are you saying that the author is lying? Can you provide any evidence to support this one way or the other? Because your position and the article can’t coexist, only one can be true. One is an investigative report and one is a Lemmy comment. You must understand how this looks?
Biden sometimes deserves criticism for sure, but not here.
Yes I am. It’s a fun bit of disingneous writing. They heavily cite everything around that claim, but not that claim. Because all of that other stuff can be true while people are still struggling. And it’s not that he hasn’t done good things. It’s that his campaign is gaslighting the country. 63% of Americans reported they still weren’t able to buy as much as they used to in January.
This is what I posted elsewhere-
Here’s Gallup actually asking the people and not an economist quoting the most generalized of statistics to cover up real conditions on the ground. It is entirely possible for the economy to grow, for unemployment to drop, and inflation to be less, while the working class is evicted en masse.
63% of U.S. adults say recent price increases have caused financial hardship for their family. This includes 17% who say it is a severe hardship affecting their ability to maintain their standard of living and 46% who report it is a moderate hardship but does not jeopardize their standard of living. Another 37% of Americans say inflation is not a hardship at all.
The current 63% saying rising prices are a personal hardship reflects a continuation of peak concern on this measure since Gallup started monitoring it in November 2021. In that initial reading, 45% reported a severe or moderate hardship. The rate inched up in 2022 even as inflation ebbed, perhaps reflecting the cumulative effect of higher prices rather than the rate itself.
Those in lower-income households (76%) are more likely than those in middle-income households (64%) and higher-income households (54%) to say price increases are causing them hardship. However, income differences are even more pronounced when looking just at those saying the impact is severe. Lower-income Americans (30%) are three times as likely as high-income adults (10%) and almost twice as likely as middle-income adults (16%) to characterize high prices as a severe hardship.
63% of people reporting something like that means that’s their lived experience. Right or not, they don’t want to see the president whining about people not understanding what he’s done. And when the number is that high there’s a very good chance the top level numbers are hiding things. Furthermore, wages would have had to go up a crazy amount this year to cover the inflation from the last few years. The last year the Census has data available for, 2022, reports a 2 percent decrease in wages against inflation. We get the 2023 numbers from them around September. This is all preliminary numbers from BLS which shows an increase of about 4.3 percent in the “working class”. (production and nonsupervisory) Meaning they just barely broke past the 4 percent CPI inflation last year. The two years preceding were 8 and 4.7. And CPI doesn’t include food purchases where there’s been wild inflation for the last 3 years.
Tl;Dr - Yeah Zach Carter lied. He lied about that sentence and did a professional job of wondering why people could possibly be angry.
I don’t really think that the Gallup poll you linked refutes Carter’s point, actually. Gallup and Carter are examining completely different data, and honestly, Gallup doesn’t make a claim about what the cause is for these findings.
The poll states that 68% of Americans thought in December that the economy was worsening. But looking a little further, actually 64% of Democrats thought it was getting better, compared to only 8% of Republicans. It kind of feels like this is the actual information we should be concerned with in the poll, and that you’re only giving me part of the information for some reason.
Regarding the CPI, it does track food and beverage as a core category.
https://bls.gov/CPI/questions-and-answers/
The CPI represents all goods and services purchased for consumption by the reference population (U or W). BLS has classified all expenditure items into more than 200 categories, arranged into eight major groups (food and beverages, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education and communication, and other goods and services). Included within these major groups are various government-charged user fees, such as water and sewerage charges, auto registration fees, and vehicle tolls.
I agree we have a lot of work to do still, but I’m sure we can also agree that a significant portion of Americans are also not very informed and generally make poor financial choices.
You live in Wall St or in reality?
Because in reality the proletariat are fucked rn, regardless of what Wall St says is happening
And what pattern would that be?
The posts and comments you make.
Such as? Am I being singled out because of my dislike of Trump? Because I can assure you it’s a trait shared by a lot of people.
Lol no. You don’t just dislike trump. You’re trying to spin everything to look great for Biden too. Even this you can’t help but throw Trump’s name in here. And no you’re not being singled out. I’m not following you around Lemmy. I just take your stuff as I find it and it’s clearly biased.
Well it’s nice to be followed I guess, and I appreciate your perception but I think you are discounting that I may have a liberal bent that falls in line with Biden. It doesn’t look like you have anything specific.
Seriously? That’s your rebuttal? 🤦🏼♂️
like we don’t have eyes of our own and brains to think with.
You sound like a campaign commercial with an angry-eyebrowed white woman looking straight into the camera.
Oh? I was going more for the 1984 reference but maybe that’s the problem.
…highest rate of economic growth among nations in the G7, the lowest inflation, and the strongest wage growth. The unemployment rate hasn’t been this low for this long in half a century. Even accounting for inflation, wages are higher today than they were before the coronavirus pandemic…
Yo, can some of this wage growth trickle down to me already? Nobody in my circles is even getting standard merit raises, never mind the 6%+ each year we’d need to stay ahead of inflation. Most companies seem to be withholding raises, and enshittifying existing policies, as an underhanded way to get people to quit without doing actual layoffs.
In fact, I suspect slate is just making this up entirely, based on anecdotal experience. They go on to claim that the big recipients of these wage increases are the lowest paid workers. Does that mean minimum wage earners got some 50% increase to now make $12/hr? News flash: that still doesn’t afford you groceries in today’s economy.
