I’ll believe the economics are better when I’m not paying markedly more for everything in my life and my salary increases.
The politicians are so wildly out of touch with the citizens.
This idea that the data is “mistrusted” or “unseen” is ridiculous to the point of incredulity. I don’t care what the data says, I know what my lived experiences are and everything is getting wildly more expensive except my labor, it seems. Show me any study you want, it won’t change that groceries are 30%+ more expensive, my rent keeps going up, restaurants and bars have gotten nearly 50% or more pricier and my wage hasn’t grown to match.
I’ll admit I’m a high income earner. I’ve never had to watch watch what I spend but recently even I’ve noticed increases in everything.
Groceries have doubled from what I paid in 2019. I buy almost the same thing every week and I compared.
Dining out has become much more expensive. Places I used to consider a good value are now expensive.
I ordered a basic meal the other day at a local place. A cheeseburger. Fries. Drink and my friend had a salad. It was almost 59 dollars. Six months ago it was around 30 dollars.
So now I have to watch my spending as everything has increased
Dining out is CRAZY now.
My wife and I were out and about last weekend and needed to eat so we hit a Burger King.
Meals for 2, nothing crazy, was $30… at freaking BURGER KING. We don’t even have a sales tax here.
$21 was the bill for 4 people to eat fast food for lunch in my part of the USA today.
Y’all are paying too much for fast food, it’s not worth that.
Where y’at?
Bumfuck Ohio
Workers wanted an increase in pay, so shareholders needed to offset that by even more. Workers can’t get a raise without shareholders getting a raise.
Inflation is majority driven by profit, not wages. Dems barely attack that angle. Republicans actively work against it.
Shareholders don’t need to offset shit. They’re just greedy rent seeking bastards.
Sorry, didn’t mean to word it as support. Just wording it as the reality of what they think.
Shareholders provide economic value (it’s literally in the name) and are not rent-seeking by definition
Pray tell. How?
Shareholders are key investors and are the principal drivers of M&A and infrastructure investment.
Disagreeing with the idea that companies exist to drive shareholder returns does not change the actual purpose of shareholders, nor suddenly cause them to be rent-seekers.
Yeah except the workers never get the increase in pay you tool. Both Dems and Republicans in office actively help this happening, progressive Dems are the ones that give a damn
That burger was probably 2 dollars of ingredients before profit
$2 ingredients, $55 labor, $2 profit most likely
Restaurants have among the lowest profit margins of any industry.
I know by definition “restaurant” can be a fast-food place, but genuine restaurants are what you meant. Fast-food joints do not operate this way.
Even BKs margins of 18% do not account for a $28 markup, as was suggested above.
You are correct that I was misattributing casual dining margins tho. That was a neat rabbit hole I went down.
I’m just below the median income for my area. Before the pandemic, I was comfortable. I largely didn’t have to worry about expenses, I could dine out a few times a month, cook meat more than once a week, buy a few hobby luxuries every few months. Could air travel for vacation once a year.
I drive a newish economy sedan, live in a decent area with one roommate, didn’t have all that much but the 401(k) looked good and I had all I wanted.
Now things are tight. Just the other week, went to a bar that sold a damn good burger for $9 with fries. Could have a beer with it and get out under $20. The damn hamburger is $18 now and the beer doubled in price. I try to buy meat twice a month to eat, but my diet is far more bean and lentil based now. Eggs, while doubly more, are still cheap enough to be a frequent protein. My vacations are all at home now. I’ve taken to enjoying fishing, which is admittedly great, but I used to fly to Europe or other parts of the US once a year.
I do not know how folks on minimum wage get by here. Without forming a support network of other minimum wage workers to pool for rent and groceries, it has to be an insane struggle.
If this is the “improving economy”, I don’t want any of it.
I eat out often for work and my company picks up the tab. Part of why I didn’t notice for awhile.
I went to buy eggs and they were like 12 dollars. I could have swore eggs were a lot cheaper in the past.
I eat more hamburgers than I should and that’s where I’ve started to notice the crazy pricing. Like you said you could get a burger and beer for under 20. I use to pay 20 with tip and the tip was over 20%.
I can’t do that anymore.
