“Economy” is such a bullshit term here. What they really mean is stock market. The real economy is shit. Pay is shit. Healthcare is shit. Real estate is a fat hog that needs to get slaughtered already. When will the people be treated as Too Big To Fail?
Whatever the fuck they’re saying on the nigntmare box means dick. I’m still poor.
Ehh, I think the economy is doing okay. Inflation is being controlled/managed. In some cases it’s correcting itself.
Don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. The media in this country has been really pessimistic about the economy and blaming the admin–to the point it seemed intentionally misrepresented.
This economy could have gone the other way pretty easily especially with the billions thrown into circulation during the pandemic.
If we want to credit Presidents when the economy is bad, you need to credit them when it’s good too.
If anything this admin should get credit for being stable and a source of order in all of the chaos–not the cause of it.
The media is owned by billionaires and/or public traded companies. Reporting is skewed to keep the populace complacent.
Ehh, I think the economy is doing okay. Inflation is being controlled/managed. In some cases it’s correcting itself.
I have to agree. Some people are still certainly struggling, of course. Homelessness is still a problem in places. Many people still live paycheck to paycheck. But the economy isn’t going to fully right itself in four years, especially with a hostile House that controls the purse strings.
Additionally, nothing has been done about greedflation (yet?). If Congress or Biden can figure out a way to force companies to stop tacitly colluding to squeeze more money from people, I would suspect more people would start to feel more optimistic about their finances (and the economy in general).
Greed will sadly have to wait…when your ship is sinking you gotta patch the holes first, then you can rebuild the troublesome parts.
The US is putting fingers in the holes of the dam right now and doing an okay job of it.
I like the analogy!
The one below mine is better lol.
I believe it’s more like while this ship is sinking the majority are below decks with old buckets trying to desperately bail out the rising seawarer while the rich and those in power are above deck rising off all the planks they can to build themselves a life raft, fully intent on leaving the rest of us to drown in the sinking ship.
It’s about jobs more than the stock market. The report says over 350k net jobs added this quarter (more than double expected) and unemployment has been below 4% for two consecutive years (not seen since the ‘60s). Plus inflation is quickly dropping and the administration is lowering costs on things where they can, putting more money in our pockets. It’s legitimately incredible what’s happened with the US economy since the pandemic nearly guaranteed a recession, according to Fox News.
We spent THREE YEARS with media of all stripes gaslighting us about a supposed incoming recession any day now. Any day now, for three years, even when the economy was doing gangbusters. Bastards.
Don’t forget the car market as well both the used and new market has lost its fucking mind.
The numbers for the real economy have been good too. The median wage rose faster than inflation in 2023 and unemployment has been consistently low, people are finding work and finally starting to earn more. Obviously things aren’t great for everyone but it’s going way better than anyone expected and it’s heading in a good direction rather than deteriorating further like when inflation was still out of control.
Some people are already too big to fail. It’s just not you or me.
Look at Trump. He’s too big to fail. He’s not in jail, despite numerous counts of accusations, from rigging elections to treason to sexual assault.
When you’re rich enough or connected enough, you’re too big to fail.
If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.
– J. Paul Getty
It’s worse, when it’s us g peoples donated election money for personal expenses, including legal expenses. Do the people donating understand that they’re not even getting a campaign out of their cash? Why isn’t this misuse of funds yet another criminal charge?
Considering the only information they get is within their little bubble which is mostly what Trump tells them, I think they believe they’re helping the most mistreated man in history get out of his very unfair oppression to stop him from saving humanity. And by humanity, they mean America. And by America, they mean white people. And by white people, they mean cishet people.
Maybe I should have quoted or capitalized “The People”. I mean the common layperson. trump, Muskrat, and their ilk aren’t “the people”. They are the storied “1%” that depend on social welfare from our government.
Got to love the constant partisan distraction machine.
Congrats on the booming economy while we’re helping with genocide overseas and we have record homelessness here.
https://www.ktvq.com/homelessness-reached-a-record-in-2023-and-it-could-get-worse
*jobs exist that don’t pay a living wage, sending workers ever deeper into poverty and despair*
media and politicians: “LoOk At AlL tHe JoBs! BoOmInG eCoNoMy!”
You get two jobs, and you get two jobs, everyone gets two jobs!
“I see you still have like eight hours each day you could sacrifice to your employers, what’s your excuse there?”
“That’s when I eat and sleep.”
“Ah, so greed and laziness. I see.”
🎵you load 16 tons, waddaya get? another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me cuz I can’t gooooooo, I owe my soul to the company store. 🎵
Booming for exactly?
Me?
Gas prices are below $3 here, only spent $91 on weekly groceries yesterday, and my high interest savings accounts are sitting around 4.75%
My property taxes went up 20% but that’s a local thing…
And I’ll toss this in here even though you’ll cry that it’s not a valid metric, but my retirement accounts are at a record high
Like, what more do you want??
