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President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.
Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception. The divergence could be a decisive factor in whether the Democrat secures a second term next year. Republicans are seizing on the dissatisfaction to skewer Biden, while the White House is finding less success as it tries to highlight economic progress.
“Things are getting better and people think things are going to get worse — and that’s the most dangerous piece of this,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has worked with Biden. Lake said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.
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I make $17k more than I did in 2016, but according to the inflation calculator, I make $15k less than I did in 2016.
The underlying health and future prospects of the economy being positive is great, but things are just eye wateringly expensive compared to a few years ago.
When the economy is doing well, that means businesses are doing well. When businesses do well, the workers are paid less. The economy is not your friend.
Or some people like to say “the stock market is not the economy”. Which I think points in the same general direction.
This is a popular sentiment but believe it or not real - as in inflation adjusted - wages - are now actually above pre-pandemic levels.
Is that a median or a mean?
I believe average but I’m not sure that’s particularly relevant here. We’re talking about wages, not wealth. It’s the latter that your Bezos’s, Zucks, etc can potentially throw off when measuring averages.
I believe average
I was asking about which specific kind of average.
I can only go by the words that you use when you ask a question my guy, and the words you used indicated that you were asking if it was the average (mean) OR the middle figure in the distribution of incomes (median).
“Average” can mean either mean, median, or mode. You’re the one who doesn’t know what words mean, not me.
Still, it would be interesting to see the distribution of these wages, whether the whole distribution shifted uniformly to increase the average, or it just became more skewed
Good news guys, shareholders are profiting again!! At least be happy for them you ingrates
The problem is that the economy is fundamentally unfair, not that it’s doing poorly. Workers get screwed and owners make money. Unless that changes somehow people won’t respond to “Well actually” and a bunch of statistics.
Income inequality has made traditional measures of the economy meaningless for the majority of us. Even the overall measures of price increases and inflation no longer apply across the board because categories that are less important can cancel out areas that are critical, such as housing and food costs.
This seems to be the GOP strategy at this point. Do everything you can to wreck the economy and write your friends blank checks. The Democrats get elected to fix the mess. Then, you use their time spent cleaning up your mess to make the case that they are ineffective, getting you re-elected just in time to start all over again.
Yep, they did the same this with Biden as with Bush to Obama, which is leave him with a giant pile of crap and then blame it on him. I remember the conservative troglodytes saying “omg Obama! Economy!!”, of course conveniently ignoring that the country was dealing with a major economic disaster created in the Bush years after years of Republican Congress and presidency. Pretty sure it’s on purpose at this point, like how they obstruct and massively waste time in Congress when there’s a Democratic President, then say the President didn’t get anything done. Meanwhile Trump, of course, whined that Obama had left him with a country in shambles, when in fact Obama had left him with the momentum of an economic recovery. Then Trump took credit for it. Then when Biden came in office, being handed a mismanaged mess from the Orang-utan, Republicans said “well Biden is President now so it’s his responsibility! Can’t blame it on the last guy!”
The middle class are often the last to feel economic prosperity. Feature, not a bug.
Neolibs and the right: The economy is better than ever, why aren’t the people happy?
The People: I’ll never be able to afford a house, I can barely afford my rent and feed myself.
Neolibs and the right:
The economy is not solid when I’m unable to purchase a week amount of groceries
What is frustrating is the framing we keep seeing being set up by the corporate media - people keep being given a moral framework and permission structure to vote for what is likely to be the end of the country, by voting against Biden (or sitting out, or voting for an absurd third party candidate) just because they feel gas or groceries are too high. As if the President sets prices.
I’m not saying this permission structure is all that new. It’s been there, just like the stupid “who would you like to have a beer with?” narratives…I’m just saying continuing this horse race stuff is absolutely not helping. I get that people are struggling, but voting for OJ is not going to help their situation and the media often frames it that way. And of course we know that many are absolutely not struggling, in fact, many are doing better, but they are now given excuses to vote for donnie that give cover for the real reason they are voting for him (racism).
Americans are so fucking stupid. Source: I’m from Ohio.
So you’re saying they should feel good about the economy, then?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Consumers have been feeling broadly uneasy about the economy since the pandemic, and they are still coming to grips with the notion that we are not returning to the pre-pandemic ‘normal,’” Joanne Hsu, director and chief economist of the survey, said of the overall trend in recent months.
Jared Bernstein, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, stressed that a strong underlying economy is “absolutely necessary” to eventually lifting consumer sentiment.
As the annual inflation rate has fallen, GOP messaging has focused instead on multi-year increases in consumer prices without necessarily factoring in wage gains.
Administration officials had once assumed that better economic numbers would overcome any doubts among voters, only to find that the negativity stayed even as the U.S. economy became likely to avoid a recession once forecasted by economists.
As a result, there’s a lag before a slowing rate of inflation boosts how consumers feel, according to a recent analysis by the economists Ryan Cummings and Neale Mahoney.
Adjusting for government transfers and taxes, the average annual income for someone in the lower half of earners was $34,800 when Biden took office, according to an analysis provided by Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
The original article contains 1,343 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
According to who?
C’ommon, fat. You really have it great. I have no sympathy for you, I really don’t. Get another job or I will give you another crime bill to cry about.
