Well, it mattered why prices went up after the pandemic. That inflation burst was mostly due to supply chain disruptions & demand skew. It was not because Biden had overheated the economy with stimulus. So, when inflation eased, it did so without recession and job losses. The reason for the inflation mattered in what happened to “fix” the inflation.
And on the other side, things like Gas & Food go up and down all the time. You could have deflation that’s driven by non-controllable things like gas & food, or maybe something weird with housing rents. So, I guess there could be reasons for temporary deflation that don’t point toward a weak economy…(any economists on the board can correct me if I miss something here)
But here we are in 2024, and the inflation burst of '21 and '22 has ended. We now have inflation at about 2.5% to 3% underlying. And wages have caught up and surpassed the inflation that we had. So, if we get deflation at this point, it would very likely be caused by weak demand and an economy in a recession. So, in general, we don’t want deflation. Usually, deflation is caused by a stagnant economy, and very often associated with a very deep recession.
If you see cabbage go up on the same day that you hear from Sean Hannity that Illegal Immigrants are running rampant, murdering children, then the logical conclusion is that unemployment is at a record high…(:-))
It’s weird that you’re finding these more obscure cites; this one is a subset of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, perhaps just for that state (they are a little unclear in the description)?
Anyway the rate they give: 4.7% is approximately the same as the national growth rate for the 3 month average.
…which is a great growth rate; while it indeed is lower than for some past months, it remains higher than it was at any point in the last administration.
If the point that you are trying to make is that it is less than 6%, I never claimed the 3 month average growth rate was 6%. I said that the average worker was 6% better off even after adjusting for inflation, than pre-pandemic. It’s not the same thing.
This article makes a reasonable case that at least part of the problem is that the administration doesn’t seem to want to talk about it. By which I should really say talk about the actions it’s taking. Why Does the Biden White House Hate Its Own Agenda?
I guess the question is what we think the base case is. What would Biden’s approval be if he wasn’t underachieving. And yes approval is not the same as economic thoughts but they have a high correlation and I think ultimately what most people are concerned with.
I would expect Biden to be around ~50% approval with almost all democrats being positive, republicans being negative and the independents being somewhere in the middle. That has things have looked like in this partisan era. Biden is closer to 35% approval. So to me the question is not why Republicans don’t like since that is obvious and expected, but why he is at 35% and not 50%. And if you look at the numbers as compared to 4 or 8 or 12 years ago you see that Biden’s approval is way down with certain demographics. So I think you do need to look at these groups to answer this question.
Isn’t that the entire point of the thread? That Biden is underachieving based on how good the economy is? I was mostly using approval/polling figures as compared to recent elections.
I wouldn’t expect that at all. I think, in the current media landscape, Biden’s approval on the economy represents the high watermark for a democrat. This btw, is how Biden’s “underachieving” is reported outside of the US:
Meanwhile, in the US, one side spreads disinformation about a “disastrous” economy, and spread memes of $90 chickens or whatever, and puts stickers on gas pumps etc. They were also only too happy to tout jobs numbers etc under Trump, only now they’re even better under Biden, it’s just “facts and charts” that don’t capture the real picture.
The other side tries too hard to not be partisan, and doesn’t want to offend their viewers, so says words to the effect of “Inflation is too high, and there are still many problems, but the economy is generally doing OK”…it’s not enough pushback.
Just to be clear, I mean that Biden’s is underachieving in polling/approval ratings based on how good the economy is in general, not that the economy is underachieving. That is what I take this thread to be asking about.
Exactly. And my argument is that while misinformation is a factor, based on where Biden is and isn’t underachieving in the polls, the bigger factor is the actual economic hardships for those groups he is underachieving with.
in all fairness, Dems have gotten really good at there own narrative that other than the 1%, housing, education, health care, childcare, and food are economically unobtainable for most Americans.
I suppose that’s true for both parties, except Republicans evil socialist Democrats.
I think regardless of your political affiliation, most Americans don’t “feel” like the economy is good (at least not in a way that they can perceive or understand). So while the national-level metrics might be “good”, what I think normal experience is the following:
There are few jobs or career paths that actually enable someone to afford the traditional “American Dream” lifestyle without an advanced expensive college education.
They often come out of college with a lot of debt and are forced to take jobs that are below their education level.
Even with so-called “good jobs” with “good companies”, a lot of them are kind of bullshit-y.
And I think people feel like at all levels, their employment is never really secure.
Everyday stuff (like feeding a family of four at Mcdonands or morning coffee) seems really expensive.
We live in a very consumerist society that constantly bombards people with messaging that they need to buy all this crap and stream all these services.
There is a vague sense that a lot of stuff doesn’t “work”. Service is often terrible. Things get broken and never fixed. Stores and restaurants often seem understaffed.
And not directly tied to the economy, but I think people are a lot more socially isolated than they were in decades past. Which I hypothesis makes them more generally sad and depressed and caused them to seek out more crap to consuming, bringing attention to how much that stuff costs.
I also think that the interconnectedness of the internet now causes everyone to compare themselves against everyone, even if they don’t realize it. So like whereas before someone might be content with working a local factory job, going home to their modest home and their regular family and play softball and barbeque on the weekends with their friends, vaguely aware that there are billionaires and rich Wall Street bankers and lawyers who make a lot of money out there but none of it really having much to do with them. Now someone like that is portrayed as a “loser” because they don’t own three homes, a boat, several supercars, and having constant sex with models and otherwise living large before turning 30 as crypto-influencer or whatever. Which means you have entire segments of the population who do critical jobs like firemen, teachers, nurses, and so on who are basically told they are “failures” because they happen to be in a useful job that will never earn them multi-six or seven figure salaries.
That’s my theory at least.
I mean it’s entirely possible some of those Western economies who are behind the USA are simply content to make due with less shit and have more time doing what they enjoy instead of work themselves to death.
Ah I see now, yeah I basically agree but I stand by my view that on the economy, this is as high as any Democrat will get now. A Republican could get majority support ~65 / 70%.
It does seem rather like a bad strategy to say “You’re all screwed by the system so vote for us to change that” and then have nothing but excuses for why you couldn’t change things after being elected.
Of course I agree with most of the things that you list, but they are systemic issues that have been true for decades if not longer. It doesn’t make sense for this being the reason for uniquely now blaming Biden, even as, for example, wages are rapidly increasing.
It’s also that misinformation is less pervasive. Here in the UK, I can’t imagine a set of events where the GDP or whatever would be X and half of the population would think it was minus X. Yes, people quibble a bit on the exact number; there are different measures one might use, but there’s a shared reality of whether things are going well or not.
It helps that we have things like the BBC; that reaches a lot of the UK audience, directly and indirectly, and which cannot outright lie (not often anyway).
You make a lot of good points, and I agree that these are all reasons why people have feelings that can be out of step with the positive general economic indicators.
But have these all started (or gotten substantially worse) under the Biden administration? I think not. If not, why the disconnect between feeling and economic indicators at this particular time?
One of my co-workers is a blue-collar skilled trades guy, who is nonetheless more than half “crypto-bro” at this point. Constant trading on his iphone is his life’s passion and by his own admission he is never away from it for more than a minute. His life revolves primarily around making money in crypto, he keeps his job (per him) for the health benefits and steady income to pay mundane bills as he tries to scrabble up the mountain to wealth.