Where do you live and what do you eat?
Flapjacks.
And hookers
I can do Jack Black doing jumping jacks, final offer.
That retirement account is going to mean fuckall when you retire as inflation eats up most of it.
I’ll be sure to raise a fist to Biden when that day comes, and curse the wretched two party system which hath delivered me and you, apparently, such misery
Edit:but until then, I’ll vote for Biden. Because honestly
They probably want theirs and everyone else’s cost of living to not be a crisis.
It’s great that yours has slightly improved, it hasn’t for the majority however and continues to get worse.
But it’s now getting worse at a slightly slower rate. Yay, progress!
$91 for a week of groceries? You either live alone or your poor family is subsisting on Top Ramen.
I have a family of 3 and can hit that target for a week of groceries pretty easily. What are you buying that’s so expensive? I’ve found the price of produce, milk, and eggs have all gone down over the last few months
My spouse and I typically spend around $60-$80 a week. $90 seems kind of high honestly.
I just spent $86 at a Whole Foods for what will amount to this week’s groceries (which is making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two each day). I already had many of the staple ingredients, and no Top Ramen is involved.
House prices to contract down to a realistic level. Rent controls such that the price of rent is not higher than the price of a mortgage (which gives you ownership of a valuable asset, a tenancy does not).
But rent has to cover all the costs of ownership and then some, meanwhile the mortgage payment is but a fraction of that.
It doesn’t, though. The owner should cover the cost of ownership, as they’re the one who gets the valuable asset at the end. The tenant should pay proportionally less than this, merely the cost of them living there for a temporary period.
If you live with someone and pay towards their mortgage, you can rightfully claim a share in the equity of their house. However, if you’re a tenant and pay the entire mortgage, and then some, you don’t get anything. That’s patently not right.
Also forgetting that the “then some” part is only warranted if we want an incentive for people to buy houses to rent out. If it was a socially beneficial thing to do. Society would not lose out if buying a house on a mortgage and renting it out was not a profitable thing to do.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
I’d appreciate if you could justify your position. I think, when you carefully consider it, you’ll understand that it’s skewed the wrong way and not justifiable.
If I buy a house with a mortgage, it costs a lot of money, but I can live in it right away and afterwards I have a house, which I can sell. If I rent, I only get to live in it for so long as I pay rent - I own nothing at the end. You get more for your mortgage but pay less, surely the rent should be lower and proportionate to what you’re getting?
Sure, if rent was cheaper than a mortgage, people would be far less inclined to be landlords - but why should that be a given path to profit? Why should the housing supply by usurped by those who already have an excess of wealth?
Sure. The terms of the owner’s financing are none of the renter’s business. The only facts that are relevant are that the owner is willing to rent out their property at a certain price, and the renter is willing to pay that price, and both parties are entering into the transaction of their own free will. If the owner and renter are unable to agree on a price, they are free to go their separate ways. No harm, no foul.
choosing to be wrong: it’s a bold move, cotton. let’s see how it plays out.
You don’t get to claim part of the equity just for living with someone and paying part of their mortgage. You would have to set up a joint venture or other business structure, otherwise you would just pay rent to the owner/ roommate like they were your landlord.
And even if the partnership was legally set up where you got a percentage for paying rent on a room in a house, unless you retroactively paid part of their downpayment, it would be an insignificant percent the home’s value…probably to the tune of 1/360th of the home’s value, minus the downpayment, minus the growth in value for however many years they have been paying on the loan, and your share would essentially be less than half of your rent going to the value of the investment due to taxes and insurance.
Most of what you are paying for on a home is taxes and insurance. My mortgage is about 65% taxes and insurance. If I were to rent my home, should I pay all of the taxes and insurance that occur in real time so the tenant has a less expensive place to live or pass that on to the renter as a cost of living in the residence?
I’m not a landlord because I ran the numbers and this just barely profitable in a best case scenario where you had nothing but great tenants, no downtime between renters, and no major house repairs, but there is a huge amount of risk with letting stranger occupy your most valuable asset. The expectation that a home owner should offer a discount on the actual cost of the home because they get to sell the house and recoup the asset value is not realistic. When you consider the amount of damage, additional maintenance, turnover costs, downtime between renters, and a whole mess of other things that cost additional money that come with renting to tenants, it is understandable why it’s hard to find cheap rent.
It sucks that this is how the system is, but housing prices have to come down and wages have to come up before this problem gets fixed, and the landlord isn’t the demon you think he is. Corporate firms buying up hundreds of houses to manipulate prices up on the other hand…
I agree that there is a lot more wrong with the system than just mortgage rates being higher than rents. The tax, fees and interests are certainly a good target for how things are wrong. With regards to damages, obviously tenants should be more easily held liable for damages they cause - and equally landlords should be more easily held liable for failing to provide a well maintained property (eg no mould).
