How's it going (theeconomystupid)?

Politics & Elections
1

Perhaps this is the wrong place for this subject, but the Economy is of paramount importance in this US election year, so I am planting it here.

About 28 years ago, I read a thing in the Sci-Am blurb section that said that presidential elections in the US can be harbinged on the basis of macro-economic performance – not so much the actual numbers, but the general public feeling about whether those numbers support an optimistic or pessimistic outlook. The “in” party stays in during good times, the “out” party takes over when things seem to be looking not-so-good. It seems like an extremely reliable predictor.

I tried to figure out what the current situation is, but it is very difficult to examine. In '06, we already had some smart people warning of serious impending issues, but today is quite different. On the one hand, I have seen left-wing sites claiming that big lenders are again up to their subprime derivative shenanigans, but on the other, one financial publication (starts with “For-”, but I cannot remember which) has convincing evidence that the bulk of the '08 crash was not subprime loans but quality loans. (Not sure if the initial subprime collapse might have dragged the good paper down with it, though.)

Robert Reich, of course, is flogging away at the income-gap/wealth-divide, which does seem to be an issue. Clay “Thomas Jefferson” Jenkinson commented on his show that extreme class division was one of the key causes of the French Revolution. But is there a public perception that the divide has reached the point of truly being a problem? And if Mr. Sanders is not in the race in October, who would that benefit?
So, my question is, what do you see going on in the economy? Is it stable? Are there serious issues that might manifest dramatically over the next half year? And what is the general sense on the street of how things are going?

2

I think it’s improving, and so are Obama’s job approval numbers.

Obama started with an economy losing a staggering number of jobs that slowly turned into an economy of sluggish growth. His approval numbers seem to mirror this recovery by meandering between 40 and 50 percent. Not terrible, but not too satisfying either.

If job growth continues, you can expect his numbers to break the 50 percent mark. At that point it would be very hard for anyone to win the Presidency with an anti-Obama message.

3

I’m a ‘upper-middle’ class in that I make just over $100,000, own my house and have a fairly substantial retirement fund (I’m 62). So gas price/food/utilities cost/insurance/taxes changes probably impact me less than many here.

For me, with a fair amount of said retirement in mutual funds (along with many millions of other Americans), it is how they are doing that tends to indicate (in an admittedly self-centered way) how the economy is doing.

I really think that people missed how much the middle class got hit when the 2008 crisis hit; I lost over a quarter of my funds value and it set my plans back a bit. Under Obama (and yes, I know he (and Congress) had little to do with it) they have been pretty steady and growing again…until lately, for the last 6-7 months I’ve been losing value.

It’s not enough to change my vote, because the Republican party seems to have forgotten about this part of their platform (or at least they aren’t getting it out there with the current show), but how those mutuals are doing is my economic forecast.

Looking forward to reading a variety of opinions herein.

4

A correction was long overdue. I held tight in 2008/2009, and now I’m quite happy. I think you should be in a lot better place than you were when Obama took office.
And you consider how much of the weakness of the market is due to China. You can’t really expect Obama to prevent the Chinese government from screwing up their economy.
I was in a lot worse shape when Bush left office than I was when he came in.

5

Does it matter that despite the good numbers, Republicans seem to truly believe that the economy has gotten worse?

6

Look at the issue from another angle. The economy has improved - dramatically so - by virtually every measure since Obama took office. Has that improvement affected all segments of the population? Yes, but some have disproportionately benefitted, and the benefits get better the higher on the wealth/income scale you go. The middle classes and working classes, far larger in numbers, have not seen the same benefits. Most of that lag is historic, starting back in the 1980s, but that also means that a second generation is now feeling it. Do you expect the next generation to be better off than yours is a standard poll question and the percentage of all groups who say no is historically staggering.