They’re citing statistics.
YOU have the anecdotal evidence.
I’m sorry shit isn’t going so well for you and yes, it sucks to be kept down without much hope. I have been there - under Bush.
But it’s really fucking arrogant to say that because YOUR experience sucks the data is false and the press is lying.
There is nothing arrogant about recognizing that your living conditions have regressed over the course of the past 5 years, nor is there anything wrong with basing your decisions around how you percieve things to be.
Its a headline and story that’s been being trotted out for 2, almost 3 years. We keep being told the economy is ‘booming’ and yet the lived experience disagrees. I have the receipts that my live experience isn’t lying (they are quite literally grocery receipts). Our money isn’t going as far and wages have effectively stagnated since 2019. My power bill is twice what it was; no change in consumption. My grocery bill is also basically twice what it was. Again, no heads added or change in consumption. In fact, we cut out things. A couple of years ago, taking a big trip was totally reasonable. I don’t even feel like I can take weekends off any more.
What you’ve got to start realizing is that their economy is not our economy. No one is giving credit because there is no credit to give. The stock market going up and to the right means jack shit when you can’t afford groceries.
There is nothing arrogant about recognizing that your living conditions have regressed over the course of the past 5 years, nor is there anything wrong with basing your decisions around how you percieve things to be.
There is absolutely something wrong when you decide that your anecdotes trump statistical data, though. That’s just flat-out defective and invalid.
But which statistics?
The 1980 ones?
The 1990 ones?
The 2010 ones?
The ones I have in my budgeting software?
Should I believe ones I can make using my costco receipts or the ones whoever on the whatever show on MSNBC is repeating? What statistics we calculate, how we choose to include or exclude data in their formulation, and what we interpret them to mean are all subjective. Is it any more or less subjective than my lived experience?
You are being obtuse about how people make real decisions about their lives. They don’t and shouldn’t’ base them on statistics because the world is varied and not monolithic in experience. Experience and memory are a form of data, if not a great one. Experience always trumps statistics. People aren’t’ going to be making their decision in November based on statistics. They’ll be making them based on their lived experience.
Never claimed that it trumps their stats, simply that the character of the economy they describe does not mesh with reality. Kind of tired of the incessant gaslighting, when no significant changes to materially improve our living conditions have materialized.
Never claimed that it trumps their stats doesnt mesh with reality
your personal reality is the only perspective/experience, which everyone experiences, ergo that reality is right and trumps their stats
ill give you a personal experience. in the last decade in the UK I have made significant gains in my personal income. While living in a crumbling country determined to get everyone into poverty. My reality is good and comfortable but that is not the vast majority of “reality” as a whole. Im an outlier. As are you, in comparison to the stats.
In fact, I suspect slate is just making this up entirely, based on anecdotal experience.
Ok Mr Obtuse - I’m saying they can cherry pick stats to support their narrative all they want, but at the end of the day material living conditions for the majority of Americans have declined in this time period. Over 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck today, and cannot afford an emergency $400 expense. That number is up from 40% pre-pandemic. If you live in a major metro, open your window and look outside to see how the size of tent cities are multiplying. These people simply aren’t counted by the new metrics. How is this the strongest economy we’ve ever seen?
at the end of the day material living conditions for the majority of Americans have declined in this time period. Over 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck today, and cannot afford an emergency $400 expense. That number is up from 40% pre-pandemic.
See, now those are statistics! That’s a very different – and much more sound – argument than you were making before.
That’s not data that gives us information on standard of living or affordability though. They keep telling you about oranges and saying it means something about apples.
What you’ve got to start realizing is that their economy is not our economy.
I think you’ve really identified to crux of the matter here. The stock market is not the economy. To rich DC insiders, it’s everything, but to the other 99% of us, who gives a shit? Wake me up when we can do insider trading too I guess.
The meteoric rise of a select few chip manufacturers is what’s driving this “strong economy”, btw. How on earth is that considered sustainable economic success?
I think it’s the wage growth, lower inflation, and longest sustained low unemployment of my lifetime that drive that economic success.
I do however agree that too much attention is paid to the stock market, and that wage growth isn’t high enough.
Well considering wages have remained stagnant since the 1970’s, compared to skyrocketing productivity, I’m inclined to agree!
No, it’s just status quo to say the mainstream media is lying. The fuck have you been? They’ve done nothing but suck rich nobs off for the past three decades.
How do you think Trump got all that free press? It wasn’t ONLY because he’s a charismatic asshole.
Here’s Gallup actually asking the people and not an economist quoting the most generalized of statistics to cover up real conditions on the ground. It is entirely possible for the economy to grow, for unemployment to drop, and inflation to be less, while the working class is evicted en masse.
63% of U.S. adults say recent price increases have caused financial hardship for their family. This includes 17% who say it is a severe hardship affecting their ability to maintain their standard of living and 46% who report it is a moderate hardship but does not jeopardize their standard of living. Another 37% of Americans say inflation is not a hardship at all.
The current 63% saying rising prices are a personal hardship reflects a continuation of peak concern on this measure since Gallup started monitoring it in November 2021. In that initial reading, 45% reported a severe or moderate hardship. The rate inched up in 2022 even as inflation ebbed, perhaps reflecting the cumulative effect of higher prices rather than the rate itself.