The system is generally screwed up through and through. The people on the bottom get shat on, but even as you work your way up there’s always still someone above shitting down hill. But that’s no excuse for resigning and not sorting the shit out.
For starters, we need to sack all MPs and implement something closer to a direct democracy, or at least representation truly as a public service.
I don’t know why this guy’s getting downvoted. Rent prices are at record high. APRs are through the roof. Groceries are getting more expensive every year. I’m even paying $20 more every month for car insurance. Sure Trump was worse but let’s not act like everything is all sunshine and rainbows just because it’s an election year.
Google seems t suck these days and I wasn’t able to find good data, but
- I see historical graph of car interest rates peaking over 8% in November, but current advertised rates 4-7%
- I see mortgage rates peaked in Sept and headed down. Most predictions I see are down or at least consistent - I didn’t see any predicting up
- gas prices are much cheaper lately
- my savings account t just went up again, I think it’s now paying 4.5%
Gotta admit it’s tough to sympathize with a $20 insurance increase when I just got hit with the double whammy of teenaged driver and new car. My car insurance is quintuple what it was a couple months ago😒
A shocking amount of people I know, including myself were all laid off. Ive been unemployed for 6 months. There are zero jobs in my Ruby red shithole state aside from retail.
This growth is not distributed equally.
my Ruby red shithole state
It’s really difficult not to turn this political, but yes, it seems like political leanings are a huge part of it.
Admittedly, my company is hiring mostly overseas in cheaper markets, but we are hiring
Thats the problem though, yes we know who’s to blame, but its still up to dems to fix it.
Its not acceptable to just have them rightfully blame then throw their hands up.
Tech?
A failed college actually. Friend was in construction.
That sucks, I’m sorry. Any plans to move to somewhere with more jobs?
My family safety net is here, so it would honestly take some saving at a different job before Im comfortable starting a life somewhere else.
But eventually I may have to. In the meantime all I can do is keep applying.
TIL grudgingly is a word. I’ve only ever heard begrudgingly before.
Apparently grudgingly is done with lack of interest
Begrudgingly is done with envy
TIL
Hey let me know if you guys find any extra money floating around. This economy is so good I can barely afford gas and groceries.
A lot of the Fox Business stuff is not crazy politically biased in the way the Opinion primetime stuff is. There’s a lot of old rich white guy conservatism, like Mitt Romney conservative. They’ll spin storylines as explanations, but not basic facts.
Just seems like people are talking past each other sometimes with Fox stuff. Same as the polling “even FOX is saying X Democrat is winning!” well yeah Fox’s polling infrastructure is pretty good, it’s probably because that candidate is leading.
I’d agree, but Fox Business has gotten much worse over the past few years. It has always been pro-business (duh), but it was rather reliable otherwise and had to be. The viewers cared about their investments and companies; a bias would make them unreliable.
They started changing and adding more and more right wing nutjob opinions to their reporting, though.
For example, three of their top stories right now are political pieces; one about how fast food prices will go up because of a higher minimum wage in one state and a second where Elon Musk blames immigrants for the housing crisis plus whatever other garbage comes from his mouth. Another article here claiming the “border crisis” was caused by DEI policies at some companies.
Brace for a lot of the magats claiming that faux is “too woke”/“too liberal” and claim they’ll have to watch ONAN even harder.
It was extra hilarious when they were complaining about the environmental impact of Taylor Swift’s plane. Like you admit the climate needs help, Fox?
It’s no different from them suddenly caring about the environment when it comes to EVs. “Mining lithium is so bad for the environment!” They post to Facebook from their lithium-battery powered cellphone.
Dangerously close to “yet you exist in society… I am very smart.”
It would be better to just go along with them when they are incidentally correct like that instance, but push towards the logical endpoint of that thought train.
Agree with them, like, “yeah, mining lithium is fucking horrible, and it is literally impossible currently without coerced labor somewhere in the supply chain. Let’s empower the regulatory bodies in countries where lithium is mined to prevent negative externalities that currently exist only because it is more profitable.”
Or “yeah it’s fucking ridiculous how much swift uses that jet. Musk too, and Bezos too. These fucks could never ride in a jet the rest of their lives and we could take flights to vacation multiple times a year for the rest of our lives and we still wouldn’t even be responsible for 1% of their emissions output. Let’s ban private jets and make these fucks ride commuter with the rest of us.”
Except I don’t think they’re incidentally correct at all. They weren’t worried about lithium at all until it was put into car batteries. Because it was never about the lithium.
Plus, like only her plane. How many millionaires fly in their private jet and they complain about her? Obviously they are teiggered. The bootstrap party sure likes to whine about dumb shit. Imagine if they put even half as much effort into anything productive.
Won’t matter because the following week they will be saying that a Trump economy doesn’t kick in until the 8th year.
