My wages have not gone up and the prices i pay are still going up.
But the economy is doing great! Billionaires and corporations are making record profits while eliminating thousands and thousands of jobs!
The DOW is a misery index. A measure of how much wealth can be extracted from the working class and reappropriated to the wealthy.
What does DOW stand for?
OK, so the D stands for Dow Jones … what do the O and W stand for?
It’s not an acronym
Then why did @disheveledWallaby write it as one?
Ya but they fired one full time worker and replaced them with three part time workers! Progress!
All hail the job creators!
I’m confused. Wages are growing faster than inflation now. Unemployment is back down. Every metric for WORKERS (not stocks, markets, etc.) is on the up.
Do you have evidence I can read about this part time phenomena?
While I know things are generally bleak from a general late-stage capitalism point of view, and things cant be all good for everyone, but things are looking good or better, at least for most people. What benefit is there in denying this? It’s the same FUD the media is spreading, I feel.
Specific inflation, like rent and food, are not down and not being beat by wages. Also the official inflation numbers don’t include food.
Furthermore, there’s decades of slippage to make up for, just in the official numbers. There is a 139 percent gap since 1974. (The first year for which numbers are easily accessible) That means that the inflation added up every year beats median wage change added every year by 139 points.
A couple months of beating core inflation isn’t going to solve something that’s been problematic since the mid 2000’s.
Good points! Isn’t decreasing runaway inflation still a boon? Also, what metric for inflation are you using? I thought the CPI included average essentials a person would buy, like food. It seems that measure is also decreasing:
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category.htm
How does one beat core inflation, though? Deflationary and austerity measures typically end poorly, right? I guess companies would have to pay up so that productivity gains match real wage gains.
Well yeah. That’s the basic problem. If we still prioritize corporate gains, we will never get people back on on track.
That’s all great in a vacuum, but when you add in housing costs suddenly none of those gains are enough.
Totally! In the context of Biden’s economic policies, generally, I think it reflects favorably for him.
I would like to see corporations banned from purchasing single family homes, massive rent control measures, etc. But these aren’t things I can expect Biden to achieve unilaterally or quickly.
Biden doesn’t even acknowledge the current issues with the way our economy is structured as evident by this article.
They really only included a quick blurb. What about Biden’s other efforts?
Brainard [one of Biden’s top economic advisors] described “lowering costs and increasing access to housing for Americans” as “one of the most important issues in the President’s economic agenda.”
and
He has backed several affordable housing bills and action plans in 2023 — including the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, which would produce 500,000 starter homes in under-resourced communities over the next decade
I am not hyper up-to-date on everything political these days, but it seems like Biden is doing alright. Especially when I consider the alternative 🥲
Public sentiment is a trailing indicator of economic success. Until the gains are really felt by people they don’t see them. In a couple months that wage growth and lower inflation will even out.
Quite a few states are increasing their minimum wage in 2024, and federal workers are getting a 5% raise. I imagine the “but why aren’t people happy about the economy” stuff will fade away in a quarter or two.
Hey if that happens, then great. But it’s one hell of a bet to make in an election year. Especially when people have been struggling for a decade now.
“fool! If you knew economics better you’d understand that your buying power is the wrongest metric. Look at the stonks you uncultured swine!”
-a super smart economist, probably
I had someone try to tell me that the economy is better than ever, people are more rich than ever, and my “personal anecdotal evidence” can be completely dismissed.
It’s no longer “personal anecdotal evidence” when 150,000,000 people are experiencing the same thing just in my own country.
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How does this garbage have any upvotes?
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So what you kinda tried to say without saying just now was that your data refutes my point. Before i waste time playing with you on a topic i felt done with yesterday im gonna make you commit more. Is that what you are saying? That your data, february 23 to today wage growth vs inflation, refutes the points ive made yesterday about massaged data being used to misrepresent reality? And this data shows me that the increased actual cost of living has been for 10 months outstripped by wage increases for Americans across the board? I need to know what you mean, precisely.
