No, tell them how it is. The economy IS booming. That fact just doesn't have anything to do with the average Joe. Teach them 'the economy' isn't on their side.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the 11 million losing medicaid is due to red states choosing to "unwind" it. It's not really an economy thing so much as a deliberate asshole thing.
Right about the medicaid. The child poverty is similar (Democrats expanded Child Tax Credit, Republicans refused to extend it. Presumably because people like OP would make posts like this to complain about Democrats. It's brutally cynical but effective.)
"I really want to hurt trans people, but I kinda like not dying in a diabetic coma. Hmm better vote D this time"
I really don't know what to say. All these people consistently voting against their own best interests. I don't agree with the shits at Koch but I get why they do it, they want the money.
Or GDP, which also just says how much money a company is making but has the added bonus of making people proud of their country to where they don’t think any harder about it.
You only have the illusion of choice, as evidenced by the "booming economy" which just actually means being extra effective at funneling all economic output straight to the top.
I've always thought that the only meaningful measure of overall economy is real median wage. Don't talk to me about GDP or the frankly insulting per capita GDP. I can't spend money that's being hoarded by price-gouging industrialists and tech-bros.
GDP gives an idea of how much value is being produced by the economy, which can help judge what kind of further pressure should be put on price-gouging industrialists and tech-bros.
There was a pandemic spike that's now gone, but it's otherwise following the generally upward trend that it has for the last decade or so. If we want to use that, then the economy is doing pretty well.
OP gives a lot of other reasons to think otherwise. Using any one measure isn't a good way to measure the economy.
Edit: also, people need to stop saying "inflation adjusted wages are flat since the 70s". That was true in the years following the 2008 financial crisis, but it isn't anymore. But as another poster in this thread points out, the working class is still not getting their fair share of GDP growth over that same time period.
Didn't the child poverty rate jump because so many had just been lifted out of it because of the expanded child tax credit? And similarly with medicaid, wasn't that because of the expanded coverage due to covid? (In other words Democrats did good things but now don't have enough seats in the Senate/Congress to keep those temporary measures permanent?)
Just seem like weird choices. "We fixed these things, Republicans broke them, the economy must be nonsense!"
People aren't lying about their struggles or material needs not being met. Then you add the housing issues on top this. It is crazy people are still pushing forward at all.
The problem is people are talking past each other. People prioritize different metrics and they don't all move the same direction or for the same reasons.
GDP is increasing, unemployment is low, child poverty is back up after a temporary decrease, homelessness is increasing, people reporting as "paycheck to paycheck" is down since 2019 but clearly OP thinks the overall level is still too high. Those are all reasonable things to look at, but they have to be looked at in totality. You can't just cherry pick some factoids and indignantly declare "don't TELL me you disagree with me"
GDP is only designed to measure the size of an economy, but how well it's serving the people who participate in it. Unemployment tells you only how many people have a "job", but it tells you nothing about whether thirst jobs pay a liveable wage or how many people are working multiple jobs to get by.
Other measures, like homelessness and child poverty, are direct measures of his of how many people are getting completely fucked by the economy.
When combining measures, I think it makes most sense to just completely ignore metrics like GDP in favor of direct measures of well-being. No matter how high the GDP is, homeless people's lives suck. No matter how low unemployment is, poor kids are still being set up for failure later in life. People living paycheck to paycheck can't use a soaring S&P 500 to pay for a medical emergency.
GDP is increasing due to inflation and speculation.
Unemployment is low because you aren't counting the anyone who is unemployed. The workforce participation rate is hovering around the same numbers as we had in the early 1970s when women entered the workforce in large numbers. Adding this with the gig jobs and the real numbers would be even worse.
Meanwhile housing, education, medical, insurance, food, consumer goods, and any service you can name has increased in a rate above inflation since 2020. The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased as well. Everyone but the tinest fraction of the population has seen a significant hit in their quality-of-life. All the while dealing with the fallout from the virus. Plus all forms of debt have gone up.
The only good numbers are those of the stock market. Which really means very little. With interest rates so high and everyone shut out of smaller investments (you aren't going to invest in a starter home when it is costs 900k USD) of course share prices will go up. Now who benefits from this? The dividends are basically the same, the risk is basically the same, the only thing that went up is the share price. Funneling money to the people who had more money in the past. Present money taken out of the middle class to fund old money.