Those in lower-income households (76%) are more likely than those in middle-income households (64%) and higher-income households (54%) to say price increases are causing them hardship. However, income differences are even more pronounced when looking just at those saying the impact is severe. Lower-income Americans (30%) are three times as likely as high-income adults (10%) and almost twice as likely as middle-income adults (16%) to characterize high prices as a severe hardship.
Maybe… just maybe… the numbers about the economy arent true.
But surely the govt and fed wouldnt lie to us?
Nah they’re true. They just aren’t numbers that describe the working class. They describe things as a whole with no regard for the parts.
Thank you, that’s helpful information! And not at all surprising, as those nearest the bottom are usually the last to feel relief from economic downturns.
I think a lot of what helped us rebuild the economy is that during covid a ton of people completed their education and were ready to move up. Those who weren’t able to do that are still suffering and left behind to an extent.
Yeah. But the problem here is the Biden campaign cannot fathom why their messaging is making people mad. And of course they’re going to be mad if they’re still hurting and he refuses to believe it.
suspect slate is just making this up entirely, based on anecdotal experience. They go on to claim that the big recipients of these wage increases are the lowest paid workers. Does that mean minimum wage earners got some 50% increase to now make $12/hr? News flash: that still doesn’t afford you groceries in today’s economy.
I mean they “aren’t” in that they’ve got citations, but its important to dig into that.
President Joe Biden spent most of his recent State of the Union address celebrating his economic record, with good reason. There is no denying the numbers: The United States currently enjoys the highest rate of economic growth among nations in the G7, the lowest inflation, and the strongest wage growth. The unemployment rate hasn’t been this low for this long in half a century. Even accounting for inflation, wages are higher today than they were before the coronavirus pandemic, and the biggest wage gains have accrued among the lowest-paid workers, resulting in a dramatic reduction in overall wage inequality. The economy is even outperforming among communities that are often excluded from boom-time gains. Biden has overseen the lowest Black unemployment rate on record and the lowest ever unemployment rate for workers with disabilities. The American economy isn’t perfect, but by any historical standard it is very, very good.
Salon is treating these metrics as fixed objects with some magical immutable definition. But the reality is that we’ve simply redefined what these tools mean, and then accepted the redefinition as if it always meant that. But quite literally, the way these numbers are calculated have been redefined to be basically useless. Look at inflation and CPI: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts. I can go backwards from my grocery receipts and look at what individual items cost me. We’ve seen at LEAST 10% annual inflation on basically every item on our grocery bill since 2019-2020. Almost every item is 40% more expensive than it was with some items being almost doubled in price.
Look at unemployment, where the Fed conveniently just ignore long term unemployment: https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts. We lost union jobs for 401ks, then we lost full time jobs with benefits for the gig economy. Shits fucked and we’ve got the Feds and Salon blowing sunshine up our asses.
Right, these record unemployment and CPI numbers are derived by changing the calculations, it’s amazing how quickly that’s been forgotten. This is the true power of controlling the narrative of the American propaganda machine.
For those “enjoying” this record employment, it still means busting ass working 2-3 low paying jobs just to barely make ends meet. Those same jobs won’t let you get above 32 hours either, so forget about benefits afforded to full time employees, such as marginally more affordable healthcare. And over 62% of Americans are literally living paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford an emergency $400 expense. Good thing they have backup financing available at payday lenders on every street corner I suppose…
It’s really sad how brutal America is to its own citizens. And mind boggling how twisted Americans are to deny this is happening at all until they’re blue in the face. Open your eyes and your ears people, think for yourself, and question authority.
I knew there had to be something fishy considering the video game industry alone has laid off 30,000 people in the past 2 years - 20,000 last year and a further 10,000 in January and February alone of this year.
This really illustrates the original problem. One point of view can look at overall statistics and say things are going great while the other point t of view can focus on job instability affecting real people.
Yeah, the things that really stand out to me on this particular example are the quotes from people in the industry saying that it’s the worst instability in the industry in the past 15 years (so since the 2008 recession) in an industry know for its lack of job stability (it used to almost be guaranteed that devs would be laid off after a project finished) and that up to 73% of developers say that they’ve been affected by the layoffs, either being laid off themselves or somebody they know getting laid off like members of their team.
I watch a lady on YouTube who works for Sony who said that the average time to find a new job is 2 months, and that with the number of layoffs it’s very likely that many of these developers will never work in the industry again.
It’s just another example of the situations like companies bragging about record-breaking profits while an increasing number of people making six-figure salaries are living paycheck to paycheck.
Right, these record unemployment and CPI numbers are derived by changing the calculations…
P-Hacking?
P-hacking is adjusting your data, but the formulation of the P-value statistic doesn’t change.
Here they just straight up changed the recipe.
Thanks for these helpful links, but I don’t see any problem with the inflation chart. The claim of lowest in half a century is false either way.
I think I’m just echoing your points, but I wanted to add that ‘inflation’ or ‘CPI’ aren’t immutable mathematical constructs. The statistics the article is citing have taken on more convenient to the status quo interpretations over time, to the point of being kind of devoid of meaning.