Commentary on commentary
Lemmy: China is spreading propaganda about their failing economy booming in their news!
Lemmy: The American economy is booming! I read it in our news!
It’s almost like those are two different groups of people.
Websites aren’t collective intelligence?
Well both those types of articles are getting upvoted to the front page so I’m assuming there is overlap?
Have you tried submitting anything? There’s very little content, I’d wager you too could get to the front page.
(Not dogging on lemmy,I love this site)
There are genuine grievances in the economy; most notably perhaps the affordable housing crisis. My home’s value is so fucking inflated it’s not even funny. It’s not worth what it is appraised for; none of these houses are. Chronic homelessness is at an all-time high.
That being said — since we are going into election year — we need to frame this not as what we see but what Republicans would normally boast of if Donnie2Scoops was in office.
- They’d be boasting about unemployment
- They’d be boasting about low inflation
- They’d be boasting about lowering gas prices
- They’d be boasting about stock-market being at an all-time high
- They’d be boasting about the GDP growth-rate.
So context matters. By the standards of what Republicans usually tout, the economy is thriving. Which means they’ve got nothing going into an election year… Which means they’re fucked.
Consider that Democrats won a midterm election during worse economic conditions in what is historically a rough midterm for an incumbent President’s party. Now consider the same with the risk of Democracy on the line, abortion rights, and a strong economy.
Republicans are fucked. (But still, get 5 people you know to register and vote). Hence why they’re so desperately clinging to this BoRDEr cRiSis as their only issue that’s sticking — and Biden just called their bluff on it.
This is the thing. We have objective measures of the economy and by those measures (the same ones we’d use to say a Republican is doing a great job) the economy is doing well.
I understand that by possibly other metrics we don’t consider important politically, or in people’s feelings it doesn’t feel like it’s going well, but if a Republican gets into office, they also will not care about those other metrics, and they will all magically feel fine about the economy overnight as soon as a Republican gets elected…before they even take control over the office.
The broader left becomes something of a useful tool for Republicans to use in election years. Republicans agree with leftist feelings about the economy, but once elected, magically those same metrics they insist are incomplete or don’t count are the only things they’ll tout again.
Leftists need to get an objective set of metrics together and then consistently grade all policymakers on them. I also think that it’s not solely (or even mostly) up to the president to determine economic policy. Presidents have an effect, for sure, but it’s largely stuff passed through the Congress that impacts the economy.
Well said. In essence, perfections becomes the enemy of good. Because leftists frankly tend to be more informed on the nuances of the economy — and especially what impacts the poor and middle-class — they have more specific demands. Which is fine, but we must always remember that Republicans will never care about those things; whereas we’re seeing legitimate progress and a reshaping of the Democratic platform in just the last 10 years.
People of a certain level and type of education think data and policies mean more than sentiment and messaging. But for many,t he data is secondary. You can see my comment on gas prices and unemployment being rooted in data and vibes. But the vibes for most people are what matters. And the vibes on election day are what matter most to undecided voters. I don’t think either party really gets the sense of dread that most people have and may never get it.
Which midterm are you talking about? I’m assuming you’re talking about the 2018 mid-term when Democrats picked up 41 seats since they lost the House in 2022. But another way of looking at the last five midterms, you see the midterms going to the party that is not the president’s. So I don’t think that the 2018 midterms provide a great reference point for the presidential election. Additionally, those gains in the 2018 election have slowly eroded giving control in the house to the Republicans.
But I wanted to address your strategy first and foremost since you address messaging. The projected map has Biden at 226, Trump at 235, and 77 to close to call. Those 77 electoral votes are spread across six states:
- Nevada (6 electoral votes)
- Arizona (11)
- Wisconsin (10)
- Michigan (15)
- Pennsylvania (19)
- Georgia (16)
In 2020, all six went Biden by less than 5%. In the 2022 midterm, Republicans gained seats in the house from Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. If those three switch to Trump, Trump wins with 272. Having a record showing in California or New York does little to help with these strategic areas.
I’m not too certain what matters to the voters in these six states, but in Arizona, the BoRDEr cRiSis, as you condescendingly noted, probably matters to them. In all six of those states, you’ll need a get out a vote drive to convince people to vibe with Biden. Usually those people are young and have a little more free time. But not when they see a genocide unfolding in Palestine and the Biden administration being complicit. Are the Arab Americans of Deerborn, MI going to come out and vote for Biden and Tlaib again? Will Tlaib stump for Biden? Are young Blacks in Atlanta or Philly going to come out in droves for Biden? I don’t know.
I don’t know what ground work the DNC has been doing, but I hope they’ve built a trusted network to get people to the polls. Either way, I don’t think the “Republicans are fucked”. It think we are looking at a close election again.
