Inflation is low, unemployment is low and there’s virtually no hint of a recession. But many Americans, according to surveys, are convinced the economy is terrible.
In the last 3 years, The cost of virtually everything went up. food, clothes, building materials, transportation, housing, real estate, and anything else people need not want. Wages didn’t rise to meet them. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, Margaret.
Straight up gaslighting. Inflation is low? We just got battered by rising inflation for two straight years. That doesn’t go away because a month turned over. Everyone’s dollar devalued hard and prices aren’t coming back down again now that they’re standard. You could only believe this if your job depends on believing it.
Inflation is low now. Cost of living went up by like 25% over the last 3 years. Not to mention, I still have pretty slim prospects of owning a house in a convenient and desirable location, and I’m on a software engineering salary. So yeah, economists, you can absolutely shut the fuck up about the economy being so “fantastic”.
And hey, you know, maybe maybe Democrats shouldn’t campaign on how “great” the economy is if nobody who actually works for a fucking living is seeing in real life how “great” it is.
Yeah like I vote dem because the alternative pretty explicitly wants me dead, but I’m an engineer who is still struggling in a medium cost of living area.
It’s like the Dems are afraid to acknowledge their strengths. Your opponents are committing crimes against democracy and promising brutal oppression of women and minorities as well as their political opponents. I think that the only major issue with their financial strategy right now is that it’s too far right, but don’t fucking run on it. Run on the fact that your opponents are fighting for unpopular opinions
Inflation is a rate of change.
If prices went up a lot last year, but they’re not going up much now, inflation now is low.
“Low inflation” doesn’t mean prices going down or the value of the dollar going up relative to a basket of goods. That would be “deflation”.
My bad, am I mixing up inflation and cost-of-living? I’m trying to understand the economy jargon better.
The point still stands that the rate of inflation is down but we still have to deal with that long period of time AKA 2022 where it didn’t dip below 7.5%.
Nothing any government can do will undo the high inflation of 2022. Deflation must be avoided, because while consumer prices would go back down, the main effect of long-term deflation is that everybody stops investing and starts saving. Why would I buy new tools now when I can wait for tomorrow and get them cheaper then? When the entire economy does that, it shrinks. Catastrophic for capitalism. Prices are what they are, they’ve stopped going up, can’t realistically wish for more.
Furthermore to blame high inflation on the Biden administration shows a complete lack of journalistic integrity. Like blaming the '08 crisis on Obama. Both were worldwide events which, if the US weren’t so god-damn self-centered, anyone could realize were just as bad or even worse in other developed countries. In 2022 most of the Eurozone was well above US inflation levels (without going too technical, the US Fed had more leeway to much more aggressively raise interest rates to reign in inflation, which it did successfully).
Now there is plenty of blame to be passed around for a lot of specific economic policy items that impact cost-of-living (wages, housing, student debt, etc.). Inflation isn’t one of them.
deleted by creator
Alright, you burned most of the money. In other terms, you defaulted on most of your debts to reset the economy.
No foreigner is willing to loan you any money any more. Global trade with the US collapses. Fertilizer, semiconductors, cars, fuel, etc. Domestic investment collapses as well, so does GDP, tax revenue, and therefore public services.
Historically, countries implementing these bright ideas ended up with a crisis so bad it brought on widespread famines and food/fuel rationing. 5c fuel is great and all except when you can only get one gallon a week.
Oh, and that “one million remaining” dollars? Guess who gets 99% of it? The army and the generals, that’s who. What are you gonna do, not pay the guys with the guns?
The US economy is doing just fine, save for the wealth inequality. You don’t need to “reset” anything, just redistribute that wealth. Maybe start implementing proper taxation of the ultra-rich and of big corporations, see where that leads you, no need to collapse the economy to get there.
Yeah, that was a bit of an insidious statement. Month over month or year over year inflation may be manageable now, but that does nothing to reverse the price spikes over the last two years. And the vast majority of us did not see pay raises to match them.
When media and government talk about “the economy”, they mean rich people’s stock prices, not working people’s ability to afford food and shelter.
Where do you think all that extra money we’re paying to live is going? To “the economy” of course! Rich donors to politicians are doing better than ever, so the system is working as intended.
My theory is the buoyed perception of the economy is because there are still surplus jobs available in many middle-class industries. IT workers may be getting laid off en masse by several large companies but (for now) they’ve been able to get jobs elsewhere.
In reality the average person or middle class family is suffering though and it isn’t perception. I literally went through grocery and consumables receipts and many categories of items cost 1.5 to 2x what they cost 18 months ago.
I get really sick of being told by douchey think pieces that things that are happening aren’t happening, and vice versa. Fuck whoevers poll numbers they are trying to boost.
I agree with the article on reporting accurately about the threat and illegitimacy of the Right.