Mine and my wife’s have, it’s all anecdata, but we’re doing better than before.
Min wage not increasing and prices increasing isnt anecdotal
At least where I am, no one makes minimum wage. Fast food and retail jobs are $17+/hr.
Minimum wage is irrelevant if the prevailing wages are higher. It seems like monthly we’re hearing that a union has signed a new record breaking pay agreement.
That is not anecdotal - pay is going up: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t19.htm https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages
Get in a union. Or keep changing jobs just going to wherever will pay you the most.
I have a union job and a non union part time job. Pay has gone up a decent chunk at both over the past few years.
“Just get a new job” is a completely asinine take. Many many reasons people can’t. Someone with a family working full time doesn’t have the time or energy to develop the skills for a better job. Someone at fast food in a small town has the choice of other fast food or other retail which all pays the same.
In my wife’s case, she cares for a disabled family member. If she didn’t do it, nobody would. She has no choice.
I mean I agree it’s not a very helpful take, but it is true. Right now is the best time in history to educate yourself and build skill sets that are marketable
I’m interested to know is that your wife’s job? You started out by saying people can’t just get a new job. Which is fair. But I’m confused as to if she is actually working. Not to say it’s a bad thing either way. We gotta do what we gotta do.
The whole get a new job thing doesn’t work for everybody. But the main point behind it is employers are more competitive when searching for new talent. Thus hire wages. You don’t necessarily have to learn a new skill or change industries. Hopping from McDonald’s to Burger King might get you more money in comparison to waiting for a raise. Depends on your market and your industry.
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Which part of “cares for a disabled family member” is hard to understand?
Is it confusing to you that someone would care for someone else?
…or is it just a general lack of empathy?
If you chose to live in a small and isolated town, have no skills beyond line staff at a fast food restaurant, are unable to promote up to management there, and unwilling to travel, I’m sorry, but you sound like you dug yourself into a hole. I have a job I enjoy a lot, even if it’s not very high paying, but I still have the experience and skill set to go off and get at least 3 other jobs in 3 other fields that would pay me more, or even getting a job doing what I do now but at a higher paying place, but like I said. I like where I’m at.
Stuff is expensive as hell now, but you can do something about it. It sounds like you may not want to choose any options that exist, though. If you’re dealing with something that totally prevents you from doing so. But hell, even work from home Apple help support reps start at like $45k/ year.
If you chose to live in a small and isolated down,
And then on any post about housing prices, all you see are comments like “well you chose to live in an urban area!! If you liberals would just move to rural Alabama you could afford your rent!1!” So which is it?
Then I get downvoted for saying there’s a million reasons people can’t just up and move, including a lack of jobs and other resources in rural areas. Besides, a majority of people don’t necessarily choose where they live. There are countless socioeconomic circumstances that dictate that.
It’s just proof that people continue to fall for placing the blame on one another when it should really be directed straight upwards.
You sound like a 20 something, childless white guy that was spoonfed fox News. Glad you had time to build new skills. Some people have children or ailing/disabled families. Some people already work 2 jobs.
Some people struggle, even when they do everything right. Callous ass.
Lol. Holy shit did you fly way off the mark. Try going with 40’s, fam with kids, and lean left. Housing assistance,snap, socialized medicine, taxing the wealthy, and all.
Sure, you can have bad luck and get screwed in life, but right now the job market is WAY better than when I got out of highschool just before 9-11 happened. You can get a work from home job at $20 an hour right now, I drive a class B truck as a side job for $26 an hour, and there’s a rock quarry that hires green people for over $25/hr that end you up close to $35 after two years. I don’t live in some fantastic state, either. Midwest.
