Summary
President Joe Biden’s economic achievements—lowering inflation, reducing gas prices, creating jobs, and boosting manufacturing—are largely unrecognized by the public, despite his successes.
His tenure saw landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, and major infrastructure investments.
However, Biden’s approval ratings remain low, attributed to inflation backlash, weak communication, and a media landscape prone to misinformation.
Democrats face a “propaganda problem” rather than a policy failure, with many voters likely to credit incoming President Trump for Biden’s accomplishments due to partisan messaging and social media dynamics.
No shit! Say it with me:
Conservatives control the media. Conservatives control the narrative. Reality does not reflect what people see.
When overnight the Joe Rogan interview with Trump had over 40 million views, the issue becomes clear.
Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn
biden getting flak over inflation is fucking hilarious.
The fed is literally irrelevant to the president, the president does not control inflation. Sure maybe his spending increased inflation. But the entire global economy was at a practical stand still. If you think getting a seized ICE working again is hard, try it with a global economy.
You can bitch all you want about inflation, but at the end of the day, nobody really knows what the right solution here was. We could’ve gone through another great depression event if not for global stimulus. And a few years of bad inflation and high costs will beat literally starving.
Consider this.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
Americans. Are. Stupid.
Our situation isn’t going to get better any time soon. For those of us who aren’t boomers, we’re basically locked into a lifetime of economic hardship.
Average american seems to be easily manipulated, especially if its about politics. No fact checking, just going with “gut” feeling.
It’s not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren’t obsessively following the news and economic reports.
It’s how they feel about money.
That was the biggest single issue.
People looked at grocery store prices and said, this is nuts, I was paying half this just four years ago.
It doesn’t matter to them that global inflation skyrocketed along with inflation in the US, or that we’re doing better than the rest of the world right now. They want to see prices go down, even though that would be deflation, which is incredibly bad for an economy.
His adminstration may have not created them. But the neoliberal Democrats that he represents did going all the way back to Clinton.
He also only deployed half measures or dragged his feet all the way until the last minute.
Same shit as always, the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises but no on hears about it because the right wing own 90% of the media.
I swear for every positive story about something Biden did, there were 3 or 4 about Trump just being Trump: saying some outrageous lie, gaffes, and of course all the crimes. He’s sucked all the air out of the room for 10 years and now we’re going to have another 4. All news, positive or negative, is publicity.
99.9%
the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises
If you didn’t learn the lesson that this isn’t true in the last 4 years then all hope is lost
Remember when he first got elected and people blamed covid on him as a joke (it happened before he was in office)
…then now people actually believe itEdit: point proven.
Because Americans are some of the stupidest people in the world.
What, the country with all the resources but still ranks 36th in literacy and 54% of their adults can’t even read above a 6th grade level?
i need this information to start being treated as the act of oppression it is rather than the “americans dumb lol” framing i see even in leftist spaces.
americans, and disproportionately minority americans, are being intentionally refused education in the same way they are refused medical care—in service of cost cutting and privatization interests rather than public wellbeing and economic wellness.
Lee Atwater full interview told the real reason for the dumbing down of America. Two younger family members went through four years of prestigious private universities, and neither had ever read classic literature, let alone discuss main themes and philosophical implications, which is sad, since Shakespeare still addresses basic and timeless western human conditions, and I daresay the reach may be broader than that.
i think there’s a bit more to the story than that but sure haha
edit: looked him up and he was an adviser to reagan? ew.
Idk if this is the same guy, but iirc someone did an interview tell-all where they basically came clean and admitted to all the fucked up shit they helped their administration do.
So yeah, undoubtedly ew, but I’m guessing that’s what they’re talking about.
And we thought the internet would solve or at least help this. Little did we know…
I feel like it’s simply widened the divide that was already present. There have always been people that care and people that don’t but now the people that care have the resources to do something about it and the people that don’t have easy access to that which reinforces their lack of caring.
Excellent summary of the internet’s potential for both help and harm. At this point, I’m not convinced the net result isn’t negative.
Hey man, we can post slurs online while taking a shit or look at porn any time. What else would we use the internet for?
Yep. I remember those days. I remember hearing Douglas Rushkoff [1] on a podcast or something about how he and others around his same age were seeing the dawn of the (privatized) Internet along with the flourishing of the rave scene, and so on and thought it had all this promise and it gave me such a huge amount of nostalgia.
Instead, we have things like Youtube influencers peddling some of the very worst things you’d want kids to watch and algorithms that push it to them.
[1] Jaron Lanier has written pretty well about some of the same aspects.
That’s why emojis are so popular.
As someone who turned off autocorrect fifteen years ago and cares about things like spelling, grammar, and compostion I can pretty confidently say that emojis have many valid uses. Text, especially quick text, is not very good at conveying subtle meaning in a clear way. Emojis though? They do amazingly, especially when it’s a face, because in normal conversations we have body language and even over the phone we can clearly convey a tone of voice. Body language is the emoji library of face-to-face communication.
TL;DR: emojis are popular because they’re highly effective.
¯\(ツ)/¯
But honestly, I admire the fact that you care about grammar, spelling, and such. This seems not very rare on Lemmy, but is otherwise a rare sight
54%?? Yikes.