For example, real unemployment having gone up and never really down after every major financial crisis, yet we’re being told ‘unemployment is at its lowest point ever’.
My favorite is they always treat inflation like a static thing. 2 percent this year means 3 percent last year doesn’t matter. You should be happy. But the reality is that’s 5 percent inflation versus whatever raise you did, (or didn’t) get in the same time period.
3 percent inflation now doesn’t erase 10 percent inflation in previous years. We need to be deflating. But that’s a dirty word because a lot of important people get their income steam from constant inflation.
In some places they did just get big pay raises for minimum wage workers. Too bad that was the previous amount needed and COVID/Greed inflation pushed the amount needed well above what they got raises for.
COVID/Greed inflation pushed the amount needed well above what they got raises for.
Did you read the article which had citations saying it’s the complete opposite of that?
The opposite of what? I did read the article but if you want to reference it then quote it so we know what you’re talking about. The only relevant section I remember from the top of my head was something like, “pay raises resulted in higher wages even after taking inflation into account.”
But that’s some really fun weasel wording. If I’m making 2 more dollars an hour in real terms, but I’m still 8 Dollars below affording a place to live it doesn’t really help me does it? We’ve been trying to get a 15 dollar minimum wage for over a decade. What’s the effective increase since then? What’s the new number we actually need? Where I live that’s 25 dollars an hour now. So getting 15 dollars finally isn’t helping.
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There are a bunch of states where minimum wage is now over $15/hour. My area has a shortage of workers for low pay jobs so pretty much everywhere is starting closer to $20. That’s still not a lot but certainly a huge increase
Because the economy sucks for everyone who isn’t a landlord or investor.
I honestly doubt the headline of this article so much, id sooner believe it was intentionally written as a psyop to get people to complain about the opposite position
Fortunately you don’t have to limit yourself to the headline; there’s a whole article with a whole set of statistical links that make the case
You’re free to disagree of course, but just the fact that it doesn’t match your preconceptions doesn’t at all mean that it’s wrong
The stock market is doing well not the economy. The BLS statistics are bullshit. They are reporting explosive job growth when in reality full time jobs are down and there are more part time jobs, contributing to that bullshit statistic. You can scroll through more of my posts if you want to see more of my political/economics commentary
I study economics, math, Physics, AI engineering, and more. I was poly maths major. Please don’t condescend to me as if I don’t understand statistics, it’s a really easy math to lie with.
You are welcome to join the conversation here then. We looked at quite a bit of data and I think I did a pretty good job at defending the idea that the poor are, in fact, getting substantially better-off over time under Biden even under pretty challenging economic conditions. My interlocutor, for whatever reason, refused at every turn to just say “oh okay the data seem to agree with you,” and kept throwing stuff at the wall until he eventually claimed that it didn’t actually matter if a typical person was better off or not, at which point I decided we didn’t need to talk anymore. But if you want to pick that up and have a data-based disagreement with any of it, we can rap.
And yeah I was a little bit of a dick about it. I apologize (for real). I’ve been speaking with people who haven’t been real reasonable, and it’s made me rude when talking about it, but if you wanna have a polite factually-based discussion I’m up for that. If you plan to ignore all of that detailed sourcing and analysis and just make again the absolutely unjustified claim that I or the OP article are looking for some reason at the fucking stock market, then I’m going to be rude to you. Up to you though; I’m happy being reasonable if we’re being reasonable.
My interlocutor, for whatever reason, refused at every turn to just say “oh okay the data seem to agree with you,” and kept throwing stuff at the wall until he eventually claimed that it didn’t actually matter if a typical person was better off or not, at which point I decided we didn’t need to talk anymore. But if you want to pick that up and have a data-based disagreement with any of it, we can rap.
The reason is he started with a conclusion and worked backwards. Any data you provide to the contrary is “fake news” from Democrats, irrelevant, etc. You can’t use reason on the unreasonable. That’s why they “gish gallop” from topic to topic, just trying to see if something sticks.
Lol, fair. Sorry and thanks.
Edit: also, it’s not like most people would expect something intelligible form my username
So, that comment section is heavily nested and hard to read on mobile
I read through that article and to be honest, I think it’s trash. I’ve already mentioned why the BLS statistics are deceiving, but even the article doesn’t hide that the economy isn’t doing better, it’s just the US is doing better than all the other countries. It doesn’t emphasize that we’re all dropping in performance, but justifies our economy is good because we aren’t suffering as hard.
But the rest of the world is suffering worse than we are, because they depend on our currency, and we have policy control over that. It was a decision to make ourselves relatively better off than our competition by making policy that harms them more.
I’m not saying anything nice about Trump, and he’s a more extreme version of the following, but Bidens policy is still “America First with a finger up to the rest of the world if that’s what it takes”
Please close this thread. Our corporate overlords assure us the economy is quite healthy and vibrant. Please maintain your spending on consumer goods, vote Biden, live long and prosper.
Good? I’m definitely not making what I should be, adjusted for inflation (23.6%). I’m not even asking to make MORE just literally what I made in 2018, adjusted. I was fine right there.
If the company doesn’t pay you fairly for your work, you throttle down your work.
No, that’s a total shit attitude. You jump ship if you’re not fairly compensated. I went from $14 -> $18-22 -> $39 (+mad benefits with each move, 10-years).