I went to buy eggs and they were like 12 dollars. I could have swore eggs were a lot cheaper in the past.
Man some things have really hit the “I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?” levels of ridiculousness price wise.
Since I buy almost the same thing. I don’t pay attention to the cost per item. I just watch the total at the end.
My groceries went from about 80 a week to about 150-180 a week.
I have no clue how the average family is handling this. It’s become so insane even I’ve noticed.
I’m a republican but we need to seriously raise the minimum wage. There is no way anyone can survive on it.
It’s almost 14 here and you can’t survive on that.
I’m a republican but we need to seriously raise the minimum wage.
Uh, you might wanna consider if being a Republican is more important to you than not living in a country full of homeless starving people is before you cast your next vote.
Most of your fellow Republicans believe deep down in the abolishment of the minimum wage, and are adamantly against ever raising it again.
That’s more of a myth. You do not see that in the party platform. Historically they’re been concerned about the inflation risk with raising minimum wage.
Inflation is so bad now, someone needs to do something. Neither party is addressing the issue.
Me and a partner got fish and chips at a bar yesterday, one app, no drinks, cost us fucking $80. Good fish and chips but like not that good… When I first moved here I was making enough to eat out basically every day and not notice it. I’ve gotten two raises since then but everything is going up in cost so much if I go out twice a week I’m straining my bank account. I’m used to being poor this job was a complete game changer for me but I’m already noticing I’m starting to pick up habits again from when I was making like 1/3 as much as I do now.
Visiting Europe and prices are so freaking cheap for everything it feels like I’m in a different decade.
Someone was telling me they bought 3 carrots for SIX FUCKING PENCE in the UK when they visited a few months ago.
America is so fucked, I don’t care what the office of the president says
I spent $500 at Costco last weekend this shit is out of control.
That’s why I avoid Costco. I always spend to much there.
What country? Cause those prices seem ridiculously high for the US, unless those are fine dining prices these days
United States Oregon and Illinois.
And no, not fine dining by any means.
From their username, looks like Oregon in the US.
The economy is doing better precisely because regular people’s lives are harder. A “strong” economy means more and more off the backs of everyday laborers. Not to mention intentional raising of unemployment rates to combat inflation. The system is fucked. There’s nothing in it for me and you.
Exactly this. Companies do better when they can exploit their workers for as much value as possible. That’s what a “good economy” looks like and it is the duty of every living human to hurt it.
I’ll believe the economics are better when I’m not paying markedly more for everything in my life and my salary increases.
BINGO.
A recent visit to the hospital for someone close recently STILL sent me a bill for more than $5K and we have health insurance. Family members are still in debt from school loans which are about to resume repayment. Friends tell me they haven’t gotten raises in years.
It’s such a shit show out there yet the cEnTrIsT backstop types want us to celebrate crumbs of shit they made someone blow off the top of the dead rat on our plate.
They need BIG BOLD moves - even if the Rs later do the unbelievably stupid move of overturning them to show people that REAL TANGIBLE benefits exist as a result of them voting in Democratic representatives or turnout is depressed.
No one is going to show up for your attempt at a request for a mail in rebate coupon that can be used on 1 Tuesday in October for submitting a form to see if you qualify for a temporary pause on 💩. They show up for things like the “Rural Electrification” project. They show up for the interstate highway being built. They show up for Medicare, Social Security, Civil Rights Act, etc.
You want people to get excited, then pass something exciting. Abuse your power if you have to. I don’t care if Rs scream about it - people don’t care if what you do brings TANGIBLE help to them.
Food service workers haven’t gotten raises in decades. I finally quit when I threw my back out, but when I started in 96, I was making $20,000 a year as a line cook, and later $30,000 as a chef. When I went into management I got a whopping $36,000 as a GM. Meanwhile the prices on the menus have more than doubled. Dollar menus are non existent. It’s bullshit. I make more money working for myself a few hours a week growing flower and building computers than I ever would in food service.
This idea that the data is “mistrusted” or “unseen” is ridiculous to the point of incredulity
Yeah, I see the data every Sunday I go to the grocery store and it sure as fuck isn’t making things better.
I can see all my grocery store receipts in my app up to two years ago.