I’d wager we can simply call vibes the right-wing grip on shallow political talking-points at the national level, for which they’re pretty effective at admittedly. Such is the nature that lies and bullshit are easier to spread than the complexity of truth & reality. So in that respect, sure, there are many people who don’t have the vibe or feel the sentiment that things are going well — not because the data is wrong, but simply because they live in an alternate reality; an echo-chamber. A place where that data just doesn’t exist.
There is, frankly, little I can think of that we can do to reach these people. On the other hand, I think Donald has already cast a wide net and those who were trump supporters remain trump supporters (minus the dead ones from old boomers dying, covid, etc.). Yeah he’s making sligh tinroads with the likes of certain Hispanic populations — mostly in Florida and Texas, but Nevada is up in the air. The question is whether these inroads outpace the influx of Gen Z and Millennials who overall lean Dem.
Actually I am referring to 2022 midterms, because as you said – the midterms tend to go to the party not the President’s; and if we compare either 2010 or 2014 to 2022, then Democrats vastly overperformed in 2022, turning what was coined the “red wave,” to at best a red tinkle, or even a blue tinkle depending on what you prioritize. Because of the reversal of Roe, youth showed up and offset what could’ve otherwise been a disastrous midterm during a rough economy. We won key Secretary of State positions, Governorships, and expanded a lead in the Senate. Yes, lost the House, true. Though not by much.
If Democratic turnout meets 2020 or 2022 levels, which it should, then I think Biden is in a stronger position now than he was in 2020 due to:
- Having (and thus no longer going against) incumbent advantage.
- A more united Democratic party (than the brutal 2020 Dem primaries)
- Reversal of Roe being a massive boost in turnout
- Being honest here: There’s good reason Republicans fear a Taylor Swift endorsement and voter registration drive.
- Both covid recovery and the economy are objectively better now than 2022 and overall improved across the course of Biden’s Presidency
- 91 criminal charges across 4 Grand Jury indictments will do nothing for Trumpers, but it will be a consideration for independents/moderates/swing-voters, and the polling generally agrees: More than half of Independents polled believe Trump is guilty, and 27% don’t know. Hell, even 14% of Republicans think he’s guilty..
In the absence of major economic issues, I predict the priorities of preserving Democracy, Justice, and Women’s Rights will rise to forefront – especially after campaign spending really kicks off.
I am in Arizona. It’s really not that big of an issue. It’s no different than the “mIGRanT CaRaVaN” that Donnie tried to fearmonger with as he pulled National Guard from their Thanksgiving dinners to try to drum up hysteria… Which turned out to be nothing. Hell even of the recent MAGA convoy themselves arrived and are confused..
So, what exactly is going in favor for Republicans compared to past election cycles…? The age issue remains a constant with both Presidents. I “condescendingly” wrote it that way because it’s patently a manufactured crisis. There are myriad issues that far exceed in this in impact to Americans overall. Yet I admit that the “vibe” right-wing media projects has this “BoRDeR CriSis” sticking even with some Independents and Democrats. Hence why Biden in a stroke of genius called the bluff of Republicans by giving them everything they wanted, and now they stumble to save face and figure out a way to not pass the legislation because Donald Trump told them not to because it’s literally his only attack going into 2024. Thus, Biden just neutered it.
But not when they see a genocide unfolding in Palestine and the Biden administration being complicit. Are the Arab Americans of Deerborn, MI going to come out and vote for Biden and Tlaib again? Will Tlaib stump for Biden? Are young Blacks in Atlanta or Philly going to come out in droves for Biden? I don’t know.
These are pretty small groups; the BoTh SiDeS false equivalence fallacy is losing its muster as more and more people are made aware of classic wedge-driving techniques during these election cycles. At the end of the day, Biden has already significantly shifted his tone with Israel, and will these people be foolish enough to think Trump won’t be an order-of-magnitude worse in his revocation of rights and complicity in genocides? (Recall, Trump said he’d block all Palestinian refugees… That really sat well with Muslims last time he tried that, didn’t it?). What about Ukraine? We know Trump sucks up to Putin… Will people opt to not vote or vote for Trump, knowing he’ll leave Ukraine hanging? I don’t think so.
I’m not going to say this is a slam-dunk, but I absolutely am more confident now than I was in 2020, or 2022.
So two things and I’ll let it be.
First, the migration issue has gained traction among voters in swing states [2]. Our system doesn’t reward the most popular candidste, but the one who can garner the most votes by state.
Swing states matter. And small, undecided groups in swing states matter most.
All the data and risk assessment mean very little. Politics are emotional. They are in the pain of today and worries of tomorrow.
I think your confidence is on shaky ground. And worry that Biden and the Democrats aren’t doing enough of the right things to be seen as better than anything else.
Well I think we’ve both said our piece and it’s just a matter of time now before speculation turns history. Perhaps more productively we need to ask how we can increase the odds Biden wins by even more, which I’m not opposed.
Well yeah all those stats look great but the problem is that inflated housing just undoes them.
