First, I’m sorry about your own situation. You’ve definitely been hurt. But you’re also smart enough to realize that YOU are not the entire economy. And also, there are always going to be people hurting in every economy.
When 65% of people say they’re doing financially well, and the macro-numbers are this strong, it shouldn’t be this hard to get good political marks for the economy as a President. It just doesn’t make sense in a normal world…but we’re not in a normal world anymore.
I do think the right-wing information bubble is part of it. I think alot of people are voting on issues like immigration & anti-woke culture war issues, too. And Biden himself is not a great communicator.
I’ll admit I said that as an offhand illustrative comment and not a hard fact. That probably isn’t going to win any new Democratic votes though.
After telling them the peanut butter stat, you can share this as well:
The extra amount of money that people facing hunger said they need to have enough food reached its highest point in the last 20 years, according to Feeding America’s annual Map the Meal Gap study. People facing hunger said they need an additional $24.73 per week in 2022, a 9.5% increase after adjusting for increased prices. Nationally, the amount needed among all 44 million people facing hunger in 2022 hit a record high of $33.1 billion, up nearly 43%. This increase suggests that rising prices, especially food prices, likely contributed in part to the increase in need.
Turn that number around: it also means that over one in three Americans (35%) do not feel that they’re “doing financially well.” And, I’m willing to bet that it’s not just MAGA Republicans who feel that way.
I have younger friends and colleagues who have seen their apartment rents skyrocket in the last few years, and who have been completely priced out of the housing market, to the point that they despair whether they will ever be able to buy a house. I know people who aren’t making great money, but were getting by a couple of years ago, but now are struggling just to have anything left in their bank accounts before the next payday. I know people (established, white-collar people) who have had to cancel plans for long-anticipated trips and other recreational activities, because they’ve had to make a choice between taking a weekend trip to a gaming convention, or making sure they can pay their bills.
I’m doing “financially well”. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think parts of the economy suck, just that I feel fortunate enough to be able to mitigate much of it. You can both be able to pay your bills AND think that the economy is in poor shape for a lot of individual needs.
In fact, if those facets of the economy weren’t such a drag, I could probably say that I’m doing good or great instead of “well”. I’ve had several conversations recently with friends who all say that something like “We’re doing okay, but my income shouldn’t be feeling like this level of living”.
An idea I’ve seen floating around is that for a lot of people, if their wages go up 5% and their expenses go up 3%, the net outcome in their brains isn’t +2% but -60%, because it was supposed to be an extra-special treat for being a stupendous hard worker, but instead most of it went to welfare moochers or greedy corporations or whatever their personal bogeyman is.
And 100% of voters are consumers but only around two thirds (or something like that) are workers, so there’s a big section of the population that only experiences tight labor markets as worse service.
I find it all kind of depressing. There’s a big chunk of the population that seems to have revealed a preference for recessions and sluggish recoveries.
‘I don’t mind eating rat grilled over a trash fire on a broken curtain rod as long as those people have neither; rat, fire, trash, or broken curtain rods.’
That’s the crazy thing, though… It’s not just anecdotes pushing aside macro-reality. It’s macro-fiction pushing aside anecdotes. Most people are doing well, but most people think that most other people are doing poorly.
Man, that is a ridiculously cherry-picked statistic. How many people are now facing hunger? How much total money would we need to close the gap for all of them? If in 2002, there were five people, one of them $5000 short, one $4000 short, one $3000 short, one $2000 short, and one $1000 short, and in 2022, there was only one person, who was $4000 short, does that mean that things are getting worse?
So, then your argument is to throw away statistics and focus on anecdotes and how people “feel”. OK, consumer surveys are showing that almost 2/3 of Americans say their own finances are fine. That’s anecdotes about people’s own personal experiences showing that things are going OK. I think people are saying, “I’m good, but somewhere else out there, it’s a hellscape.” This is the same thing people say on survey about crime, btw. So, the broader macro-numbers are good. People say their own situation is good. I’m not dismissing anyone as stupid. I’m just saying this should not be a situation where Joe Biden can’t run on how the economy is doing.
And I don’t think Joe Biden is dismissing anyone as stupid or ignoring them. He’s going out and talking to people, and showing he empathizes with them. When he came into office, we had unemployment over 6%, with thousands dieing every day from covid and an explosion of crime. All of that is far behind us now, and he needs to get out there and remind people that they in fact were NOT better off 4 years ago.
That’s true. But when you have a situation where verifiable statistics show a very strong economy, combined with surveys where 2 out of 3 Americans say their own finances are fine, you should be in a situation where the incumbent POTUS can campaign on the economy.
I think that used to be the case.
The reason it’s no longer the case is an interesting case study, IMO, in information bubbles and how MAGA has created an alternate universe.