I started walking away when it got lumped in with this bullshit.
Don’t look at your shit wages and blame inflation, Kevin.
Dope
My wages weren’t shit before the inflation hit, Cletus.
Right but your wages are shit now because they didn’t keep track with corporate profits. Inflation is only bad for you because it somehow didn’t cause any inflation in labor costs. So the question you should be asking is, why is everything but your labor costing more?
The problem is the wealthy. And it will be, if history is any guide, until the only thing left for people to eat that aren’t wealthy, is the wealthy.
This guy gets it.
Yes they were…if the inflation of the past 3 years broke you you were fucked anyway before.
Christiane Amanpour has reported all over the world, so she recognizes a democracy on the brink when she sees one.
“We have to be truthful, not neutral,” she urged. “I would make sure that you don’t just give a platform … to those who want to crash down the constitution and democracy.”
It’s a great suggestion, which will be summarily ignored by every major tv news outlet.
Neutrality isn’t the mark of good journalism. Questioning the position of governments is. Asking “why” in the context of how it affects people is.
No news organization is neutral. There’s a story and a length of time for each segment. The editors and anchor decide what to say and how to say it in that allotted time. That forms a message, and that in itself shows bias, intended or otherwise.
Instead of focusing on neutrality, they should focus on objective truth, and stop worry about which party they’re implying to support.
You are so right. Media/government/society has been conflating objectivity with neutrality. Many things are objectively right or wrong.
I would say questioning the position of the powers that be is the mark of good journalism, whether that’s government, religion, the wealthy, business, whatever.
Questioning the position of governments is. Asking “why” in the context of how it affects people is.
However, questioning isn’t the same as attacking or undermining.
For example: It’s important for journalists to look for corruption in every government. However, it is an error to expect to find the same amount of corruption in every government; or to inflate the small corruptions of a less-corrupt government to make them sound as important as the large corruptions of a very-corrupt government.
If the Trump administration illustrates one thing, it’s that there actually is a big difference between a good administration and a bad one. Everyone who said “the major parties are the same” or “they’re all just politicians” was shown to be making a serious mistake.
Agreed.
To paraphrase what I’m saying with direct examples, the Fox News and MSNBCs (I’m not ignoring CNN or others) of the world have highly polarized standpoints, both of which claim to be giving us unbiased news.
It’s obvious, however, both are imparting an agenda.
I typically make the analogy of softdrink preferences. Everyone loves their brand. They rarely deviate, even though Coke and Pepsi are both brown, hyper sugary, bad for you, and rot your insides. I.e., we like our specific brand of poison to be “just so.”
the media only cares about click and impressions /FULL STOP > not sure how to fix, but until that changes, it’ll be status quo.
Fixing requires readers support their preferred news outlets with subscriptions. Currently headlines need to drive the ad machine if the lights are going to stay on. Challenging the ad buyer’s main revenue stream is not financially viable. It’s the main reason news outlets do not want to touch Medicare For All, pharmaceutical ads are big money makers. Money in politics is a no-go because it’s a guaranteed cash infusion every two years, not to mention the overlap with other ad buyers. Decoupling the ads from the main revenue gives media outlets the freedom they need to address the news as they seem fit.
This is definitely a factor although advertising alongside subscriptions for news print was a thing for at least 100-130 years. So I don’t know if subscriptions are enough.
Too, better journalism requires news media oligopolies to be dismantled and to have more independently owned news media companies.
Corporate News is for-profit and run by republiQans. It’s really that simple. Trump showed that corporate news will never do the right thing at the right time, even in the face of the most arrogant, ignorant, outrageous lies and attacks.
It’s time to stop pretending that corporate news can be “saved” and start accepting that it absolutely can not be saved. Then we can move on to a truer form of journalism. We have the ability to publish globally in our hands, literally.
Yeah, the “liberal media” is just the wing of the corporate propaganda machine that packages its propaganda in a way that is palatable to liberals.
deleted by creator
I just love all these people telling use every day Americans how great things are despite everyone struggling and feeling otherwise. We’re still feeling the effects of years of horrific inflation and price gouging. No one’s salary kept up. Things aren’t good.
Fuck us peasants though. The stock prices are up.
Wait till we all have to start paying on our student loans.
If this is going to be the Democrats stance, that the economy is in good shape, then Trump has an actual chance at winning. WTF is wrong with them, dilusional.
They’ve got a rich history of stealing defeat from the jaws of victory - this is just more of the same.
The rich economic focused liberals control the purse and the message
democracy? again?
It’ll never work. The Athenians tried and failed. Get back to your plow. Feudalism is the only realistic system that accommodates human nature.
/s, icymi
Democracy forever!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Last week, as she celebrated her 40 years at CNN, she issued a challenge to her fellow journalists in the US by describing how she would cover US politics as a foreign correspondent.
