If you must argue about the economy over Thanksgiving dinner, at least get the facts right
If you must argue about the economy over Thanksgiving dinner, at least get the facts right
How the economy is doing has always been a contentious topic, particularly when friends and family with different politics gather for Thanksgiving dinner. And the question has gotten even thornier this year, with consumer sentiment and polling data about the economy becoming historically de-linked f...
How the economy is doing has always been a contentious topic, particularly when friends and family with different politics gather for Thanksgiving dinner. And the question has gotten even thornier this year, with consumer sentiment and polling data about the economy becoming historically de-linked from official measures of economic health like GDP. It’s not our job to tell people how they should feel about the economy, but we can at least add some facts as context to common complaints.
The economy is doing well, exclusively by the metrics the owner class sets.
Their metrics for the economy revolve around them metastasizing their wealth, and no supply side sycophants, that doesn't mean it'll lift your little peasant boat.
For context, the Fed considered it to be an emergency that for a short period of time laborers could actually have enough leverage to set terms of employment with their employers, the horror! Their answer was to use their interest rate mechanism to attack that emergency as hard as they could.
They were successful by their own definition of success. The economy is great now, the value of their digital seas of selfish capital were protected at laborer's expense, and all is right with the rigged capital markets again, according to those same people calling economic inequity a feature rather than a bug at least. The owner class would consider the economy perfect if we'd just work 16 hour days 7 days a week for minimum wage without complaint.
May this economy crater into dust, and cause enough pain that it will never be rebuilt in a similar form to perpetuate greed cruelty generationally. I've no hope for it happening near term, the oligarchs have too much control over force and propaganda, but it will one day. Rome fell under the weight of its own greed too.
And Rome didn't even yet have the technology to abuse that would have allowed their own runaway selfishness and decadence to literally reverse terraform the planet against their own survivability. I'm not superstitious enough to believe in karma, but I'll admit its a pleasing notion with regards to the growing climate change catastrophe of our own greed and greed enabling making.
That inflation bit is especially useful. Biden isn't to blame for inflation despite what Fox News and the Heritage Foundation say.
The budget reductions I had no idea about.
What the fuck? Why isn't anyone in the liberal media saying how good Biden is doing on the economy?
Because you cannot convince someone that the economy is doing well when they think it's not. Inflation was extremely high for too long, and the wage gap may be closing but it's still absurdly high. "There's a tumor in your brain, but we made it smaller by a third." It sounds like objective progress, but when the tumor is in your brain causing psychological and physical disability. Celebrating the progress makes it seem like you don't care about the remaining problems.
Because the WH keeps telling us we are doing great, but we can see that we are not. The wealthy are doing great, but the working class and poor are not
Because the "liberal media" is a myth, they're all owned by oligarchs who only care about their own cost to borrow capital to fund their VC Ponzi schemes so if interest rates are high they'll try to convince everyone that the economy is bad.
Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. The rent-seeking class prefers higher interest rates because they get higher returns on their investments. They've been lobbying the Fed to raise interest rates for over a decade, and they've finally gotten their wish.
yup on inflation. just look at the fed interest rate for the last decade. you will see how it was raising at a nice gradual pace as obama finished up and then trump bully pulpitted it down to nothing before covid even hit. if they had kept the measured pace it would not have had the bad effects of having to pull so hard on the rudder now.
Because Dems are TERRIBLE at messaging when they’re talking about themselves.
Incredibly useful data. Thanks for sharing. Inflation compared to rest of G7 is great data to have.
If Democrats think we can "Well actually" our way out of economic malaise we're screwed.
That's basically the Obama years.