Build your skills and education, JUMP. FFS, young people act like they’re being used by these companies. Instead, use them.
Young and old, we all know lifetime careers at the same company is a thing of the past. Fuck. Them. Use them for resume ammo and jump if you’re not happy.
Well, yes and no. The work is easy, my manager is great, I have complete control of the code and two juniors to do shit I don’t want to. So, it has perks. But…. They’re gonna have to step it up, because after another year or two here I’ll have quite an impressive list of accomplishments as a lead developer, and that could easily move me up and out.
I’m gonna wait until November to see if I have to jump ship to Canada though.
I’m already doing negative work.
In this thread: “Biden did not have a 1-on-1 conversation with my manager that resulted in a massive raise, so I declare these statistics invalid!”
This seems to happen a lot on Lemmy, makes me miss the Economics subreddit.
I know that not everyone has had the opportunity to take classes in economics, but the amount of people who are unable to see past their own nose is incredible.
How would we prefer our leaders to make policy decisions? Should they pick a random 10 people and ask what they think, or would it be better to gather a wide range of data on the topic to build an understanding of the economic impacts for 300M+ people? I’d argue that it would be irresponsible for policymakers to ignore the aggregate statistics, but commenters in this thread seem dead set on asserting that because their personal circumstances don’t follow the narrative, the statistics must be a lie.
Good luck trying to explain to working-class people that the struggle they’re feeling is only because they don’t understand economics well enough.
Good luck trying to explain to tech-savvy upper-income Lemmy users that average income adjusted for inflation, at the bottom end of the scale, has actually been rising faster than the grocery prices, and that that’s a good thing.
I’ve been trying for a couple of days now with apparently no success.
Don’t need the luck, I don’t chase fool’s errands.
Sorry, but Lemmy is full of libertarian chodes. They got no clue, just a sense of moral superiority.
I’m not a Libertarian nor a chode. Big words from someone that has to leave the basement to count as socializing.
What a chode thing to say.
You’re a taint!
So you socialize in your basement?
I don’t have a basement ;)
Fascinating that you took that personally when you first admit that you don’t self-identify as one of those. Someone might think that your comment is actually disingenuous.
I’m just communicating how you choose to. Guess it isn’t effective.
They should ask
TwoRandom_english_words_usernamewhether that particular person is spending more at the grocery store than they were in 2019.That seems to be the metric, a lot of people feel very strongly about it
It feels like lots of people holding their breath until “prices go back down”, passing out from a lack of oxygen, waking up, asking why the prices are still so damn high, then holding their breath again when they’re told, “this is just the price now, deal with it”.
I mean don’t get me wrong, it would be neat if we could go back to 1990 prices, but that just isn’t how this works, nor should it be our goal.
so i read the article and all the coments here, as well as most of the cited links and some other articles i thought would help. im not an economist but i know most of you aren’t either.
are we just allergic to admitting the economy might just be mid?
why are we so horny to say JOE BIDEN GOOD or JOE BIDEN BAD? when really it’s quite clear that many many things are bad, many people lost jobs, people are struggling, people are scared AND ALSO it could be a lot worse, because we’ve seen it be a lot worse in recent history?
and everyone railing against Biden in these comments: so are we cool with voting third party? letting the spoiler effect spoil? shudder voting Trump? what are your intentions? the primaries are over. the time to set up a third line to the trolley problem is past.
what are we doing? maybe we should pick a better struggle.
go unionize your workplace. go help out your neighbors and friends, go and participate in local government. vote for biden to minimize the violence that will inevitably occur. plant a garden for your community. support local artists who might be disabled or unable to work. tip your waiter. be decent? be kind. i don’t know im literally just a girl. whatever
So many people consider any kind of nuance to be weakness and failure.
why are we so horny to say JOE BIDEN GOOD or JOE BIDEN BAD?
I’ll 100% agree with this – I actually feel pretty weird coming in and saying all good things about any establishment Democrat like some kind of faithful CNN viewer. For me I actually try to make a deliberate effort to air criticism of Biden where it’s due (bottom comment here or talking about his support for Israel), although I can kind of understand the desire to respond to “Biden bad Biden bad Biden bad” in this sort of endless drumbeat with saying he’s good on everything, just to sort of “counterbalance.”
But yeah there’s nothing wrong with just saying it the way it is, good or bad.
go unionize your workplace. go help out your neighbors and friends, go and participate in local government. vote for biden to minimize the violence that will inevitably occur. plant a garden for your community. support local artists who might be disabled or unable to work. tip your waiter. be decent? be kind.
1,000% agree. Internet is nice to be able to communicate about interests that maybe people in your real world environment don’t share. But nothing about real political and social change will happen from typing a comment.
For me I actually try to make a deliberate effort to air criticism of Biden where it’s due
You’re the very first person on many threads to accuse Biden’s critics of being Russian shills.
Those are not mutually exclusive statements.
I can believe in giving fair criticism of Biden, while believing also that the absolute tsunami of total bullshit criticism that comes in a very particular style of interaction that’s markedly different from organic comments, is probably exactly what it seems like it is.