China is coincidentally also facing their economic issues from their massively inflated housing market with Evergrande (again?) collapsing
For sure, completely agree it needs addressed. But like most things, the origin of this housing crisis largely falls on Republicans. Here’s what I’d do if I were Democratic strategists going into this year. Pivots. Lots of pivots.
-
If Republicans push back on Gun Control talk, you go, "okay, if you don’t want to solve that and deflect, then let’s solve root problems like societal stress, education, single-payer healthcare, and guaranteed access to a therapist at any age
-
If republicans push back on the boRDeR cRiSis, (a) point out the net-positive economic impact these hard workers fleeing crime & poverty have while (b) pivoting to the domestic terrorist threat from right-wing extremists home-grown here in the US that are the #1 threat per the DOJ.
Combined with the border crisis and affordable housing, Democrats need to go, "Why focus on the small fish at the border and not the foreign investors from China, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia who’ve bought up large swaths of land, stifling the American dream? Hell even the King of Jordan owns 2 Beach-front Malibu properties. Look at all the real estate investors and AirBNB jacking up the prices.
Most of the housing crisis needs to be solved at the local level. Zone for density, support social housing (where the city builds the houses rather than developers), design walkable neighborhoods, and support public transportation.
The federal government can play with interest rates, regulate banks, and provide funding for cities to do the above. It certainly affects things, but it’s highly abstracted from the actual work of getting more people into affordable housing.
I agree zoning is a big one.
There are some top-down factors that need to be addressed in my view; chief among them is cracking down on rental properties, and foreign investors/ownership.
Another facet to this is the deterioration of small and rural communities across the country. We have a massive amount of land and yet the population density in certain hot-spots is off the charts. In this respect, I think we need an investment in bridging the rural-city divide. That means promoting work-from home jobs with federal tax incentives, high-speed rail infrastructure akin to the Interstate system that helps link the rural communities to the cities, and high-speed internet for all akin to the investments FDR made for rural communities in bringing electricity to the masses (The REA).
The ultimate effect of this will be de-congest cities where stress is high, bring people closer to nature, and tap into unused land and foster smaller more tightly-knit communities that aren’t so disconnected from the world.
Democrats aren’t going to fix shit lol they’re just going to bail out the banks again after the economy collapses like Obama did in 2008.
And then pepper spray the protestors on Wall Street
… That was a University police officer on UC Davis campus in California and literally had zero to do with Democrats’ direction, lmao. Wtf you smoking this early?
And don’t care — One side is objectively orders-of-magnitude worse. Progress or damage-control, it makes little difference to me.
Them protesting against the direction of Obama bailing out the big banks?
Seems kinda relevant.
One side is objectively worse but you don’t have to spread the fairy tale that Democrats are going to ever fix anything. They are just slightly less worse.
There’s also NYPD cops pepperspraying the protestors if you like that one more but the picture doesn’t look as funny:
New York City settles Occupy Wall Street pepper spray lawsuit for $50,001
Protester Kelly Schomburg filed suit after NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-sprayed a group of protesters in 2011, when Schomburg was 18 years old
I’m certain the lives of these people would’ve totally improved if the banks and economy completely collapsed, right? As with most things, the direction and anger of these Occupy protests — which I was a part of — had a long list of grievances including “banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” But universally all these problems are squarely of Republican origin; and their solutions are almost all squarely obstructed by Republicans.
After all these years, do people forget that Democrats and Obama only had a filibuster-proof control of Congress for literally only months early in his first term? These protests came after the disastrous 2010 midterm election when many of these Occupy Wall Street protesters stayed home and let the Tea Party (pre-MAGA if you’re unfamiliar) take control of Congress with the Freedom Caucus and other bullshit. So that sure did wonders for all the bankers, didn’t it?
I’ll say they’re considerably-less worse. Obama sympathized with Occupy Wall street. I wonder what Trump would’ve done… Send in FBI vans like he did in Portland?
Bank bailouts got signed in by Bush though…wtf?
Both of them bailed out the banks. This is a both sides thing.
01/12/2009 11:39 AM EST
At Obama’s request, Bush has agreed to ask Congress for the second $350 billion of the $700 billion financial bailout.
Also Obama was the guy dictatoring against Occupy Wall Street.
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There’s quite a few places where right and left agree on some point, but not what to do about it. It’s not Horseshoe Theory, because they only meet in a single place and then run in different directions. They don’t come up with the same solutions at all.
Republicans say the economy is failing, Democrats do not, but the left also thinks the economy is failing. But the left think it’s failing because it does not provide a base of support for everyone and would like to fix it. Republicans don’t give a shit about that and would prefer to keep pulling the ladder up behind them.
This has got to be an Onion headline. I mean, of course it is, but they would never in a million years admit it.
Biden’s administration has done pretty well considering all the grenades the GOP had thrown into the road.