Right now there’s a ton of work available if you go get your feet wet. The younger than me generation is screwed on housing costs right now. I’ll give you that, but so was most of my generation. But you also have the ease of an online education and remote learning making it far easier and cheaper to get into some things than anyone else before has. The job market was terrible when I got out of school. Now unemployment is low and unions are getting a hold again and companies are all having to pay more just to poach other companies for people. John Deer will hire you, pay you to go through their 6 month program to learn how to work on their tractors, give you a truck tool box decked out with tools and send you off as a repair tech for them for like $70k a year. There’s not a mechanic shop in the country that isn’t behind right now due to the high vehicle prices causing people to hold their old vehicles together longer that wouldn’t like another person to do mechanic stuff.
I’m rambling, but the point is, there are pretty ok jobs out there right now. Businesses are willing to train you on the job from knowing almost nothing at this point. If you look and don’t live in the middle of nowhere, you can probably get hired doing something that pays better than wherever you’re at. Today’s economy no longer rewards loyalty.
People can’t buy houses with three full time incomes. Glad you got yours.
You’re fucking delusional, dude.
People can and do, you weirdo.
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I’ll talk to biden and let him know of your situation. I’m sure he will do something tomorrow dw.
Ill let him know next November
Trump will 100% be great for your life 💯💯💯💯
Oh boi i get to choose between my life getting worse and my life getting worse.
BoTh SiDes is defeatist bullshit and just an excuse for mental laziness. Try thinking for a change.
The thing is for a great many people they don’t care. They aren’t getting deported. They aren’t getting shit on any worse than with Biden.
That may change, but it didn’t in Trump’s first term. Biden has to be better now, for the working class, than Trump was. And he just isn’t.
The POTUS has little control over the economy. But the economy is way better than when Trump left office, and the outlook is thousands of times better.
It’s just that people bought the claim that somehow the economy going to shit under trump wasn’t his fault (it wasn’t) but now that the same thing that fucked trump is still fucking shit up, it’s Bidens fault.
Is the suggestion here that minorities shouldn’t or don’t matter even though they are a solid chunk of the working class?
You’re talking at me and not taking in what im saying. Working full time every week, my life is worse off now than before Biden took office. Im not going to vote to make my life worse.
The only real reason to vote for Biden is his commitment to letting us vote again in 2028. Something Trump seems soft on. What are our options in 2028? Lmao
I do hear what you’re saying. You apparently think another option would be better, despite the mountains of evidence against that
Worse off during Biden is different from worse off because of Biden. Hitting the brakes while going downhill 200 MPH doesn’t completely stop you from going more downhill. Every modern Republican has been so incredibly short-sighted that it’s genuinely destroying our future by insane levels.
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Yeah, even as a solid dem from my perspective this reads as “report how I want it to sound”. It falls flat.
That said; the economy is doing better (but unfortunately the kind of economic improvement that helps shareholders more than regular people), inflation slowed down, unionization is on the rise, fuel prices (temporarily, as always) are down…so that’s good.
But housing or every kind is still out of control. Record profits without commensurately rising wages. New cars are still fucking ridiculous money. We’re being subscribed to death.
So from an everyday perspective we are still getting fucked.
There’s not much Biden can do about late stage capitalism. We’re reaching the end game. Where companies take us for just nearly everything we have to where we “survive” enough to keep working and paying them but just barely.
Even just talking about it truthfully would be something. Sticking his head in the ground is just going to get us a dictator.
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Low wages, poor or high cost benefits, termination for any reason the employer sees fit… unions can also fill in gaps with additional insurance, legal benefits, addiction programs, and more.
Are you not from the US?
E: quick trip thru your comment history shows possibly Finnish? With libertarian and possibly anarchist leanings. Pro-free market to a fault while completely ignoring the damage free markets do, and the fact that they’re never really free.
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I suppose you have a choice then. Let corporations run amok and sacrifice your well-being for profit as they do in the US, or in your case let unions take over and give people better lives at the expense of bureaucracy.
I prefer something in the middle after spending time in Europe and the US. EU quality of life is higher, as is upward mobility, longevity, and a bunch of other factors. FBFW that comes at the price of strong unions that make a lot of things difficult to do thanks to the bureaucracy.
