So what was his response to this revelation? “Ahh, well, nevertheless…”?
Well that makes me feel a bit better about our economy then lol
Ahh yes the price of buying a new propane tank (not swapping like you said) is one reason I won’t be voting for Biden. Trump Tanks would only cost half that.
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This whole exchange is just a repeat of what happened in 2020 and 2021 with vaccines. People are justifiably worried about inflation (like they were worried about COVID), the technocrats’ first order control systems broke down early on (like they did with COVID), people hate the more blunt technocratic control mechanisms (like they did with COVID), and all that anxiety and anger and lack of media literacy skills is the natural breeding ground for misinformation (like it was with COVID). You will never be able to reason these people down to a more rational view, they’re furious and scared “anti-vaxxers” about the economy.
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I had dinner with friends last night who earnestly asked if my visit to Seattle was ruined by all drug riddled homeless people because Seattle had legalized all drugs. He’s a lawyer and though he is a little overly fond of Elon Musk isn’t a conservative, there are weird sources of “news” out there.
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The economy is so bad that the only escape is to go to one’s favorite restaurant. They pack the airports, they ram the ramparts. All that shit. It’s terrible.
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I think the vast vast majority of people simply dislike Biden and are readily willing to blame him for all slights real and imagined. Basically the only people not in this category are the EDem types and let’s not pretend they dont live in their own version of a fantasy world where Biden has accomplished incredible progressive things and has been more than a placeholder for 4 years before we resume our descent into full blown fascism. To them Biden isn’t a stumbling, barely coherent old man. He has a “stutter”. These people also tout the economy as a success of Biden in much the same delusional way as the other side blames the “horrible” economy on him.
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This. BiL flew to Seattle for an Alaska cruise and said Seattle was amazing except you walk 5 feet and it’s Mogadishu with all of the drugs, homeless, and lawlessness 0/10 would not return.
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He thought Seattle was a super-white city but saw a black person?
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Probably several. This was indeed deeply disturbing. Pretty sure “they” came from the wide open southern border with the rest of the invaders.
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tldr: wage growth among blue collar/non-college educated workers has begun to outpace wage growth among college-educated/white collar workers for the first time in over 25 years, blue collar workers are more likely to be part of the MAGA cult who are going to say the economy is bad no matter what until Trump gets back in office and have no problems voting against their own best interests, Dem base is increasingly made up of college-educated voters who have not experienced the same wage growth since the pandemic compared to the country as a whole.
It’s not quite morning in America. Joe Biden’s economy isundeniably strong almost every way you look at it, such that he’s begun campaigning on the media portmanteau “Bidenomics,” pitching a Reaganesque story with an FDR twist—that his combination of industrial policy and pro-union support is rebuilding the economy “from the middle out, and the bottom up.” There’s just one big problem, though: Most of America’s influential voters are upper-middle-class professionals who are a bit worse off than before he took office, and they comprise the Democratic base.
With the off-year elections in the rearview mirror, the two major political parties increasingly appear locked in for the 2024 presidential contest, with the economy taking a starring role in voters’ minds. And that’s a worry for the president, as a flurry of polls released this month show Biden struggling to defend his economic policies against pessimistic consumers and workers.
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“‘Voters Aren’t Believing in Bidenomics,” the New York Times declared last week, showcasing a joint poll with Siena that showed the president struggling in battleground state polls against his likely GOP opponent (and predecessor), Donald Trump. “Americans are unusually down on a solid economy,” NBC wrote Thursday.
Indeed, most Americans are dour. Half of respondents to a Bankrate survey released Wednesday said that their personal finances had gotten worse since 2020, and nearly seven in 10 cited a surge in living expenses. A survey by Morning Consult, a decision intelligence company, shows consumer sentiment has been dropping for two months, particularly among middle-income households.
“There seems to be this massive disconnect between what people are feeling and what the data are saying,” Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at job site Glassdoor, told Fortune.
Blue-collar workers win big
The economic recovery since the pandemic has been unusual in many ways—but especially in how well less-educated and lower-paid workers have done.