Many things have gotten a lot more expensive, but some things haven’t. I would put it at 20%, not 30+%.
Also, my mortgage didn’t go up. Renters are getting screwed, that’s for sure.
Finally, my wage definitely went up. Although many people did not have had their wages go up and they are getting screwed too
So I’m doing much better than two years ago.
The economy isn’t bad for everyone.
But for many people, it’s definitely bad.
To say that the numbers are wrong is a stretch though. The numbers just reflect averages.
I too have largely been doing better since the pandemic than before it. But I also bought a condo during the extremely brief price dip in early 2020.
I think a lot of it is living costs. If you were able to lock in a mortgage with low interest rates, and don’t have to rent or look for a place to live right now, then you’re probably doing a lot better than others and then the President’s analysis may make actual sense.
On the other hand, I’ve gotten a couple raises but it hasn’t felt like it. They’ve basically equaled out to inflation.
Same here, still doing fine in my low cost of living area. Not all of the USA is as bad as some of these reports.
This is called “propaganda” say it with me “prop-a-Ganda”
This idea that the data is “mistrusted” or “unseen” is ridiculous to the point of incredulity. I don’t care what the data says
That’s…proving them correct, the data IS mistrusted
This idea that the data is “mistrusted” or “unseen” is ridiculous to the point of incredulity. I don’t care what the data says
Cannot believe you wrote this without a trace of irony.
Buddy they can say the economy is better until the cows come home, it doesn’t change that for a huge swath of people, it fucking ain’t, it’s far worse.
You could say it’s not trickling down. It’s more like an inverted pyramid scheme.
Individual impacts are always felt last. In 08, the average person didn’t experience the crisis until it had been underway for about half a year or more.
I am not arguing that every person is literally better off this moment but rather that economic messaging as a whole is not resonating with people.
Wages are going up. Hiring is through the roof. Things are turned around. Fundamentals are all rock solid, and even the Fed is saying that they will be easing off as they have essentially already achieved the “soft landing” with inflation.
The person I replied to is committing the same logical “sin” that the article bemoans.
It’s almost as if when the average person talks about the economy, they’re talking about metrics and dynamics that affect them, and when politicians talk about economics, they talk about a set of metrics and dynamics that the average person couldn’t give a flying fuck about, which may or may not affect them eventually. The degree to which those two sets are related is constantly in dispute, but trying to confuse the economy for the 1% as the economy for everyone else is kind of a fundamental deception that people are getting tired of. There’s no guarantee or even strong reason to believe any of our schools of thought of macroeconomics have ever been right. We’re making it up as we go along, and often times for the benefit of the upper class, not everyone else.
That is because Americans are not seeing the benefits. CEOs and stock holders are.
Imagine a world where stock grants were a standard part of all employment contracts, not just for tech workers and the like.
Stock grants for tech workers are often not worth much unless they get in super early and they get lucky.
I got more from my accrued vacation time than I got from my stock options at the last three jobs I left.
Stock grants (e.g. RSUs), not options. Options often become worthless.
Indeed. For the last 3 years the economy has been cooking and stocks rising yet my pay can’t even keep up with inflation.
Exactly.
Hard to believe it when strong economy doesn’t translate to food on the plate.
Tax the rich
Hey, stock market number and GDP go up. So that means we’re all doing better somehow. Right? RIGHT!?!?!!?!!
It’s like when they bail out corporations because they’re about to go tits up and then talk about how they “saved the economy.” No you saved a company that got way too big, was irresponsible, and is holding the country hostage.
Good news all, we paid the ransom!
Hey, they can’t let capitalism work properly. Competition is bad. We need monopolies.
If everyone says they feel like the economy is bad, but the metrics say the economy is good, maybe the metrics are wrong or measuring the wrong things!
Possible; it’s also possible they’re believing lies being told to them by people who benefit from others having false beliefs.
Information asymmetry often works to the benefit of employers and landlords, for example. If workers and tenants do have lots of options, but don’t believe they do, they’re more likely to settle for shitty jobs and housing.
There’s a common lie told by upper managers in a lot of industries: “Our business is perpetually in danger; so we can’t afford to pay you more because then we will go out of business and you’ll all lose your jobs anyway.”