So there it is. The steaming garbage heap of our economy looked in total just as you requested.
I’m an avid planet money podcast listener, but a recent episode pissed me off so much. They were asking why consumer sentiment is so bad when all the economic news was good. It’s like they don’t pay attention to how most leading economic indicators are nothing more than a barometer of how rich people are doing. They expect us to be happy that inflation has slowed, even though prices are still high and it took high interest rates to do it (something that punishes poor borrowers but rewards rich investors). They expect us to be happy unemployment is low when jobs pay horribly.
I feel like we should be able to quantify what "employed" is in the unemployment metrics.... Like, if you barely have a job and it pays you next to nothing (below a living wage) then you should be considered to be in the unemployment pool.
I think if that was the way it was counted, then the numbers would actually look atrocious.
In all actual fact, they specifically exclude people who are not actively looking for a job from the unemployment numbers. Historically this was to reduce the unemployment numbers from all the unemployed spouses that were stay at home parents or whatever. Now it's just a way to mask how many have gotten so thoroughly fucked by the system that they gave up.
if you barely have a job and it pays you next to nothing (below a living wage) then you should be considered to be in the unemployment pool.
They do track this. It's called underemployment. On the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, you can find this table which indirectly gives this data: the difference between U-5 and U-6. Underemployment is about 2.4%.
Wages, especially median wages (working class wages), have surpassed inflation almost every month this year. Are you actually rooting for deflation? And thinking that would not be worse?
Some have, many haven’t. Honestly I just don’t see those numbers in reality. All throughout this, I’ve only gotten the standard 2% annual COLA. Therefore I am down around 14% in real wages. Sorry, the idea that some median wage has gone up is little comfort. I can tell you middle class engineering salaries have not moved to match inflation, at least in my area.
And, no, a little deflation would not be bad. Sure, sustained deflation could be a problem, but after such a period of high inflation, prices going back down a little would probably spur consumer spending.
This goes back decades now with politicians on both the right and left claiming to support "middle class tax cuts" and nobody asks "how do you define 'middle class'?"
"House Republicans issued a fact sheet about their new tax cut plan that referred to Americans earning $450,000 a year as "low- and middle-income"—even though that income level would put those taxpayers in the top 0.5 percent of all individual Americans.
The median household income in the United States is $59,039, after all."
People got 'thrown off' Medicaid because it was temporarily expanded under the pandemic, and lots of the people that qualified under the expansion no longer qualify now that it's expired. Yeah, I'm in favor of Medicaid for all--or Medicare, I can't keep them straight--but this is disingenuous.
Second, 45M people in 1.8T student loan debt is a problem, sure, but who keeps blocking forgiving that debt? If you think that not voting for the guy that did everything in his power to cancel that debt is going to fix that problem, well, you probably shouldn't have gone to higher ed. in the first place, because it didn't help your critical thinking skills.
Is the economy we have now--under a Democratic president, with a Democratic Senate and a very slim Republican majority in the House--better or worse than it would be under a Republican (Trump) president, Republican Senate, and Republican House? Do you really think that all of the things listed in this short, misleading blurb would be fixed if Biden loses the election? Do you think that your protest vote for a Green or Dem Soc candidate is going to improve anything, given that we don't have ranked-choice voting in national elections?
I really hate hearing people who say they're not going to vote for Biden because for whatever reason without realizing that not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump or any other Republican who will work against everything that will actually help people. Which is better?
Not only are you letting the other side win but the only way to get representation is to vote, if you don't vote why would any candidate want to do anything for you? You're no value for them.
About your last paragraph, who said this was a partisan issue? Someone who agrees with your last paragraph could also agree with the sentiment that those who tell us the "economy is booming" are often ignoring issues that affect everyday Americans.
It's a partisan issue specifically because of who is spreading which messages.
Democrats are saying that the economy is generally moving in the correct directions, e.g., we lost a couple million people in the pandemic which lead to a labor shortage, opportunistic businesses jacked up prices leading to double digit inflation, but overall the unemployment caused by the pandemic is reduced, inflation is on the way down, and we're doing better than we would have been doing otherwise.