In all economies, you’re going to have some non-negligible % say things aren’t good for them. That’s always been the case and will always be the case. But when 65% say they’re doing financially well, and you have macro-economic numbers that are very strong, it’s usually something that allows a President to campaign on the economy. And yet for maybe the first time ever, that’s not the case.
I think what you’re missing here is that politics has changed compared to previous decades.
And I know a lot of people that are doing better than they were 4 years ago. I know people that have started taking vacations in the last couple of years, and who have had promotions at their jobs, and are buying new vehicles and houses, and are doing fine. Everyone can play this game. That’s one reason I posted macro-numbers at the top.
I don’t watch FOX, much less anything to the right of FOX (OANN, etc). Most people I engage with don’t watch FOX. This doesn’t stop them from feeling like things aren’t going correctly or that their income isn’t keeping pace with the cost of expenses. These are all people who I know will vote Democratic but are doing so entirely based on other factors than kitchen table budgets. It’s not some MAGAsphere brainwashing making people feel like they’re treading water even if they’re keeping the lights on. If you’re pretty much disengaged politically and you’re feeling this way, you’re not going to be voting for more of the same.
Anyway, I hope Biden’s people don’t display the same sort of blindness in this thread. They actually did try touting all the macro top line numbers and, well, there’s a reason why they’re not still using “Bidenomics” as a campaign pitch.
You keep leaning on this but, when Trump is clearly leading Biden on economic stewardship then I think the most obvious answer is that “says they’re doing financially well” doesn’t mean what you’re convinced it means. It also reminds me of the phenomenon where people are most likely to self-report themselves as being middle class even if they’re well out of the median income band. People don’t want to SAY they’re doing poorly financially because they think it reflects poorly on them as people so you likely wind up with a number of people who say “Yeah, things are going okay” when they’re not.
@survinga Paul Krugman has written tons on this exact subject, so it may be worth tracking that stuff down. Some reasons – Republicans are much more partisan when it comes to opinions on the state of the economy; right-wing press is relentlessly negative on the economy when a Democrat is the president while mainstream press tries to be balanced (“Inflation was down today, but clouds remain”, “unemployment remains low but in troubling signs for Biden…”); while pay has kept up or exceeded inflation, people think that they’ve earned the raises and inflation has eaten away those hard-earned gains; and so on.
One thing you’ll never do is convince people on this board that times are good. This has come up in other threads and it just never works. You can post all the stats you want, but people will respond with feelings and anecdotes. Quite frustrating.
Ritter, thanks for the notes on Krugman, and I’m aware that the glass is not half-full for many on this board.
One reason I’m bringing this up is that the same phenomenon is taking place with Crime. There are verifiable macro-numbers that are extremely strong for Biden. And there are surveys where people say their own area is OK with crime…but in those “other places”, it’s a hellscape of crime. And just like the economy, Biden gets no credit for the crime decrease and can’t “run” on the crime issue.
Has there ever been a President who is more hamstrung to run on good numbers with economy & crime? It’s incredible. If say, Trump were President, and we had these exact economic & crime numbers, would he be equally as hamstrung? I don’t think so.
I think this is saying something about today’s politics that should scare people a little.
You mean focus on voters’ feeling and experiences which are going to dictate how they cast a ballot? Well, yeah. Macro statistics are great for winning internet debates but, if someone at a BBQ is lamenting the cost of groceries, saying “Well, actually, 65% of people…” to them just makes you sound like a tone-deaf asshole.
[To be clear, I’m not saying YOU are a tone-deaf asshole; I’m saying that it’s a losing technique to sway voters]
So, under Biden, real income gains were stronger at lower & middle-income areas. For the first time in many decades, we’re seeing a compression of wages. This goes straight at the inequality issue, which I agree is a big issue.
But again, Biden will get no credit for it, and his voice will be drowned out by people saying that somewhere out there, it’s awful for people.
Do you see where I’m coming from here? I don’t think there’s ever been a President who is as hamstrung on running on the actual economic record here. He inherits a mess from the previous guy, and things are verifiably better on numerous measures, but the previous guy is seen as stronger on the same issue. Same dynamic with crime. We’re in a different political world where overall reality seems inverted, and this should scare the Hell out of people.
OK, but that leaves us with essentially nothing, if we can’t talk about macro numbers or micro-surveys. We’re basically locked out of the issue at that point.
We shouldn’t be in a world an actual economy that’s verifiably strong is seen as a liability. And this has never happened in US politics. This should scare the crap out of people.
It’s almost as though you’d need to listen to what they’re saying about their personal experiences and have a better response than to call them a MAGA-brainwashed liar who is too stupid to know that they’re doing just fine and any reports of feeling squeezed are mythical stories about “someone else” who doesn’t exist.
It’s almost as though you want to throw away a survey that says 65% of people say they are doing financially well, and tell a President that he can’t run on the economy…
Again, this should scare the Hell out of people, as we’ve never been in anything remotely like this.