If workers and tenants do have lots of options, but don’t believe they do, they’re more likely to settle for shitty jobs and housing.
If workers and tenants are settling for shitty jobs and housing, the economy is bad. It doesn’t matter if they technically have lots of options because the economy is structured to make them feel like they don’t.
Capitalism working as intended 👍
Firing them into the sun would be extremely expensive. It’s cheaper to just send them into deep space.
It’s even cheaper to let them build submersibles.
OceanGate had the right idea.
Crushing billionaires in the depths of the ocean is actually a good way to get their carbon back into long-term storage
Good point. Make gravity work for us rather than against us.
The weird thing is, these information asymmetries make capitalism less efficient than it would be with less asymmetry. They don’t serve the interests of capital; they serve the interests of management.
We’ve stopped being capitalist a long time ago. Now we have corporate feudalism. We prop up old companies, tamp down on startups, and do our best to make sure companies make most of their money from rent seeking.
(pst that’s just capitalism)
Marx characterized this as “anarchy of production” - without centralize control, the whims of the market inevitably undermine economic growth. It’s what causes the boom and bust cycles.
I think Marx also underestimated the class interest of the managerial class, which shows up rather vividly in actually-existing socialisms as well. Principal/agent problems are a doozy.
Maybe.
I think Marx underestimated the class divisions created by colonialism between colonizers and the colonized. It turns out that settlers could be bribed with the superprofits created through the superexploitation of colonized people. It took later theorizing by Lenin and Mao and Fanon and Du Bois to advance theory to that point.
Sure, although once we foreground the concept of “colonialism” it also crops up in those socialist contexts too: see the Bolsheviks’ treatment of Ukraine, or the ongoing maintenance of North Korea as a source of slave labor.
This. Wallstreet is doing great. The average US citizen not so much. But politicians really only care that CEOs are still getting their bonus checks, not that minimum wage workers are having to work multiple jobs to just barely scrape by. We need to reevaluate the metrics we use to drive policy decisions because they’re rewarding the people that need it the least.
GDP was invented during the great depression. The rich have figured out how to game the metric: wealth inequality. You can give more and more to an ever narrowing slice of the country and “average GDP” can still be going up…despite the fact that much of that went to Elon Musk so he can buy another PJ or whatever.
Does the definition of “economy” actually include people or are we just looking at corporation numbers because I can believe THAT economy is going strong but there’s no way I believe that the entire economy is doing just fine. You don’t need to look further than the grocery store prices to see that.
Or housing prices compared to local wages
This is entirely controlled by local zoning policy, so isn’t relevant.
Er, what? Maybe it’s not relevant in every single location, but it’s definitely relevant for most of us right now. House prices in my area have almost doubled in the last 4-5 years, and rents are up similarly. Maybe it shouldn’t have to be relevant, but it definitely currently is. Even when zoning policies change, it can take years to have a meaningful impact on housing availability or prices because it takes time to build units or convert existing buildings.
This is a conversation about federal policies, making home prices - which are controlled locally - not relevant to the discussion.
Not sure what you’re missing here. Biden can’t go into every town and change local government.
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People. Wages are also rising across the board, hiring is through the roof (hence rising wages), etc.
There is no person the economic turnaround is not directly benefiting.
You don’t need to look further than the grocery store prices to see that.
This is an ass-terrible measure of economic conditions.
There is no person the economic turnaround is not directly benefiting.
I call bs. I’m not suggesting it’s hurting anyone but there are definitely those who’s financial situation is no better. We need stronger social services, not just growth.
While I agree that we need better social services, that doesn’t change the reality of everything else I said.
Nothing, not even basic necessities like food, is even remotely affordable anymore, let along a roof over your head. Yet they still want us to work to the bone like slaves and have babies while somehow not having a place to live. Biden has passed some great legislation but the economy is nowhere near ok for anyone except the 1%.
Takes time to turn the ship around after only a single term of conservative rule. It’s the same in every country. The right ruins the economy and then the left have to fix it while the right spends all it’s time in opposition blaming the left for the mess they themselves caused (while trying to sabotage any reform).