I don’t think I ever accused any specific person of being specifically Russian, but yes I believe that most of the drumbeat of Biden-is-bad-for-this-made-up-reason-no-I-will-take-no-questions comments represent an organized shilling effort.
why are we so horny to say JOE BIDEN GOOD or JOE BIDEN BAD?
I mainly object to one: people with that position seem to be ignoring data, trends, news from last week. But how do you discuss that people need to pay attention to the world instead of sticking to their beliefs, without appearing to be the other zealot?
Biden doesn’t get the credit because from a purely pocketbook perspective, prices are still going up.
Telling the average citizen “Hey, you know, inflation is only 3%, not 9.9% like it was…”
They’re going “Yeah, but it’s an extra 3% ON TOP of the 9%.”
And yeah, there’s a lot of factors… corporate greed, bird flu raising the price of eggs, etc. etc. The average person doesn’t care about that, all they care is their weekly grocery bill keeps going up and there’s no sign of it coming back down.
“Average annual food-at-home prices were 5.0 percent higher in 2023 than in 2022. For context, the 20-year historical level of retail food price inflation is 2.5 percent per year.”
Good time to buy pork though I guess!
I encourage you to read the article
I did, there was zero mention of how food prices went up 9.9% in 2022, another 5% in 2023 and are still going up.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings/
It’s no surprise Biden doesn’t get credit for “the economy”, it’s because your average American is spending more, getting less, and not seeing the benefit.
You can’t talk about the economy without talking about pocketbook issues and this article bends over backwards to avoid saying anything about that.
not to mention housing still is unaffordable.
The economy currently has an outlier problem where a few very rich people are posting massive gains. As soon as you remove them from the analysis the portrait is a grim picture of austerity and price fixing.
It’s actually the total opposite of that. Inflation-adjusted income is falling for the top 10%, while it’s rising for enough of the lowest-wage earners to boost the overall average picture to inflation-adjusted wage growth every single year, even during monster inflation caused by Covid + supply chain issues + corporate greed.
daily costs for most people have risen and rich people tend to have less of their income spent on the things actually going up in price so my guess is wages are a response.
Okay, let me be a little more complete since “inflation adjusted” seems to be confusing and I feel like maybe you’re not the only one.
Per capita income, current dollars:
- 2019: $55,311
- 2020: $53,811
- 2021: $59,905
- 2022: $64,984
Now that’s not a fair comparison, because exactly in 2022 was when post-Covid and supply chain and corporate greed fueled inflation to its peak. So, what we do is correct it down to constant dollars, which gives us inflation adjusted income in constant 2015 dollars:
- 2019: $52,070
- 2020: $50,024
- 2021: $53,417
- 2022: $54,274
… i.e. even after accounting for the factor you’re claiming means we’re making less, we’re making more.
Income for the top 10% of wage earners actually went down by about 5% from 2020 to 2022, and income at the bottom tiers (again inflation adjusted) actually went up by enough to counterbalance it and result still was a net gain.
But, if a Republican who encouraged austerity through the pandemic, or a centrist who did not provide as much stimulus were in office, then it would have been more likely a repeat or worse than '08 with 10% unemployment… Which shitty situation would you rather have?
“Losing slowly is the same as winning” -democrats and their useful idiots
I’ve actually seen price softening on some of the items that went up the most during last year. I know because they were items I used to be buying and then stopped because of price increase, and then now they’ve dropped. Not quite as low as they used to be, but definitely lower than their wish-flation pricing strategy.
Luckily for my life expectancy, double stuff Oreos are still sky high, even with shrinkflation
Well it looks like there’s a recent drop for normal Oreos down to $5.49 from $5.99: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B078PDK5B5
Doesn’t seem to have transferred to Double yet, but there’s hope for your pancreas’s demise yet!
I mean, I like pork, but we haven’t been having a lot of bacon. I could go for some beef.
They had to put a sign up at my local grocer in the bacon section “Please note the increased price of bacon” because so many people were gasping at the register and deciding they didn’t want it. Perishable things can’t go back after it’s been in someone’s cart for an unknown amount of time so it was getting thrown out.
I guess the economy really is doing great. Which is somehow worse, because if this is what a good economy looks like I don’t want to imagine what a bad one looks like.
Two thirds of people can’t handle a $500 expense. Three quarters don’t have a month of expenses saved. And a third of people making over $100,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck. (Source 2023)
So maybe the problem isn’t that the economy is broken and needs fixed, but that it’s working correctly and needs replaced.
maybe i am dumb so please help me out here but
35% of people making more than $100k per year are living paycheck to paycheck
how is this an indication of a significant struggle? $100k is a shit ton of money, no? that’s the fabled six figures? and that includes people making more? could not “living paycheck to paycheck” be chalked up to maxing out IRAs and 401ks followed by a decent chunk of using disposable income?
edit thanks 4 the downvotes to my genuine question you guys are truly amazing 😻😇😎 my time on this website is better because of you ✨💫🤩
Because many ppl that earn that kind of cash live in high col area…where ur expenses eat up everything unless u are dual income. In bay area u pay 3k a month for an apartment…and food/gas bills easely add up to 2k…its rough…
thanks for the response this makes a lot of sense
i guess my mind cannot comprehend the finances of someone making more than i’ll ever hope to see 😭 so i have a hard time feeling bad for that population segment but maybe that’s something i should self reflect on
It’s one of those things where the money sounds good until you realize you also have to live somewhere expensive to get it.
