The Real Reason No One Is Giving Biden Credit for How Good the Economy Is Right Now
The Real Reason No One Is Giving Biden Credit for How Good the Economy Is Right Now
Sharp and sustained economic criticism from Biden's ostensible allies established a narrative of failure that has proved alarmingly resistant to reality.
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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?
You're ignoring previous inflation. Again. Wages beat inflation just this year. They are not higher relative to inflation over the last few years. They are certainly not higher relative to the wage-production split in the1970's.
Since the beginning of 2020 wages are down from inflation by seven points. And this is after decades of losing ground. Weasel wording the numbers from 2023 where wages beat inflation by 1 percent to gaslight people is disgusting.
Inflation-adjusted wages grew by 6% in 2020, 8% in 2021, and 6% in 2022. Here's the citation. Most of that growth happened at the lowest-wage end of the scale -- inflation-adjusted wages for the top 10% of earners actually fell by 5% from 2020-2022, meaning for the average to rise, quite a few of people in the lower percentiles saw their wages go up.
I suspect that a lot of the Lemmy community is tech people in that top 10%, which makes the anecdotal "IDK things are bad for me and my friends" resonate with them. And fair play if you want to say that's a problem, I won't say it's not.
But it seems like you're just trying to create a narrative that wages for everyone have gone down, because of stacked year-on-year inflation, that simply doesn't exist anywhere in the data, even in any given year in isolation. What are you saying was the change in wages that justifies what you're saying? Where are you getting your actual numbers and what are they?
This is Business Insider. You really need to check the sources. And the OECD chart they linked does not show what they claim. OECD has a table for real wage growth. It's not nearly as fun to read.
OECD: Annual average wage growth
OECD: Table N2. Real wage growth of average gross annual wages per full-time equivalent employee
Now those do stop in 2022, which also makes BI's assertion in 2024 kind of suspect.
- That's their old site, they have a new one that works better now.
- I'm not completely sure, but that looks to me like those are two different ways of measuring average income per person who's already full-time employed. Reducing unemployment won't have an impact on that number, nor will getting someone from a barely-scraping part time position into a higher-paying full time position (in fact the latter will actually bring that metric down, if the new position makes less than like $70k in 2024 dollars).
I think what you want to look at is something like Per capita income, inflation adjusted on the new site. It shows (in constant 2015 dollars):
- 2019: $52,070
- 2020: $50,024 (Covid takes wages down even with stimulus)
- 2021: $53,417 (+6.7%)
- 2022: $54,274 (+1.6%)
So, substantial growth of income overall, even after adjusting for cost of living. I don't know if those are the exact numbers BI used (seems like not) or what the numbers after 2022 look like, but this so far seems very consistent to me with the economic outlook getting better for people at the bottom, back to and better than pre-Covid, and offset partially but not completely by some wage loss for the people at the top. If you can find some more recent ones or ones that tell a different story, I'd be happy to look at them though.
Well substantial growth in Average terms at least. Per Capita is the literal Average, total divided by population. Which is why we talk about medians and modes. Now finding a mode is hilarious, much less for each year. But median is actually pretty available. When even the Fed can't make the line go up, you know there's a problem.
Here's the Fed showing a 15 percent gap in inflation and wages up to 2022. Median Income / Inflation Consumer Price
Why do you want to use household / family income instead of individual income? Median personal income in constant dollars is independent of any confounding factors and doesn't show the same drop; it shows no change at all.
And yes, I could see this being consistent with what I was talking about. I actually already sent you data points (the link text is "fell by 5%") showing the 10th, 50th (i.e. median), and 90th percentiles, which showed -1% change in real income at the 50th percentile. The census bureau numbers show +0.01% instead at the 50th percentile, but pretty similar.
All of that is consistent with a boost for the lowest earners, which is what I've been saying this entire time. "Most of that growth happened at the lowest-wage end of the scale" is how I phrased it.