Dude, the economy wasn’t doing great under Obama either. He did the same thing, pointed at employment numbers and GDP while people were struggling. More than half the homeless people in my area report they did not come from another city. They had been slowly sliding out of being able to afford housing for the last decade. Even while working full time.
Obama who came in as the 2008 recession was in full swing? You’re just proving his point.
And bailed out the guys who made the situation. One guy was charged when the criminal financial conduct was widespread and common knowledge.
That however isn’t the point. The point is there was a benefit of doubt for Obama because he wasn’t in office for decades beforehand. Biden was and is trying to run the country like it’s 1980 still.
What do you mean by that?
His solutions are things we either could have really used in the 1980’s or things that were acceptable then but not now.
Such as?
People know when their lives are getting better or worse. You can explain to them all you want about per-capita GDP, adjusted vs raw unemployment, whatever other jargon-crusted, hyperabstract measurement you care to explain, but people know the world they’re living in. They know whether they’re struggling to get ahead, struggling to stay even or struggling to slow the rate at which they fall behind.
People know when their lives are getting better or worse.
They literally don’t, you ever see these millionaire people making 300k+ a year calling themselves middle class? People love to claim hardship even when they’re doing fine.
No, I have never once seen that. Go ahead and quotemine the one asshole in human history who did say that. Just because someone somewhere doesn’t have an accurate assessment of their situation does not mean that everyone everywhere lacks it.
I see it all the time. They’re all over reddit, twitter, etc
Hello observation bias my old friend. I’ve come to see you again. Because an internet argument softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And that alternative fact that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of observation bias
In restless dreams, I trolled alone Narrow threads of social media 'Neath the halo of a X I turned my collar to the facts When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a mobile alert That split the night And touched the sound of logical fallacies
And in the naked android app I saw Ten thousand tweets maybe more People texting without speaking People scrolling without readinf People writing posts that never shared No one dared Disturb the sound of observation bias
“Fools”, said I, “You do not know Facts like a cancer grows Hear my words that I might teach you Take my arms that I might reach you” But my posts like silent raindrops fell And echoed in the threads of social media
And the people bowed and prayed To the Facebook god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said, “The words of the influencers are written on the subway walls In tenement halls” And whispered in the sounds of observation bias.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
Unemployment numbers don’t mean a damn thing when wages aren’t enough to live on. The profit has spoken and it says that the working class can starve outside for all it cares.
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I hate both sides. How’s the economy doing good when my wife and I work 40+ hours a week, both have college degrees, and can barely afford a 2 bedroom rental apartment in a shit part of the country let alone ever think about owning a house?? Btw second bedrooms for our son.
Economy’s doing good for the wealthy.
Meanwhile the rest of us gotta make due with weakened spending power and income, COVID era social benefits being rolled back, etc etc
It’s not even doing good for the wealthy. Lots of corporate bankruptcies are occurring right now. Any business operating off cheap debt is getting fucking railed. It could be worse but it’s not like they aren’t taking losses right now. Some of them are fucked.
Look at this privileged asshole who thinks his son should have his own room.
You wanna hear something really fucked? Every state has a standard of rooms per child at X age. Basically you can only stick two boys or two girls in a bedroom once they’re teenagers. Some states work with the parents and some states (it’s the red ones) charge the parents with child neglect for not meeting this standard. So as this standard becomes completely unattainable what do you think the party of no abortions is going to do? Change the standard, or leverage it to break up minority families?
Yeah, I had to sleep in the living room while my sisters slept in my parents bedroom.
Because, for a lot of people, the economy isn’t improving.
Say you were on the verge of buying a house, interest rates have doubled, are at a 22 year high, and now you’re priced out of the market.
Or, say you’re like me and bought a house in 2021 with a 3.25% interest rate. You’re locked in. You can’t sell your house, a) because nobody could afford the 7% it’s going to take to buy it and b) you likely can’t afford the 7% it will likely take to buy a new house.
Refinancing isn’t an option because who wants a higher rate. Ditto for a 2nd mortgage.
And this doesn’t even get into rising food and fuel costs.