Republicans are saying that the economy is trash, that everyone is hurting, everything is expensive and no one can afford shit. ...While conveniently ignoring that they're the ones that have been pushing all the policies that have led to this, while Dems have been doing everything they could to prevent a recession or depression.
If you blindly accept that the economy is bad without looking at why, then you're biting the baited hook of the Republican propaganda machine.
45 million with 1.8 trillion debt isn't even a "problem". The meme is just throwing out big number vocabulary trying to be scary.
That number averages out to 40k a person. 40k after 4 years of college with long term low interest to pay it is not done huge problem. The problem are for people who got scammed by for profit colleges and those with ridiculous levels of debt, and this administration is addressing those.
In NL the govt switched from a scholarship-like student loan program to a regular loan program (which has been reverted since the start of this college year), and students racked up 60k debts over 4-5 years of study.
And that's in a country where the government also sets the student fees (2k a year now, somewhat following indexed inflation), which means about 8-10k is for study. The rest is additional cost and due to stories of low interest (0% for years, but now it's 2.4%) causing 18-22 year olds to be maxing out this loan to enjoy the student life and paying it off using the bank interest.
Then the 2021-23 inflation skyrocketed and that loan started going up faster than it could be paid off, as paying off is on an income-based monthly amount. Meanwhile, this loan does get subtract 1.5x from your potential mortgage sum.
What’s the point of this statement? Both groups of things can be true. The economy of the US, as a whole, can be booming while simultaneously having those other things be true too. The economy isn’t a measure of how individuals are doing. It’s a measure of how well the bullshit of capitalism is working. Seems to be working as intended…
It chose to explain what I explained by making the exact opposite point? You’re not making any sense. Either that stuff is related to the economy or it’s not. You can’t have it both ways.
That’s like saying “Don’t tell me the Lions are doing well when tickets to their games cost $15/seat”. The Lions can be doing well and the seats can be cheap right now. One is not necessarily reflective of the other.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the economy booming -that has to do with you electing legislators to enact appropriate legislation. That's not a failure of the economy, that's a failure of the voters.
Yes, but to be fair a lot of us were swindled into it. District moving, lies, misinformation, voter suppression, and many are working so much there's hardly time to verify what's-what. Then when voting day comes along the ballots are worded so obscurely that the average person has no idea what the fuck they're actually voting for/against. I get lost in the wording at times as well!
I vote, and I vote for the best interests of the majority because I'm wired that way. Many others are... confused
"Just learn how to budget and you'll be fine working just under the number of hours that requires us to provide you with benefits" (as long as you work another job also without benefits and don't waste money on frivolous expenditures like food)
The economy is working the way it always has in our capitalistic system. To be fair, gas prices are down, wages are up and there are jobs out there. Corporate price gouging is a problem but red states don't seem to mind since they vote against their interests over and over again. Pennsylvania's governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro signed a $15 minimum wage into law - how you doing red states?
It's not by chance that in big countries official economic numbers are listed for the country as whole (independently of the number of people) or at best using the arithmetic average for per-capita numbers rather than the mode.
Countrywide numbers sound great until you merelly divide it by the number of people (i.e. the average, which still has problems) were for example the US falls from #1 in wealth to #15 in wealth per person.
Further, it's way too common for governing politicians in countries with strong population growth to only talk about total economic numbers, because total country GDP will grow simply from adding more working adults (due to immigration or higher birth rates) even if it's actually falling per-capita (if, for example, the working adults added have lower productivity) hence the economic position of most people is getting worse.
As for arithmetic averages, they suffer from not really representing the experience of most people when there is high inequality. For example, if there are 10 people, 1 with 10 chickens and 9 with zero chickens, that average tells us each has 1 chicken whilst in reality most people's chicken-ownership experience is of having non chickens. The mode would tell it's zero chickens because that what most individuals have.
And don't get me started on the actual ways to rig official economic figures (such as understating Official Inflation, which because of how it's produced results in a higher Official GDP number)
For at least 2 decades now, Official Economic Figures have been complete total bollocks, and you should be especially suspicious of the figures quoted by government politicians as (as I explained above) they're generally cherry-picking and presenting figures which bare little resemblance to what's happenning for most people.