I don’t think you really want truly free market. The first thing to be sacrificed is you for more profits.
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A new pet peeve. Not slamming, or blasting, but RIPPING. He tore these fuckers’ jugulars out y’all!
Once non sensational headlines start getting more clicks, they’ll make them less sensational. More people want it that way I guess?
Yelling at cloud not effective, gotta pump up that headline.
“Bidenomics”
Opinion rejected. It’s the same neoliberal trash that’s defined American since Reagan, and Republicans want to do an even worse job at.
Did you even watch 1 minute of the video?
Bidenomics
Opinion Rejected
“Rejecting” someone you probably agree with because you can’t take a second to understand their position.
Noice.
It’s a very simple and time saving system.
Let the term “Bidenomics” cross your lips without at least audible scare quotes, get your opinion invalidated.
Dare ya to watch 1 minute.
Translation: “we spent all this time massaging CPI and GDP, yall better report how great the economy is now!”
When they report that the economy is great, always ask for whom…
If you have to tell people how great the economy is, it’s not that great.
Translation: you pulled that from your ass. There is no evidence of manipulation of the indicators and those the Gov. is using match those of the business community.
You know the CPI calculations and fields reported change freuqently right? Started back in 1981, when CDOs started getting big and housing prices had a huge jump without ever coming back down
Feel free to prove your claim at any time.
The CPI is regularly manipulated with hedonistic adjustments.
Feel free to prove your claim at any time.
“My numbers are dropping! This is not my fault! Release more articles telling them the economy is great and it’s all in their heads!”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
President Biden criticized news coverage of the U.S. economy as he faces growing backlash from voters over his handling of inflation.
In brief remarks Saturday before boarding the presidential helicopter, Biden expressed confidence in the economy and ripped the reporters for the way it has been portrayed.
The economy has roared back from the COVID-19 recession under Biden, who enacted legislation for trillions of dollars of economic relief and investments shortly after taking office in 2021.
Biden and his Democratic allies have largely blamed the media and Republican critics for skewing the public’s views on the economy by exaggerating recession fears and dismissing record-setting job growth.
Pandemic stimulus and restrictions also fueled a surge in home prices and rents, deepening an affordable housing crisis that began long before COVID-19.
Many voters are also struggling with the long-term changes to their jobs and industries caused by COVID-19, along with the lapse of economic relief programs that temporarily lifted millions of Americans out of poverty.
The original article contains 473 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
If Biden wants the media to cover him better he needs to do what Republicans do: give them a simple message. The other day I saw a Biden “I did that!” sticker on a national park fee payment station. Blatantly untrue? Yes. But it’s simple and people aren’t going to research or even think about whether park fees are Biden’s fault.
“The economy sucks and it’s the president’s fault” is a simple message. But:
The U.S. unemployment rate was just 3.7 percent in November — barely above the pre-pandemic level of 3.5 percent, which was a five-decade low. Annual inflation has also fallen sharply from a peak of 9.1 percent in June 2022 to 3.1 percent in November, and the economy has defied widespread predictions of a recession.
These numbers will just be ignored. They don’t fit in a headline or even an unpaid tweet. And I find people’s natural reaction to numbers is to distrust them. “Yeah, but that’s not the real unemployment/inflation/GDP/etc”.
As for what that simple message can be, I have no idea. “Rising employment, plummeting inflation” might be an option, I dunno. But he needs to get someone in charge of messaging who will simplify things.
The economy is doing great. Except for one thing. It’s all being sucked up by the people who are already rich.
Everything we do to help just gets sucked up by the megacorporations and the already rich. I’m sure you know the feeling.
The economy is doing great. Except for one thing. It’s all being sucked up by the people who are already rich.
Biden’s supporters don’t see why this is a problem.
The problem is the economy is good in metrics but not for the individual. Corporate greed is leaving most Americans worse off despite the “good” economy
I think this is one of the things Trump got right: there should be a more adversarial relationship between politicians and the press. Of course Trump was adversarial because he wanted to do awful things, and also he wanted to set up a state media apparatus, but still.