Imagine how well people could be doing if the GOP actually cared about anyone other than themselves, rich people, or the Russians.
Biden’s administration has done pretty well considering all the grenades the GOP had thrown into the road.
people who say things like this have never been affected by any former president or the current one in a bad way and most likely do not travel around the US in any capacity
how has the economy improved under Biden? make it make sense
was it that higher minimum wage he promised then told workers not to protest and ask for better?
was it the factory jobs in the south he touted where pay and work condition standards are lower?
was it his obama style communication relief that helped citizens with things like internet bills that is now ending that only helped with about $25?
was it that national health insurance he promised that he never mentions?
yes biden has done some things but not enough or long enough or at all in some cases
everything he has done has been quartered ass at best and never good enough and always blamed on someone else when he fails to deliver like every president the US has ever had
You don’t have a choice tho.
The economy is rich people’s yacht money, remember?
Not who dies of drugs and/or starvation
Did you miss the part about the GOP scuppering and hamstringing every attempt by the Dems to make things better for the people?!?!
Pull your head out of your ass and look at the ACTUAL enemy rather than blaming the Dems for not walking as far as they could if the hurricane of traitorous actions by the GOP was not pushing them back at every step.
This has always been the case.
Republicunts ruin as much as they can and stand in the wreckage saying ‘See we were write? Govrmnt Bad!’
And democrats have to come in and fix as much as possible before the entire nation forgets again and elects another right wing shitstain come in to ruin things again.
Rinse and repeat for the last near 5 decades.
I’m so fucking tired of this. So fucking tired.
Ask not for whom the economy booms -
For only the bell tolls for thee.
I don’t think Republicans get to complain about trickle down though
They want piss trickling down on their face.
Being a republicunt is a license for hypocrisy. They can and will complain about literally everything.
Remember when unemployment went low and they complained about the plight of the poor corporations?
There’s still a full on America+China+EU sized market crash boiling under that “booming” surface. I don’t know quite how they staved it off with just Credit Suisse and two other banks imploding so far. But it’s not done, it’s not finished, it hasn’t even started.
No idea what backroom deals were done in the financial sector to stop it all for now, but it’s still coming. Otherwise corporations wouldn’t still be bleeding the plebs dry with cost of living and trying to offset their shitty investments on the CBMS as well as fighting tooth and nail to keep students indebted forever, so the party can keep on rolling.
It’s an utter clusterfuck. We’ll see what happens in the next few years.
Credit Suisse and two other banks imploding so far
Don’t forget Evergrande
Here’s a Plain Bagel video on why the Evergrande liquidation isn’t as big a deal as lots of other people are hyping, at least to the world economy
No offense, but I’m so burnt out of this finance crap, everyone is lying, the whole thing is a pointless big casino. Reading anything about finance anywhere is as reliable as reading TASS (or Ukrainian) reports from the war in Ukraine.
Nothing ever is a big deal, then everything comes down and a bunch of flapjacks who caused it are laughing and drinking champagne above the sea of desperate people protesting the whole charade.
Economics is the one issue where I will actively not trust the experts. When so many of them were saying we were going to have a recession, I was starting to get suspicious. And it turned out, we didn’t have one, even though so many were so sure of it.
Generally speaking, the experts seem to fall into groupthink and miss the actual trends. I’ve seen forecasters at some of the biggest oil and gas companies make the stupidest calls ever. They apparently forgot that in a cyclical business, we were due for a bust after a boom. It caught them by total surprise.
Nothing ever is a big deal, then everything comes down and a bunch of flapjacks who caused it are laughing and drinking champagne above the sea of desperate people protesting the whole charade.
Are you talking about 2008?
No mention of swaps, no mention of debt lending and loaning. Evergrand’s impact doesn’t just come from the shit it does in China with the real estate. As a publicly traded company, there are many financial instruments tied to that single stock that have nothing at all to do with the real estate side of things.
Evergrande stock has been all but worthless for over 2 years now, what shoe do you think is left to drop?
I gotta admit dude, this just smells like made up conspiracies. That Credit Suisse and 2 regional US bank shock happened almost a year ago. If those were emblematic of systemic issues, the failures would have continued, but they were instead just the result of bad governance and decision-making at each individual institution. The world economy absorbed those failures and moved on a long time ago.
And do you really think businesses need this excuse to raise prices? What about good old fashioned greed? Regarding prices either way, they’ve gone down in almost every sector of the economy besides groceries. High grocery prices definitely hurt the most, though, and I hope Biden can help influence grocers to charge less
I don’t think they need excuses, no. But there is a limit to how much you can realistically get out of a stone.
The world economy has absorbed fuck all, because a lot of, if not all, bad debt is still floating around the markets, hidden in swaps overnight repo, and similar mechanics. I don’t care if you believe me, it’s crazy talk for sure. It doesn’t even matter a single bit if I am right, because there’s fuck all to do about it for most day to day people. I’m also not being alarmist in: OH BUY GOLD NOW, PREP YOUR BUNKERS!!!