I could conceivably move to somewhere like ND and save a ton of money on housing and the necessities, but the limited job market could also mean that I would be unable to continue in the same career.
And switching jobs sound great, unless you’re in an industry seeing large changes post-pandemic. It’s certainly kept me from jumping ship. At least until I see my area of work stabilize.
To add to it, I am doing alright overall. But my student loans kicked back in, food prices have climbed, even my monthly utilities have increased as of a few months ago. So I might not be worried about keeping the lights on, I do feel the pinch and it doesn’t make me feel overjoyed about the economy.
Once you get that fabled six figures you start doing things like getting married, buying a house, and starting a family. Child care is expensive. Health care for children is expensive. Houses are expensive, especially maintenance.
If someone has a family of four and is making $100,000 a year I can definitely see them living paycheck to paycheck.
my opinion has already been swayed by other comments but this is not one of them, sorry haha
i know many people with families, children, and houses who make less than half of six figures, who may never hope to get six figures
I also think it’s not as good an income as you expect. While every place has a range of incomes, in general, you’ll get six figure incomes in high cost of living areas. Sure it’s a higher income, sure it’s probably better but after accounting for how much extra everything costs, it’s not that much better
Where I live, plenty of people are making six figures, but the cheapest single family home will be well over $500k and even older run down houses are approaching $1M. Combine that with higher interest and my point is that $100k income may sound like a lot to many of you, that income level is common here but you can’t buy a house on it. Given how expensive cars are, you probably aren’t driving a new car. You’re probably not buying the latest electronics. You’re probably not going out to eat very often. You’re not hiring a house keeper or yard guy. And if you do any of these, you no longer have disposable income. It may be well over median income but you’re not getting any of the trappings of “well off”
And a third of people making over $100,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck.
Okay. That’s their fault, lol.
You can literally buy a house for <$100k. These people just feel entitled to live in major cities and cook none of their meals.
I’m sorry… did Biden magically end late-stage capitalism?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
They conveniently underlined all the bullshit.
For example:
Highest rate of economic growth (reflecting even more of the wealth being distributed among the Uber wealthy)
Lowest inflation (not counting housing, healthcare, energy or food)
Strongest wage growth (maybe in nominal terms if you ignore the actual increase in the cost of essential goods and services putting people behind where they were pre-pandemic)
Biggest wage gain among lowest paid workers (who still make less than they did before 2019 and somehow overlooking that almost all the gains in the economy since 2019 went to a few specific billionaires)
Lowest unemployment in x years ( they just keep redefining unemployment so that instead of it meaning ‘people who can’t find enough gainful employment to pay essential bills’, we limit it to people that have no job right now but did in the last six months and have made x number of applications while not collecting any income. It’s a damn joke)
They say “accounting for inflation” but then you have to remember their definition of inflation does not count housing, healthcare, energy or food so it’s nonsense anyway.
The wealth gap is wider now than 2018. I don’t even know where this claim that people are better off or the wealth gap is shrinking comes from… oh they got a 6% raise and inflation in sensible terms (not even counting housing and healthcare but including energy and food) is close to 9%.
And the black unemployment rate much like the unemployment rate itself is a cooked number that ignores most of the people that are black and unemployed/underemployed. It just doesn’t give a shit if you can eat, have a place to live or can afford to go to the doctor, it just cares if you have a job right now or if you recently did and are still looking.
I am on my phone so I haven’t had a chance to look up the disability unemployment claim, but as someone that lives with and supports people with disabilities, this might actually be real. Remote work is a real social revolution and it is making lives better.
My point is, as long as articles like this used continue to use cooked books to justify rose tinted viewings they will continue to think Americans are just ungrateful and ignorant of how great things are.
Dishonest stuff like this undermines the credibility of revenue driven media and leads to blurring the lines between a community getting high on hopium and Trump’s firehose of bullshit.
Do you have citations for all this detailed rebuttal? Even just explaining verbally why it is you think their inflation numbers wouldn’t include housing, healthcare, energy, or food?
The fact that they specifically said that wages are higher now even accounting for inflation, and you’re saying that wages in real terms are now lower because of inflation (without commenting on the discrepancy), makes me think that maybe you’re just throwing out claims instead of having done your own detailed point-by-point analysis of what they’re saying.
If you click on the inflation link to the treasury, it says it excludes food and energy.
And if you play around with this calculator, you’ll see that food inflation is currently at 2.2%, the lowest it’s ever been since February 2020, when it was 1.8%. Energy has had some wild fluctuations around a fairly constant mean, including a big spike after Covid, but it’s currently actually back down to a negative 1.9%. It’s actually pretty interesting to look at the different metrics on that page, because they all show variations of the big spike after Covid but the return of pre-Covid levels afterwards. Housing is also an interesting one to look at, just bear in mind that it shows pure value (i.e. going steadily up) and not the percent change year by year like the other inflation metrics.
So… the argument is perfectly accurate, and the numbers shown good economic performance, but because one particular metric doesn’t include some numbers (because those numbers need to be excluded to do apples-to-apples international comparisons which is what they’re specifically talking about there), let’s throw the whole thing out and say Biden must actually doing a bad job because obviously the numbers that aren’t included are bad (even though when you look at them they’re not)? Kinda sounds like that’s the argument.