Add to this the obsession with the “horse race” aspect of the campaign, and the profit-driven desire to increase the potential news audience to include Trump voters, and you’ve got the kind of problematic coverage discussed above.
The Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman pointed out last week that the media apparently has failed to communicate something that should be a huge asset for Biden: the US’s current “Goldilocks economy”.
Two-thirds of Americans are unhappy about the economy despite reports that inflation is easing and unemployment is close to a 50-year low, according to a new Harris poll for the Guardian.
“When one of our two political parties has become so extremist and anti-democratic”, the old ways of reporting don’t cut it, wrote the journalist Dan Froomkin in his excellent list of suggestions culled from respected historians and observers.
It’s our job to make sure that those potential consequences – not the horse race, not Biden’s age, not a scam impeachment – are front and center for US citizens before they go to the polls.
The original article contains 720 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Removed by mod
No less than you’d expect from an opinion price in the Guardian. The idea that American media is too un-biased is laughable. The exact opposite is true, and the Guardian gleefully participates as one of the more overtly biased outlets.
Everyone in the media has an agenda, and they’re all pushing it 100% of the time.
None of those agendas are “left”, buddy.
It’s not even always that they are pushing an agenda is that they make money off of horrible things and others misfortune.
We’re really going with the tired democracy is on the ballot trope again?
It’s just a factual statement about most modern American elections, what are we supposed to do, pretend it’s not true because you want fresher material?
Removed by mod
Are you really claiming to not get the expression “X is on the ballot” to mean it will make a big issue for issue X which party wins? Like for example in 2024 in addition to democracy, abortion will be on the ballot.
Rather, “to be subject to a vote in an election” e.g. [democracy] is on the ballot aka is subject to a vote in an election.
Right - so factual it hasn’t managed to pan out in any way beyond absurd hyperbole.
You’d think at some point in the last two decades of the trope, people would have recognized the pattern through which they’re being led on.
I suppose that if that were the case, the scam wouldn’t keep working.
Member those dudes beating down the door of a barricaded senate that only stopped because one of their zerglings took a bullet to the neck? I watched a live broadcast of the gallows they had set up and the chants of “Hang Mike Pence.” Member how a former President is literally facing criminal charges for trying to fix the election in Georgia?
ANY OF THIS RINGING A BELL?!?
Or are you one of those “alternate facts” types? Feel free to join my block list.
Or are you one of those “alternate facts” types? Feel free to join my block list.
Okay, “completely rational and not at all hyperbolic or biased” type.
I don’t know how you’ve detached yourself from reality this badly, but please get help.
Maybe it looks that way if you’ve only been at this a couple decades. Given how things have changed slowly over the last 40 and relatively abruptly with the Trump era, I think Democracy has been under fire for a long time.
The problems are that: too few have been aware of it, too many have been apathetic about it. Too few have voted, and too few have been involved beyond the absolute bare minimum of voting.
But the real failing is that the growing corruption – regulatory capture, lobbying, campaign finance, rise of oligopolies in ever more markets, etc. – has left us with neither major party primarily beholden to anyone but the ultra rich and mega corporations.
So I would argue that our realistic choices (since with our election mechanism, we are essentially locked into a choice between only two parties) are …
Democratic – incremental progress socially but mostly status quo economically and little interest in addressing the root problems I mentioned along with failing to address the seriousness of the rising threat of the right wing, loosely similar to the attitude of liberal centrists in the German Weimar Republic of 1930-1933. (I am fully aware that Democratic party is a hodge podge including some left leaning groups but the centrists run the show, I think we can agree)
Republican – long term (40+ year) plan to undermine education, suppress voters, dismantle government safeguards, challenge (by ignoring) fundamental checks and balances, along with regressive social policies (particularly race, sexual orientation, reproductive freedom, gender expression).
If one is actually aware of the GOP’s gerrymandering, active voter suppression, undermining of news media, rejection of the concept of truth and fact, conspiring to overturn the presidential election, anti-intellectualism, stochastic terrorism, active persecution and suppression of marginalized people, criminal activity, and brash corruption, one cannot interpret as anything but a directed, coordinated, doggedly persistent attack on American democracy.
Only one of these two groups severely degraded the operation of the government in the last decade and one of these groups is driven to further establish a theocratic, nationalist, authoritarian, regressive—in short, fascist—rule.
To look at the last twenty years and term “democracy on the ballot” as trope or hyperbole just shows how bad “the new normal” had gotten by the 2000s.
All this has been going on ever since the GOP transformed into a reactionary party in backlash to the Civil Rights era and especially following Nixon’s resignation.
Maybe it looks that way if you’ve only been at this a couple decades. Given how things have changed slowly over the last 40 and relatively abruptly with the Trump era, I think Democracy has been under fire for a long time.