I would much rather be wrong here. Would be fan-fucking-tastic, and if I am, good. That’d be literally the best for everyone.
All I’m saying is, the underlying issues that keep leading to these market upsets aren’t resolved and CS, et al are just minor break outs of a major issue that keeps bubbling and boiling. Fucked if I knew when it’ll blow, but the next time it does, will be bigger than anything we’ve seen. Just these three banks failing in 2022 was already much larger in value than the entirety of 2008-2009 collapses.
Again, it doesn’t matter what I think or say. I don’t know if I’m right either, how could I? No one does. I just believe that it’s much more likely that the same fucks that caused 2008, who never saw any consequences whatsoever and are still running the show, never changed their greedy underhanded and horrible ways and 2008 was never resolved either, than all of them having a change of heart and never doing anything shifty or illegal ever again, cross their hearts and hope to die.
This is such horseshit.
There have been a quarter million layoffs at tech companies at every level for the last year or so.
My own 10+ year stint as a contract worker for one of these companies ended in December.
I got another position before January but the pay is significantly less and it’s only for the next half year probably.
I am 10 years closer to retirement but haven’t had a full time position anywhere since 2012 because companies get to abuse laws to pretend I’m not an employee so I have to pay more of the share in federal taxes and they can fire me without paying unemployment, retirement, or give severance.
I still have student debt that I’ve paid on since then, and the cost of living is higher than ever.
Paying for medical bills is worse every year, and insurance finds new ways to avoid paying anything while taking THOUSANDS out of our family finances every month.
I am tired of having no real choice but to either support a fucking fascist, or a 1980s Republican.
I fucking hate everyone across the internet who told me Sanders was “uNeLeCtAbLe.”
The neoliberal wing of the only somewhat sane party have paved the way yet again for a demagogue to screw the entire world over by allowing them to disingenuously assign blame related to inaction at addressing material and tangible issues that are solvable by the Democratic Party on marginalized people as scapegoats.
All we had to do was elect the guy who said “maybe let’s tax the billionaires a bit more and we can then have healthcare, maybe some better consumer protections, and I don’t know - a couple of bullet trains between our biggest cities.”
But no. We had to get the guy who plagiarized his speeches in his las run, and whom Obama selected as his VP to appease racist moderates in the late 2000s.
Just a fyi…we don’t need to take the rich more, we can literally pay for single payer now. This is what kills me, we already spend 3xs as much in healthcare than any other single payer system out there. We’re more than capable of providing that yesterday if we wanted to, but the insurance companies would shit a brick if we told them to pound sand.
Yes but have you considered that the rich are getting richer and therefore the economy is great? Doesn’t matter that us normal folks can’t afford groceries as long as stocks go up.
There have been a quarter million layoffs at tech companies at every level for the last year or so.
Pro-tip: Tech isn’t the whole economy. Over-indexing on that one sector–and SV tech companies in particular–is incredibly myopic.
The stock market is held aloft pretty much solely because of tech.
I’ll be honest, I don’t understand your point.
What does the value of those company’s stocks (which it’s worth noting are rallying in response to those layoffs) have to do with my point that the underlying causes of the layoffs in tech cannot be extrapolated to the broader economy, and thus action in that sector should not be used as a proxy for overall economic health?
So much emphasis is placed on the stock market and yet the stock market is boosted to all-time highs thanks to a handful of tech companies. In fact, these handful of tech companies make up about 25% of the entire S&P 500 (not even counting the many other tech companies on the S&P 500 that aren’t part of this handful). With how much the stock market is talked about as evidence that the economy is doing great, tech plays an oversized role. So if tech companies are being temporarily boosted by layoffs, what do you think comes after? The AI hype cycle will hit a slump and tech stocks will eat shit, as will the broad stock market because tech makes up so much of it. Then suddenly “the economy” ain’t doing so great.
A lot of great speculation that has absolutely nothing to do with how the economy is doing right now, which is what I thought we were talking about.
Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough: the stock market is correlated with economic health but does not measure it directly. In the first half of 2023 the stock market was erratic due to rising interest rates while the real economy–measured by unemployment rates, salaries, etc–was quite healthy. Conversely, the post-2008 recovery was anemic at best for the non-rich while the stock market rallied to all time highs. There’s a reason I’ve never once mentioned the stock market while making the case that the economy is healthy.
Put another way: your predicted future slump in tech stocks does not therefore mean the economy more broadly will suffer.
And that’s assuming your prediction plays out, and that remains to be seen. After all, I’ll bet you were predicting that Facebook is on the decline, and yet they announced a truly astonishing quarter.
And again, none of this is relevant to the state of the economy right now.
Tech isn’t the whole economy.
LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!