Just because food inflation is low now doesn’t mean that I can leave Costco for less than $200 for absolute basics. So, to your point, if they included food in the inflation estimate, it doesn’t seem like it would change much. To the articles point, and the point of the comment above us, people don’t believe the economy is doing well because they can’t afford food.
Part of the point of the article is that wages, compared with inflation, have gone up.
There were people who couldn’t afford food before Biden, and now even though he got handed an absolute economic shit show, there are quite a bit less of them than there were before. Surely that’s relevant?
You’re right. The comment above appears to be bullshit.
So when was deflation? If you’re not worried about the inflation of previous years there must have been deflation. So when did that happen?
Or is this just more ignoring the reality of inflation to gaslight people?
It stacks, year after year, unless there’s deflation.
I got a pop quiz for you
If wages have grown relative to inflation
Then has the stacked impact of the reality of wages combined with the stacked impact of the reality of inflation made it easier for the average person to buy groceries? Or harder?
To any given person, it’ll just seem like groceries are more expensive. That’s always true (because, they are) and when inflation has been high for a couple of years it’ll feel really true and really tangible. That’s why these “I don’t know what you’re talking about I’m struggling, fuckin grocery bills and rent” talking points are so relatable. Because almost certainly the person you’re talking to will feel some version of that. And grocery prices are an easy touch-point to make it feel true.
But to a person who didn’t have a job before, and now does, it doesn’t feel like “the economic program” got better. It feels like they got a job. To someone who joined a union as those are making a start at a comeback for the last couple of years, or someone who was able to get one of those $15/hr entry level jobs that used to be impossible during and before Trump and are now becoming the standard, it doesn’t necessarily feel like things are “easy” now. And of course you can’t say Biden’s really fully responsible for that all happening, because he’s not.
If inflation at the grocery store is partly Biden’s fault, though, then why can’t the growth of unions and increase in wages at the bottom end of the scale be partly to his credit?
That’s the whole point of the OP article. The reality is, those $15/hr jobs and that union membership came about under Biden, and the wage growth that’s happened has been large enough to outpace even a couple years of massive inflation as Covid’s supply-chain issues and government spending really came home to roost. The fact that the growth is actually larger than the pain, even with those challenges, is really remarkable. And it’s weird that that’s not really any kind of significant narrative in the media. And it’s definitely weird that the inflation is somehow Biden’s fault while the wage growth that outpaced it isn’t to his credit.
Yes it’s harder. That’s the point. And deflecting it with, “why doesn’t he get credit for good stuff?!?” Is bad faith. People are pissed off he’s trying to gaslight them, just like you just tried to do with your example where people only pay attention to groceries. When in reality they know what’s left over at the end of the month. They can see it shrinking. They can see the day where they can’t pay rent coming.
Treating people like they’re dumb is not a winning move in the Democratic party. It hasn’t been one since my dad was my age.
Yes it’s harder.
Wrong. If wages have grown relative to inflation, then it’s gotten easier.
Right?
Food inflation of 2.2% now doesn’t mean anything when it was 5% in 2023.
That’s what’s killing Biden. People are spending more at the grocery store week after week or they’re getting less.
2.2% on top of 5% in 2023 on top of 9.9% in 2022…
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings/
Tru dat. My point (and the OP article point I think) is that the stacked impact of wage growth, especially at the bottom, has actually outpaced even the significant amount of inflation. And that the latter gets talked about all the time but not the former (which doesn’t have to be nefarious - everyone feels grocery price even if nothing has changed, whereas wage growth a lot of times feels like “well yeah but I got a new job, of course I’m making more now”).
You might find this useful.
How many times do we need to spell it out for you finance bros before you get it? The working class does not care about how Wallstreet is performing. The working class does not care about your cherry-picked misrepresentations of macroeconomic issues, nor do they trust them. The working class cares about the price of their grocery bill and the cost of housing, both of which have seen record increases in the last 4 years. You can shake your heads all you want and blame social media but until we dont have to chose between paying for medication or paying for groceries we are not going to buy any of the BS you are selling.
In norway we have a word called “kjøpekraft” or purchasing power. It is basically how much goods you can buy for your salery. And about the only statistic that is relevant for normal people. Tried to find something similar in that article, but did not.
Americans, in our typical way, have a system of economic reporting that allows those in power to sort of hide that elegant metric in a combination of other statistics.
Here, you’d have to compare the rate of change of the Consumer Price Index against wage growth. And also find some way to factor in the cost of gasoline (which has more volatile price changes and as such isn’t included in CPI figures).
Housing was not mentioned, and it is shit, what else was not included here?
A lot. A lot wasn’t mentioned. Like how that low inflation doesn’t erase previous inflation.
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How has the Lorenz curve shifted over the past 30 years?
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What percentage of people’s income is going on housing?
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What percentage of people :
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are living with food insecurity, or are reliant on food banks and other charities?
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are living with their parents as adults?
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need second jobs in order to afford basic necessities?
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are in casual, gig or otherwise insecure employment?
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cannot afford adequate healthcare?
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will never own their own home?
All broken down by percentile, please. And how have those numbers shifted over the last 30 years?
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