It is, though. Wealth and power are concentrating at the top of megacorporations and billionaires and bringing in record profits, just as they're supposed to under capitalism.
It's not like that money is disappearing. Why are the 99% of the population it gets taken away from so selfish? Can't they just be happy for the few rich entities who profit from taking away their livelihoods, stripping them of their last shirt and draining them dry until they are bankrupt? Doesn't the promise of maybe later being trickled down upon make them happy? It's bound to happen one of these decades...
It’s booming for some people. Look at all the spending. And for anyone with a 401k, or and brokerage they’re seeing 30% growth yoy. It’s booming. It’s just not booming for everyone.
This barely exceeds inflation. Used cars are up 35%, electricity costs 18-55% depending on region, groceries up 28%. That "growth" you mention is only on paper, there's no increased buying power behind it.
Regardless, you'd have to be a sociopath to say that a few people making more money (on paper, again) still qualifies a booming economy in the face of
Child poverty rate +138%
+11,000,000 kicked off Medicaid
Record homelessness
60% living paycheck-to-paycheck
The only rational conclusion we can make from this is that the metrics we use to measure a booming economy are fundamentally broken.
"They" is just another corporate machine. It's not for us, it just pretends to be. "Booming" is just a reflection of the current stock bump, unemployment lows and analyst predictions because that's all a corporate machine would know about. It could just as easily turn around next week to "recession lights blinking" or some other nonsense. You can pretty safely just ignore all that trash at this point.
The latter. They're saying the rate is over double what it was before. It apparently fell to 5.2% in 2021 and jumped to 12.4% in 2022. That 7.2% jump is 138% of the 2021 value making it 238% of what it used to be, or as he post said it a 138% increase
Child Poverty and people getting thrown off Medicaid are the return to status quo after temporary pandemic programs. If those people being poor and not having Medicaid prevent the economy from booming then the economy has never boomed except in the depths of the Covid lockdowns.
Maybe "booming" isn't what we need the economy to be. I'd much rather it be humane.
I make very good money, but I'd be perfectly happy making 1/3 as much if I knew my savings wouldn't be obliterated by things totally out of my control like medical bills or a layoff. I feel bad about hoarding money but I still do it because I know the only real safety net I have in this country is what I make for myself.
I'm just saying the post is using the numbers wrong. Things can be bad without being evidence of a bad economy. We use more oil during a booming economy vs a recession, CO2 emissions are bad but it's a bad thing that increases with a good economy.
The economy is booming, but you also need to negotiate with your employer and switch jobs if needed. Unless your boss automatically gave your 10%+ annual adjustment, you are slowly falling behind.
Even if you are able to change jobs, your current employer is still extracting more productivity from you than they are compensating you for until you do change jobs ... into another position where your next employer is still extracting more productivity from you than they are compensating you for, but maybe not quite as badly as the last one, so you "feel better."
You're still getting fucked either way, because capitalism.
"Yes, the economy is booming for your employer, and the country will continue to bend over backwards to ensure this continues. Yes, you're going to fall behind ever more as extraction of wealth from Workers continues to stretch you thinner and thinner."
A worker pulls into the parking lot of his office. His boss pulls up next to him in a new sports car. The worker goes, "Wow! New car? Looks amazing." The boss goes, "It is! And if you work hard, hit your targets, and put in some overtime, I can buy a new one next quarter."
Gotta love when liberals get angry at you for challenging the narrative that the economy is doing great because they are terrified of Trump winning... and they think trying to gaslight people (who by and large are pretty desperate right now) into thinking the economy is doing great is the best strategy to get Biden elected.
Nope, you just make democrats come off as a condescending assholes who are out of touch.
Can't wait until they blame progressives again for losing ("So JUST because Biden is the most crucial international supporter/enabler of a genocide and won't do anything meaningful about it means you aren't going to vote for him???!?? You people are the problem").
There's nothing progressive about helping Trump back into the White House. There are no good choices in the upcoming elections, true, but this doesn't mean that the potential outcomes are equivalent.
Americans can choose between a bullet to the knee or a bullet to the lungs, and attitudes like yours do nothing but raise the angle of the barrel of the gun.