I don’t know how people are surprised by the current interest rates or market… when lockdowns happened my wife and I had bought our house a year prior and I immediately told her since we both had high paying and safe jobs we should remodel everything we wanted and buy three cars since I figured interest rates would get jacked up and supply economics indicated people were going to stop doing renovation work using contractors for a minute before supplies would get expensive.
These are all market reactions. It’s a rubber band of effects that happened because of the pandemic and the shock to the economy. Capitalism requires constant feeding so when the world stopped it for even a month it did major damage and when it went on longer in key areas it basically collapsed those sectors. It’s gonna be a while before things get better, but honestly this recovery is better than I expected.
Sounds like capitalism is the problem. Boom and bust cycles are terrible for working people and great for billionaires.
100% it’s why I mentioned Capitalism requiring feeding. It’s like when people say “I can’t wait for the next housing collapse so I can afford a home.” While forgetting the part of housing collapsed where the average worker can’t afford a house and often all that happens is the millionaire and billionaire class swoops in and buys up all the property. 08 wasn’t famous for making more average Americans able to afford a house. It made it so companies like Blackstone could go around and feast for cheap.
Facts
That isn’t a reflection of the strength of the economy. That’s just capitalism. Republicans are even further from being able to fix that. They somehow think getting rid of taxes and benefits will somehow fix that. Sure you can get some deflation if you increase the amount of debt of the populace, but that’s not an actual fix.
Our economy’s health is not directly related to the average person’s buying power. One can argue that it’s actually inversely proportional.
Our economy’s health is not directly related to the average person’s buying power. One can argue that it’s actually inversely proportional.
If that’s the case then a weak economy is what we should be aiming for
Or just fix the problem and stop letting capitalism run rampant without regulations and start taxing the corporations and wealthy individuals who’s own profits are responsible for a majority of inflation.
The economy matter less to the individual when wage growth has stagnated and most Americans are living pay check to pay check. The economy is healthy for the millionaire class, not the every day American.
Isn’t that a feature of capitalism though, if people are forced to work 2-3 jobs at 60-70 hr/wk to cover bills, you have way more wealth generation per capita than if they were only working 32 hr/wk. The more you exploit your labor, the more your economy is booming.
I think the economy should never be a standard of measure.
Real Median Wages: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Wage growth hasn’t stagnated for the vast majority of Americans.
How would that chart look if the y-axis started at 0?
Much flatter… 310-390 as opposed to what’s ostensibly a 10-90 scale visually.
I’m not sure thats possible. There probably hasnt ever been a time when the median Wages were $0
The number 0 still exists. The chart does show arbitrary values higher and lower than the line. Choosing a lower limit other than 0 is a dishonest choice. It’s the first lesson I taught kids about when I touched on media literacy. Ask yourself why the author chose the mode they used and any arbitrary choices they made.
That’s not the point–because the y-axis doesn’t start at zero, the changes in wages look more drastic than they actually are.
I’m not sure I follow, the OP is clearly wrong about wages not increasing. Real wages are increasing.
$30 of increase since the 1980s is entirely are up by problems in how we measure CPI. Even the understatement in housing alone would eat up that “increase.”
$30 of real wages increase.
Yes we do have a housing shortage, but OP is wrong about wages not increasing
Systemic problems in how we measure “real” dollars have probably outpaced $30 in that timeframe.
Christ I don’t know how you look at that without being disgusted unless you are literally just seeing a line go up and stopping all thought processes at that.
That is a 40 year period with a net increase of $50 per week.
The inflation from 1980 to now averages about 3% per year or a cumulative 270+% in those 40 years.
The purchasing power of $315 in 1980 is equivalent to roughly $1,300 today (and it’s technically more based on metrics).
So us making $365 today means we are getting the equivalent of a pay reduction to $90 in 1980 or a drop of 72% of our pay
The average American is making ~28% of what an equivalent job would be in 1980!
No we aren’t better off. I don’t know how you couldn’t be sickened by that.
Oh also just to add onto that.
It means to be making an average wage for 1980 you would have to be making ~$35/hr to be making $1,400 a week or $70,000 a year to be middle class so no wonder people say wage happiness starts at $72,000 a year it’s literally where you need to be to have the purchasing power of someone 40 years ago.