Rationally, it is simply impossible for every generation to be better off than the one preceding. The average family is already living in splendor by historic standards, with two cars, large houses, expectation of college for their children, frequent travel, goods from around the planet, and technological marvels at their fingertips. The rich have nothing that the middle class doesn’t; they just have more. The important difference is that they don’t have to worry about the money to pay for it all.

Irrationally, families do want more and better without worrying about paying for it. The rich aren’t truly blocking them from this, but the rich are employers rather than employees. They can leverage unstoppable and irreversible globalism to move jobs or replace people with machines. The rich have become job destroyers.

This message has been actively repressed by the rich and their representatives so that the blame goes everywhere else: immigrants, welfare moochers, government taxers, the Other, Them, Foreigners, Unbelievers, Anti-Americans. That propaganda is fantastically successful. People are voting for anyone who professes to stand up against Them.

Long term prospects don’t look better. The Occupy movement was a farce. Being against globalism is like being against rising ocean levels. They’re happening, like it or not. Sanders rails against the banking system, which is a symptom and not a cause. The lifetime, high-income manufacturing jobs of the past will never return. Blaming Others for any of this will make everything worse in every possible way. It’s just hard right now to find the positive to get people to root for. Being against is far easier, and much more satisfying in the long term. We’re going to see a lot of that for a while.

7

It’s not just propaganda though. Labor surpluses at the bottom do hold wages down for unskilled workers. Restrict immigration and fruit pickers make $15/hour. People aren’t stupid, and they don’t just blame “the others”. They blame the corporations too. They just blame both sides of the transaction while the left for whatever weird ideological reasons isn’t willing to deal with the sellers of cheap labor. and I’m not saying to blame them, they are blameless. But you can’t actually solve the problem while still allowing cheap labor to flood into the country.

There are jobs, the low unemployment rate proves that. The jobs are just paying poorly, which indicates labor surplus. If Democrats continue to pretend that the labor surplus doesn’t exist, and propose policies to make it worse, then people will notice. Doesn’t take propaganda to see what’s right in front of your face if you’re a low income worker who is competing with people willing to work for even less.

8

This might make a lick of sense if not for two things. Cheap labor is not flooding the country taking jobs away from would-be hard-working Americans. They fill some of the slots at the bottom no Americans want. And the blamers are not the low-income workers (who are heavily minority and vote Democratic if they vote at all) but those just above them who yell about minimum wage increases and any governmental assistance of any kind. Oh yeah, and skin color.

You can’t wriggle out of the current situation by talking about the people who are most hurt by it as if they controlled the situation, the party, the vote or anything at all. They don’t. And they are also tiny in numbers comparatively. Let’s keep the focus on the classes above them, who have been the core of your party for most of your lifetime.

You dare to decry propaganda at the same time offering this unconscionable shifting of blame? Your post is what propaganda stinks of.

9

No Americans want at minimum wage or below. At good wages, you’ll fill those dirty jobs just fine. I’m old enough to remember when American hotel room maids were as likely to be American as foreign. Today, it’s almost unheard of. And I’m not that old(42). The only jobs that have always consistently gone to immigrant labor have been agricultural, and that’s mainly because expensive labor in that sector would put too much pressure on household food budgets.

One can vote Democrat and still not be happy about individual policies. One can also disagree with the policy but place other priorities higher. But it’s an economic truism that labor surpluses hold wages down.

All I’m doing is pointing out that the widespread blaming of immigrant labor is not due to propaganda, and liberals actually concede the argument indirectly by going after outsourcing, which is basically the same thing: taking jobs away from Americans and giving them to cheaper laborers. Democrats see a distinction somehow, but I doubt the average American worker does. He’s in the same boat whether the job was exported or the worker imported.

10

Just that adding immigrants as being a cause of that is what it is propaganda, and of the worst kind, usually coming from nativists as the conservatives at CATO report.

http://www.cato.org/blog/immigrations-real-impact-wages-employment

That the average American worker does not see a distinction is indeed a result of republican propaganda (and also thanks to propaganda from places that deserve no respect).

