Why can't Biden get more traction from the economy?

Politics & Elections
664

Yes, and as I said upthread, I can appreciate that inflation hits harder than other factors. And I worry that it’s just unrecoverable; since prices can’t come back down again, there’s nothing Biden could have done to get people to feel good about the economy. (despite the US being the envy of the world right now)

My only points were:

  1. We shouldn’t cherry-pick. That is, if salaries are significantly up on average, we shouldn’t pick examples of people on low salaries and use that as a reason why people are negative about the economy. That makes no sense but is exactly the argument many upthread have made.

  2. Clearly disinformation has been a big part of this. People are responding to polls with factoids that are spread by conservative media and are the exact opposite of reality. Half of Americans. I don’t know why some here have such a problem with acknowledging this.

665

I didn’t mean to imply that, but I’m afraid I did.

The examples you cite – rising rents, food prices, etc. – are real and cause real pain, particularly for younger and lower-paid people. The point I was trying to make was that inflation colors the perception of even people who aren’t hurt as badly by it, so they’re more likely to harbor negative impressions of the economy and even believe things that are 180 degrees from the truth, e.g., that unemployment is at record highs.

Agreed. I don’t blame anyone for having these feelings. But I do blame them for blaming Biden for them.

As far as the OP … I’m starting to think that Biden simply can’t get any traction from the strong economy. Anything positive he touts will only provoke a negative backlash. If voters are stupid enough to believe that Trump can make housing and college more affordable and bring gas under $3/gallon, well then we’re truly fucked.

666

By which I mean, making him seem out-of-touch to people who aren’t doing as well in this economy. Which dampens enthusiasm about him in populations where he needs every vote.

667

Are you talking about the pandemic stimulus checks?

These checks were issued in March of 2020, December of 2020, and March of 2021. The first two were under the Trump administration; the third was under Biden.

I am unaware of any stimulus in 2022. What am I missing?

668

Maybe survinga read about the state-level stimulus checks that went out to individuals in 2022? I believe for some or all the sixteen states that did this, the 2022 checks were disbursements of unused federal stimulus from another “bucket”.

Regarding federal stimulus, there were no more direct checks in 2022, but there were some other federal pandemic stimulus programs still going (e.g. rental assistance, higher education, PPP).

669

Bringing prices down back to pre-pandemic levels would win Biden a ton more votes than any record-breaking Dow Jones high.

670

And he can do this by…?

671

No it wouldn’t, because deflation is absolutely disastrous for an economy; it would likely trigger a recession and huge layoffs. And I’m pretty sure at that point nobody will be claiming that jobs numbers and growth rate don’t matter.

672

Czarcasm

And he can do this by…?

Crashing the economy and causing huge deflation. What a plan!

673

I’m talking about way more than just stimulus checks.

There was the Cares Act, which was passed in 2020 in a bipartisan matter, and then ARP, which was passed in 2021 by Democrats only. It was far more than just “stimulus checks”. There was all kinds of extended unemployment. There was PPP. There was stuff to make Medicaid and the ACA a better safety-net when people lost jobs. There were tax credits. There was money given to state & local governments. There was money for enhanced food stamps. There was money for transportation. There was money for the pandemic - for schools to build better ventilation, and for free vaccinations. There was so much tucked away into the ARP bill, it was valued at about 1.9 trillion dollars.

In 2022, there was another trillion passed in the “Inflation REducation Act”, which was also stimulative in some ways. In 2021, there was the BIL, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

The first two years of Biden’s term was full of legislation to accomplish various goals, but all of it really was stimulative to the economy. And that’s one big reason we had an extremely fast economic recovery.

674

OK, thanks.

675

Time has nothing to do with it. It was a poll on how people feel.

676

I don’t know a single person who got a 6% raise. When I Googled wage increases I got this cite which shows significantly less than 6%.

677

Your “cite” is a group that sells memberships to people that they convince the economy is shit but can be improved if you join them.

678

For shits and giggles, I downloaded a CSV of annual inflation rates from the Minneapolis Fed website, a table going back to 1800.

I ranked the years according to inflation rate… #1 being 1864 with a 27% annual inflation rate, #223 being during Jefferson’s presidency, when there was a 14% deflation rate in 1802… and then asked:

What happened in those years of high inflation to make the rate go high?

Nothing occurs in a vacuum, of course. What macroeconomic event was happening in these years which would drive inflation higher?

And the answers were pretty obvious: Of the top 25 years for inflation in post-1800 American history, eighteen of them came about because of the twin demographic disasters of wars and pandemics, and the years following. Five of those years were 70s oil shock related (Sorry, Jimmy Carter!), and the other two were in 1808 (Jefferson) and 1854 (Pierce).

Eighteen of 25, or 72%. Want to keep inflation low? Don’t go to war, and don’t kill a lot of people with disease.

I alluded to this in my “commercial” for Joe Biden, but I wasn’t aware until now just how stark and obvious this relationship is: If you kill a lot of people, you disrupt supply chains, government spending goes up, and inflation rises as the cost to fight those battles, rebuild those supply chains, and repair the damage is put upon the entire economy. In short: inflation is the price we on the home front have to pay for winning the battles fought on the front lines.

So… for me… this is why I don’t “blame Biden” and is part of my daily narrative when talking about this: the inflation of 2022 was a direct result of the COVID pandemic, and there is economic history to support this contention.

Imgur

Here’s the link if you want the spreadsheet:

(In the spreadsheet, I included the increasingly-seen bullshit stat of “cumulative inflation” because it was easy to do and I wanted to have those numbers available if needed. I decided to do 2, 3, and 4-year CI rankings because… why not.

Also: Biden years are highlighted in yellow.)

679

Time has a lot to do with this thread though, because we’re talking about why Biden isn’t getting traction on the economy.

Why, despite month after month of record-breaking news on jobs, on the stock market, on energy production etc, the needle hasn’t moved.

And the answer is pretty obvious when you see the polls that say half of Americans are not only unaware of these data, but think the exact opposite of the truth.

Sadly, it’s been decreed that misinformation can’t be a significant part of the answer, so I guess we’ll never solve this mystery.

You just googled it, did you? This good faith googling somehow didn’t come across the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, but instead, a relatively small survey that I don’t think shows what you think it does. It makes a distinction between multiple ways that companies are raising salaries and even the “total salary increase budget” is not the full accounting because it is excluding things like raising salaries for new hires.

One wonders why you went for this particular cite.

680

And if they feel that the unemployment rate is at record levels, and we’re in a recession, how do you suppose they arrived at that feeling? The price of cabbages went up?

681

Also, time has nothing to do with these feelings, they have existed since the Big Bang and will continue until moral improves.

682

Does it matter why prices go down? Say all CEOs have an attack of conscience and admit that 96% of their price increases since the shutdown were done with the sole intention of padding their personal bank accounts, and that they would still be obscenely profitable without them. They immediately reduce their prices accordingly. Assume there’s no resistance from the shareholders for whatever reason. Does that make any difference at all?

683

Well, you’d get human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! But other than that, no problems.