Well, Trump was adversarial to certain media outlets. Others, like FOX News, were All-But-State TV. They’d parrot whatever he said as the god given truth and he’d parrot whatever they said as truth. If Trump said that the election was stolen and COVID was no big deal, that’s how FOX reported it. If they said that vaccines were dangerous and that immigrants were replacing “real Americans” (read: white people), he’d parrot that right back.
Also, adversarial relationships are good to a point. Biden is asking the media to cover things honestly. Trump was calling the media “The Enemy Of The People” and threatening to go after them (or encouraged his supporters to go after them) unless they fell in line. There’s a huge difference between those two adversarial relationships.
Do we have to label calling people on their shit “adversarial”? To me that word has a connotation of reacting unreasonably.
One might just call it “reporting” 😉
I have the same connotation with word adversarial…
I would think combative is closer to your connotation and adversarial is judgement neutral.
What the hell are you talking about? Trump did massive damage to journalistic integrity as a whole. You ever hear the words “fake news” before he used it?
Trump did massive damage to journalistic integrity as a whole
Not nearly as much damage as access journalism (e.g. Maggie Haberman style palace intrigue stories) did. The press and politicians being buddy-buddy is a disaster for journalistic integrity.
You ever hear the words “fake news” before he used it?
I did. The first time I heard it was on the PBS NewsHour, second half of 2016. Trump didn’t really start using the term until 2017/late 2016, IIRC. They were using the term to describe news sites that felt like “official” news sites but were not journalistic, using social media to spread and get ad revenue.
To be clear, I’m not saying that Trump’s press strategy was good. Overall it was harmful; but the adversarial nature specifically was good.
Pandemic-disrupted supply chains are pretty much righted. Inflation is already back near normal levels. Labor shortages have eased. The Federal Reserve is poised to cut interest rates next year.
We’ll still get a thousand stories about a looming recession.
Inflation is back near normal, but prices are not, and wages have not shifted to match those prices (partially due to the government fighting “wage inflation”). People are still worse off than they used to be. I don’t think this is Biden’s fault, but here we are anyway.
Biden has called this out. A lot of companies are still raising prices or aren’t letting prices fall. They’re still saying “oh, this is inflation causing this” while their costs fall and their profits rise.
Biden can’t stop them singlehandedly. (He’s a President, not a Supreme Dictator.) But he can call them out on it and use what powers he has to bear down on them somewhat if they don’t stop.
It might not get all of them to stop (some might risk fines because the profits would be greater), but hopefully it will direct the anger towards the actual culprits - big companies taking advantage of past inflation to raise prices.
Biden can’t stop them singlehandedly.
No but since he couldn’t stop them he decided the working class would pay the price and had the Federal Reserve fuck over the American people.
The Federal Reserve is independent of the President. They technically answer to Congress, but in reality it’s to the big banks.
Powell was reappointed by Biden. Biden is responsible for what Powell does.
No one has been talking about a recession lately. The stories have all been shit is too expensive for the majority of Americans.
And…well…they’re true.
The poor and uninformed are the last to see improvement. That doesn’t mean things aren’t getting better. Yet they are most likely to vote against their self interests.
The poor and uninformed are the last to see improvement.
And the first to catch hell when things go to shit. When wages start to rise, the fed considers it a disaster to be averted.
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I think he’s actually saying the opposite.
Media reports say the economy is doing great because corporations are making record profits
Meanwhile wages continue to stagnate and prices continue to rise.
The economy isn’t great just because rich people are making more money. It’s only great when consumers have real purchasing power and are paid a good enough wage to circulate that money back into the economy.
That could make some sense.
“Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.”
—Trump
"Start reporting it the right way”
—Blue Trump
why all the complaints
if someone mentions voting for someone other than biden you are instantly a trump lover and if you mention voting for someone else other than democrat or republican you are are a biden hater
maybe there should be better reasons for voting other than shirt color or letter or name