11

And depress wages at the lowest end of the scale.

12

Graping a contradictory straw does not help your argument. “increase living standards” ≠ depress wages.

13

Increases living standards for the middle class and upper class. If you’re looking to close the wealth gap, mass immigration is a pretty terrible idea.

14

Wait, so immigrant labor isn’t a problem?

But immigrant labor is the problem? Good spin.

Outsourcing is the same thing? Yes, it also results in lower wages but they are fundamentally different in cause and effect. And most importantly, one doesn’t allow a direct target and the other does.

Like Mexicans, people we can build a wall to keep out, because, you know, that would solve everything.

The irony is delicious. Trump is a master of the propaganda of blaming Others, the culmination of 30 years effort. Does he lie and cheat and bluster and hurl nasty names? We knows he does because the pustules that were the powers in your party are saying the same things about him that the rest of us have said about them for 30 years.

He wasn’t running for office then. Now he’s agin it. He’s a master at propaganda. Your constant reiteration of talking points ain’t nothing compared to his lies. Big lies. The hugest.

15

It is more of a lousy idea to use a straw man.

16

How many Republicans believe this?

If Obama gets over a 50% approval rating, that means more than half the country thinks the economy is getting better. And that’s the whole ball game folks.

17

Democrats need to make up their minds about voter intelligence, unless they actually think that minority voters vote wisely, whereas white voters are fooled by propaganda and vote against their own interests.

18

The economy is doing fine for people who are living well within their means and have money to save/invest, particularly post-'08 crash- the stock market has gone gangbusters and it has been pretty easy to grow disposable income, if you had it.

People living paycheck-to-paycheck in '08 are probably in the same situation, assuming they still get a paycheck. After Obama they now at least get Obamacare, but that doesn’t solve all problems and anyway a lot of people can’t seem to see it as a benefit. They’re still struggling and/or poor. A rising GDP or falling unemployment number doesn’t help them in a directly noticeable way. For them, the economy is not good.

19

You don’t think that having a shitload more money, not to mention the political power that goes with it, is something that the rich have that the middle class does not? :dubious:

First you say that the wealthy are not blocking people from having more and better things, then you say that the wealthy have the power to “leverage unstoppable and irreversible globalism to move jobs or replace people with machines”. How is that not a situation where wealthy people are in absolute control over the fates and fortunes of the vast majority of people from having the means to secure that which they want? :dubious:

This part I agree with, with some caveats on the details depending on which people and which anyone and which Them we might be talking about.

Aye.

I largely disagree.

Aye, not to this country or any other.

20

You misunderstand. In the days of true class differentials, the wealthy had many things that poor did not. It wasn’t until the New Deal that most of the rural part of the country had electricity, e.g. It wasn’t until after the New Deal that it became unlikely that you couldn’t tell the wealthy from the poor just by the clothes they were wearing. Today the differences are quantitative rather than qualitative. Huge, enormous, society-changing difference.

The wealthy are not in absolute control over anything. How are they doing against Trump? How much money was lost in the recession? They are in relatively better shape to ride out down times. They can control some businesses to remove some jobs (unfortunately, relatively good jobs) but they are outnumbered by the millions of small businesses that have started up and compensated for the absolute losses.

What you skipped over was that all-important first sentence: “Irrationally, families do want more and better without worrying about paying for it.” In the 1950s, the supposed golden age, families were thrilled to buy a 1000 sq. ft. house, own one car, and have one TV set. Today the standard expectation for a middle class household is many multiples of those basic goods. Mean household income for the middle quintile has barely moved since 1967 but expectations and wants have soared. People simply expected that income would always grow to match wants. It hasn’t. That’s why they are so mad. Look up the J Curve of Rising Expectations. It’s not the absolute level of misery that causes revolutions, political or violent. An increasing gap between expectations and reality does - even if reality is constantly improving.

That’s the situation we’re in. Simple. Easy to explain. Impossible to accept or change. “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”