Who cares how well the stock market is doing if we all got mass fired to make it happen
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.
…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.
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.
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.
What are they supposed to do? They improved the economy. People refuse to believe it.
I’ll give you a moment to rage.
Okay, now that’s done, consider it from their perspective. The data tells them they have succeeded. People refuse to believe it. What are they supposed to do? Succeed again? People will just reject it again.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they just did a heel turn and said, welp, guess who isn’t a bunch of ungrateful fucks? Wealthy people. Tax cuts ahoy! Found a new voter base!
I refuse to believe they are that dense. The first thing you learn in economics class is that the top level statistics like GDP, Unemployment, Median Wage, and Inflation are too broad to tell the whole story. That’s why we have the surveys. When the top level numbers are good and people are still complaining it’s not just PR or ungratefulness. There’s really something wrong. And at the end of the day if things are normal, then you’re losing the messaging battle. These guys are completely detached from reality in one way or another. But considering the survey results I’m pretty sure it’s actually hard to put a monthly budget together for 63% of Americans right now.
And at the end of the day if things are normal, then you’re losing the messaging battle.
This is it. Facts don’t matter, only perception. We’re in a post-truth era.
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.
No no no things are great please stop saying things aren’t great have you tried picking up another job? We added a record number of new jobs last quarter, maybe you can help us beat it again!
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command
Nobody in my circles
Imo this is the heart of the problem. The economy is getting better for poor people. But middle class people complain the loudest. And middle class people don’t interact with poor people, so they don’t see any improvement.
I think this is where Biden messed up. Helping the poor is the right thing to do, but politicians have ignored the poor for generations for a reason: the middle class is what wins or loses elections. You need to keep the middle class happy. The middle class owns the social media airwaves. The poor have no voice.
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.
All these tech bros on Lemmy making over 6 figures calling themselves “working class” is really funny
Working class doesn’t mean poor, it means you don’t own business assets and generally that you don’t profit off the labour of others. It’s a convenient method of control to keep working class people so divided that the fight remains amongst ourselves instead of it being focused on improving things for everyone.
Working class doesn’t mean poor,
No, but a lot of upper middle class people are sure happy to exploit the connotation of poverty from the phrase.
People making $30k/yr and people making $300k/yr have nothing in common except they both hate they people making $1m/yr. They don’t belong to the same class. They just have a mutual enemy.
Sorry, but Lemmy is full of libertarian chodes. They got no clue, just a sense of moral superiority.
These articles are starting to annoy me. There’s no yardstick that says “Economy: terrible <-> great”. It depends on who you are, how much income you make, what kind of assets you hold, what kind of debt you hold, etc. Ask different people and you will get different answers.
If you poll congressmen regarding the health of the economy and then poll the next 100 people that walk out of your local Dollar General, you’ll probably get a lot different answers.
We can talk specifics like inflation, rates of household saving, etc. but just trying to say “the economy is great/terrible” is overly reductive and doesn’t really take into account the country as a whole.
Slate is not known for its nuance. Not that it doesn’t have a lot of company in that regard, but since this OP is a Slate article, well…
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.
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”
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
I live in San Francisco. Things are so expensive here $100k/yr is considered “low income” and qualifies you for government assistance programs.
WOW
yep i am seeing the point here, thank you! 😊
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 think the problem is lemmy is so privileged that none of you have ever known any actual poor people, which is the group benefiting most from Bidens economy. The middle class (which is what all you people are, no you’re not “working class”, that’s not a thing, you’re middle class) is about the same. The upper class is slightly worse off, but they started so far ahead it’s difficult to tell that without looking at the stats.
no you’re not “working class”
Please explain this to my boss.
Easy:
Dear Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod’s boss. There is no such thing as “working class”. It’s a useless distinction. Thank you.
Oh please, do get off your high horse. My entire family is poor as shit and everyone is struggling. Also, “upper”, “middle”, “lower”, all just words meant to divide this working class you disavow against itself against the capitalist class.
If you work to earn your living instead of letting your investments do it for you, you’re working class.
Exactly, so the single mom struggling on $12k/yr and the corporate executive making $5 million/yr are both “working class”. It’s such a broad category it’s useless, except to provide cover for people making a lot of money who want to pretend they’re poor.
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.
Spoken like a true C-Suite-er.
edit glitched double comment sorry
I’m sorry… did Biden magically end late-stage capitalism?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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
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.