There’s a canyon of difference between “is under fire” and “is on the ballot”.
One of these may be able to be supported through reference and analysis. The other is hyperbolic outrage bait.
But the real failing is that the growing corruption – regulatory capture, lobbying, campaign finance, rise of oligopolies in ever more markets, etc. – has left us with neither major party primarily beholden to anyone but the ultra rich and mega corporations
A failing which precludes the notion one can simply defend democracy by voting blue.
So I would argue that our realistic choices (since with our election mechanism, we are essentially locked into a choice between only two parties) are …
If you’re going to draw arbitrary realistic bars by which to measure, you may as well just stop voting.
Democratic – incremental progress socially but mostly status quo economically and little interest in addressing the root problems I mentioned along with failing to address the seriousness of the rising threat of the right wing, loosely similar to the attitude of liberal centrists in the German Weimar Republic of 1930-1933. (I am fully aware that Democratic party is a hodge podge including some left leaning groups but the centrists run the show, I think we can agree)
I’d argue they’re center-right at best, and actively malicious towards the working class.
Republican – long term (40+ year) plan to undermine education, suppress voters, dismantle government safeguards, challenge (by ignoring) fundamental checks and balances, along with regressive social policies (particularly race, sexual orientation, reproductive freedom, gender expression).
Every single one of these failings applies to Democrats as well - hence the problem.
If one is actually aware of the GOP’s gerrymandering, active voter suppression, undermining of news media, rejection of the concept of truth and fact, conspiring to overturn the presidential election, anti-intellectualism, stochastic terrorism, active persecution and suppression of marginalized people, criminal activity, and brash corruption, one cannot interpret as anything but a directed, coordinated, doggedly persistent attack on American democracy.
Are you still pretending the majority of these don’t apply to Democrats?
Only one of these two groups severely degraded the operation of the government in the last decade and one of these groups is driven to further establish a theocratic, nationalist, authoritarian, regressive—in short, fascist—rule
If you haven’t been paying attention to anything but Salon and Vox, sure, I can see how you’d think that.
To look at the last twenty years and term “democracy on the ballot” as trope or hyperbole just shows how bad “the new normal” had gotten by the 2000s.
Alternatively, it highlights the extent to which media has been crying wolf using such tropes to try and drive blue votes where platform has otherwise utterly failed to do so.
I agree that the new normal is bad - I disagree with using irrational outrage-bait to drive votes in such a manner as to perpetuate every problem behind the new normal.
Read up on Trump 2025, if you don’t think democracy is at stake in the US. They’re planning to turn every election into a republican primary at best.
Again, we’ve been hearing variations of the same fearmongering for decades, and we’ve already seen parallels with either party trying the same in Congress.
It’s fortunate that we have a system of government which generally prevents authoritarian power-grab e.g. as it generally did last time around. Law is difficult to just ignore and Congress has a rich history of partisan
circlejerkdeadlock. But that’s specific to concentrating executive branch power in the elected individual and seems to entirely miss democratic selection of individual.This all seems to miss the point, though - even if it was correct this time, the best blue team seems to be able to come up with is the tired rah rah vote for us or vote for fascism crap yet again. It’s as if they’ve recognized they aren’t actually going to try to bring anything to the table that voters want, so in order to try and minimize criticism of those failures, they’re just tripling down on wedge messaging.
Ok, so you are either ok with this or are another one of their useful idiots.
Mike Pence could’ve (likely illegally) decided to reject the votes from contested states or taken an alternate slate of electors. The President, the highest elected official in the land, told Mike Pence to reject the results of a democratic process even though all legal challenges had been laughed out of court.
I’m sure that happens every election though.
Mike Pence could’ve (likely illegally)
So… could he have, then? You seem not convinced of such a thing itself when you qualify it as a thing not supported by law therefore not binding or enforceable.
The President, the highest elected official in the land, told Mike Pence to reject the results of a democratic process even though all legal challenges had been laughed out of court.
Trump is deranged - water is wet and other apparent news at 11:00!
I’m sure that happens every election though.
Hyperbolic fear mongering and borderline delusional Presidents does seem to be a trend - one you seem to be perpetuating.
Woah, there. Can’t have them actually run on a platform or promise to deliver things. Orange man bad and scary. The DNC has been gifted the biggest get out the vote candidate ever on the other side and still insists on shitting on themselves.
I think Obama was the last time they managed to not completely shit themselves at every opportunity. Coincidentally, it was the last time they campaigned on any form of positivity.
Stop threatening it and we’ll stop saying it.
No one is threatening it.
It’s beyond amazing you still fall for the same crying of wolf so often.
Edit: I should have checked the comment history. I see you’re just another stereotypical blue team cock-riding Reddit migrant.