In a reversal of every economic expansion for the last three decades, wages since the pandemic have grown fastest for workers in the lowest-paid rungs. It’s the “revenge of the blue-collar worker,” one anonymous Amazon worker wrotein February, a month that saw employers hire half a million people but tech companies lay off 10,000.
“It’s totally, totally atypical,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist for job site ZipRecruiter. “The pandemic and the labor shortages and increase in worker leverage has been a huge boost for lower-income workers.” In a similar vein, pay growth for workers with less than a high school degree has outpaced growth of college-educated workers—the first time since at least the late 1990s that this has occurred.
Annual pay raises by education level
199820002002200420062008201020122014201620182020202220240.00.51.01.52.02.53.03.54.04.55.05.56.06.5%
CHART: IRINA IVANOVA • SOURCE: FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ATLANTA
[image]
That’s a problem because those well-educated white-collar workers now make up the Democratic Party’s base. College graduates (of all races) support Democrats over Republicans by a 24-point margin; those without degrees favor the GOP by 12 points. It’s the culmination of a great shift that began with the Clinton-era “New Democrats” of the late 1990s, which emphasized social progressivism while pushing through neoliberal reforms that did lasting damage to America’s working class. The declining popularity among working-class voters is even threatening Democrats’ earlier gains among Hispanics and Asian-Americans, as working-class voters of all ethnicities break toward the GOP.
It’s that decades-long shift away from economic populism that Biden’s economic agenda is attempting to reverse, albeit in a limited way.
Not only is pay for the top tiers of white-collar workers growing more slowly than for the people who serve them coffee and look after their kids, but many of the office elite are facing an entirely different job market—one with fewer prospects and more requirements. It’s the most dire in the tech and media sector, where payrolls have shrunk 3% since last fall, but also visible in finance, where bankers are expecting their bonuses to shrink substantially from last year, according to Reuters.
(Compare that to employment in construction, which is up nearly 3% from last year, or health care and education, up 4%, or oil and gas extraction, up nearly 5%.)
Those who are still employed are less than thrilled at being told to return to the office—or find another job. “The rapid shift around employee flexibility, compensation, and benefits has generated a lot of resentment among white-collar workers who are used to being treated exceptionally well,” said Terrazas.
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My kid goes to WSU in Eastern Washington and while they hate UW for many reasons, the conventional wisdom is that if you go to school at UW you will get constantly harassed by homeless people pooping in front of you while you walk to class.
People will blame Presidents, even if they like them. There’s a persistent mythology in the US that the President is the “boss of the country” and all outcomes should be attributed to the President.
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It seems obvious American’s feelings about the economy have almost nothing to do with the economy but are, like all things in the US, purely partisan.
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Except somehow all the covid anxiety stuff became Biden’s fault too. Pretty sure he was president during covid, right?
i love the unhoused/drug addict narrative in blue cities… i just keep telling people i live in a RED city in a RED state and i walk by a half dozen unhoused on the way to the convenience store.
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I have a theory that most of these (non-Ras, non-RCP) pollsters are actually fairly left-leaning, or at least willing to be manipulated by left-leaning operatives, and they stick to the same script every election year when a democrat is president:
- “People are angry hurting, this is tough news for [Clinton/Obama/Biden].”
- Normal news happens, party outrage machines kick into high gear, operatives highlight great strides in the supposed areas of deficiency highlighted by previous polls.
- “Wow look at these polls. What amazing comeback for [Clinton/Obama/Biden]!”
The comeback story seems to be engineered and timed. Just a theory.
The left should be channeling its collective angst away from Trump’s trials and boomers into doing something productive like correcting these false economic narratives.
Oh wait, you’re telling me they actually support them too?
We all live in fantasy worlds, but the left-Trump anti-Biden alliance live in the one least tethered to reality.
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You’ve lost me. I don’t recall people blaming Biden for COVID stuff they didn’t like before Biden became President. People really hated the vaccines, which largely coincided with Biden becoming President.