Any lower than $35/hr and you have been lowered further down the rung of lower class. So if you are making federal minimum wage you have been fucked for some time. Everyone should look at their own wages and how it matches to $35/hr and realize how we have been screwed over.
This is real median wages. This takes into account inflation.
Things are also getting better for the working poor.
The middle class is the one seeing few benefits.
I generally like Biden, but that’s a crock of shit. Anytime news outlets claim that the “economy is strong”, they’re almost always talking about how it is for the investor and owner classes, not for the working class. This economy is absolute dogshit for the proles, how the hell is anybody supposed to survive under these conditions? I make OK money and I’m barely scraping by, I don’t know how the fuck anybody else is still hanging on. Housing and the price of consumer goods needs to seriously come the fuck back down to Earth, it’s squeezing people dry. I kind of wish people in apartment complexes would just start banding together and burn their rental offices down and just refuse to pay rents anymore, because whoever decides what “market rates” are for renting apartments are some of the greediest motherfuckers on the planet.
Rental prices are sickeningly high right now it’s insane. I was excited to see that lawsuit against that rental price fixing company RealPage but it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere, frustratingly. If all the rental agencies are using the same automated tool to set their rental prices obviously it’s going to artifically inflate them all.
Right?! That’s a much bigger deal and one that absolutely needs a rush on taking care of but no one wants to change anything that makes a rich person somewhere money. They would rather slowly hang millions of the lower and middle classes than piss of a handful of rich people.
The stock market isn’t the economy… jic that’s what this article is referring to.
Uses a stupid fucking definition of unemployment, then tosses out a biased ass line disparaging peoples distrust of media.
But the poll found that 51% wrongly believe that unemployment is nearing a 50-year high rather than those who believe it’s actually low (49%).
An economy “going strong” for only those at the top isn’t going strong at all.
But you see, stocks and GDP are up. So you’re doing better. Walmarts profits are up 50% YOY. Ignore the fact they just decided to cut starting pay in spite of that.
Yes. Surely that will translate into savings for me at Wal-Mart, because costs under capitalism go up and down.
To be fair costs do go down…
When two parties of equal power are negotiating. Yeah they always forget to mention that part. I wonder why?
I think people rightly don’t believe it because it’s apparent that the economic machine in the United States is not built for the benefit of the average worker, it’s built for the benefit of the capitalist class that’s captured the government. Republicans may be more up front about upholding the status quo, but there are plenty of corporate Democrats that will support the same status quo while chasing the social capital that comes with agitating for change that more progressive groups are pushing for.
People don’t have faith when they’re constantly sacrificed at the altar of “the economy” without seeing any of the benefits of an improving economy. For a good example, look at how the BNSF rail strikes were resolved before Christmas last year. Rail workers were striking for very reasonable things like 7 days of sick leave per year (up from literally 0, per the contract they had with BNSF) and appropriate staffing to prevent emergencies (like what happened in East Palestine, Ohio in early 2023), and what did Biden do? Biden, the guy who campaigned as one of the most pro-labor and pro-union presidents in recent history, stabbed them in the fucking back and made it illegal to strike because an unstable supply chain around Christmas spelled “economic catastrophe”. Biden would rather go to bat for a large corporation than for the workers that corporation is shamelessly exploiting.
The pandemic is another great example. “Essential workers” were expected to risk their lives and those of their loved ones while business owners got huge loans they never had to pay back. Working folks meanwhile got a couple grand for the entire year and even then folks say it was too much.
I’ve never seen such a naked upwards redistribution of money in my life. At one point, the Fed gave itself the power to literally buy shares of funds itself to inflate the price.
Now since the free money has dried up with rising interest rates (which had to happen because the poors were finally seeing an opportunity to get a mortgage with low rates and that caused all of the inflation don’t you know) businesses are raising rates on everything ever to sustain their profits.
Except the term “essential workers” became a hollow statement when it became obvious that it wasn’t referring to “essential” to society, but essential to the economy.
Nurses and firefighters, hell yeah, but also bartenders? Oh, but definitely not restaurant servers. Oh yeah, but we gotta keep those Walmart baggers on the Frontline, can’t risk cutting into the Walton’s fortune.
Fucking clown world, I swear