By design. About a century ago, Rockefeller turned the public school system into a mindless factory worker production machine. Republicans have been reducing funding for decades since.
They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines. College tuition paywalls real education. As AI improves, the bar lowers further. Public schools will be continually defunded or converted to a voucher system in order to exclude even more citizens.
Republicans decided back in the late 70s and early 80s that the public was too educated (and too hard to control) so they decided to do something about it. 45y of slashed education funding and standards later here we are.
They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines.
Nothing new. Jim & Jesse even did a song about it years ago.
The company owned the houses And the company owned the grammar school You’ll never see an educated cotton mill man They figure you don’t need to learn Anything but how to earn
The money that you pay upon demand To the general store they own Or else they’ll take away your home And give it to some other homeless Cotton mill man
Can you elaborate on what Rockefeller did? Never heard that before
Rockefeller worked with the General Education Board to reshape education to be vocational. He also pushed for the duration of the school day to be extended to eight hours, for early exposure and adoption of the standard work day.
Very interesting. Surely we can trust our current crop of billionaires to do better for society!
Fun fact, the average American public school education doesn’t include critical thinking skills in the language curriculum. You either get your introduction to this in AP English (if you’re a high scoring highschooler) or during your first year of college/university.
It’s mind blowing how many people can’t pick apart a given piece of media and think about what message it conveys and why it conveys it.
So yeah, Americans are ripe for manipulation.
I think not stressing critical thinking skills is not a bug, but a feature, of schools that were designed to crank out factory workers.
It’s sheer lunacy in today’s world, but it also happens to be a feature for the qon/Republican agenda.
It’s sheer lunacy in today’s world, but it also happens to be a feature for the qon/Republican agenda.
Redundant statements are redundant.
That’s the result of the Republicans fucking over education in this country for the past 50 years.
I’m sorry to have to upvote that.
I’m American and have to agree with it; it might be because I’m stupid though.
‘am I actually stupid?’
and like 90% of our media is owned or controlled by republicans.
I hate to hear this myself but there’s a global rebuke against incumbents of all shapes and sizes literally everywhere, in response to inflation.
So by definition, everyone is stupid in countries that have rebounded well because they’re doing the same.
The media that they choose to consume is the problem. It plays down the accomplishments of “the enemy” and plays up the hardships and failures like “rampant illegals” and constantly rising food prices. I blame “stupid Americans” less than I blame manipulative billionaires that control media consumption.
That’s an understatement. Source: Live in America.
Stupid and proud of it.
Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies and used the FTC to implement things like click-to-cancel, and invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing. Oh and he also tried to pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism this century and everyone is upset he didn’t magically fix everything all at once.
Bidens problem has been one of messaging. He didn’t know how to connect with the voters to get them to understand all the things he was doing.
I hoped that 2016 was a fluke, that Americans weren’t that dumb and hateful but rather we got caught unprepared by a personality we didn’t expect to run for president.
I hoped that 2020 was the true thoughts of Americans, that the insurrection represented the dying grasp of an extreme minority.
I don’t think Trump stole the 2024 election. I think it proved that yes, this is America. Whether you think America has changed into this or was always this, it doesn’t take away the fact that a majority of Americans will believe anything so long as it makes them hate. Good news doesn’t drive votes. Fear and anger drives votes.
I’ve tried so much to try and be a middle of the road voice of reason and moderation with my friends and family. I didn’t want to be a knee jerk conspiracy theorist, I was always patient with people, listened to them, told them the places they were right, and asked them questions hoping they would ask themselves. I’d say “be like Mr. Rogers. And if someone isn’t acting like Mr. Rogers, be like Mr. Rogers.”
It started to hit when a friend of mine who is very left wing told me that people with college degrees are brainwashed by the deep state. I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
I ordered another drink and changed the subject but it hurt. Now I know she is representative of a majority of Americans. I’m worried civil war is all but inevitable when facts just don’t matter as much as anger.
Edit: Lord grant me the strength to be like Mr. Rogers in this comment section.
Apparently, America’s economy seems to be driven only by fear or greed
I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
All due respect, you are literally brainwashed by the deep state. Universities are institutions of the wealthy; of the status quo. They exist to train the managerial class of capitalist society. The ideas that rule are the ideas of the rulers. You specifically took as your major the mainline ideology of that ruling class. The only way you could have done yourself a worse service in that regard is if you took economics.
With all due respect youre simping or even more brainwashed than the people you are trying to argue with. You’re either paid or played, and have enough time to respond to everyone here.
Why is it that the “deep state elite” universities always have such liberal voters? Why do liberals and deep state want to expand social welfare programs? Doesn’t seem very “wealthy brainwashing”.
Most rulers didn’t take polysci, they got law degrees. Or bankrupted casinos.
Why is it that the “deep state elite” universities always have such liberal voters?
Because liberalism is the governing ideology of capitalism and has been since the 1700’s. The problem you’re having is that your definitions of words is mush.
Why do liberals and deep state want to expand social welfare programs?
Can you please observe reality? When since LBJ has that been the case? When, since the Soviet Union was a rising threat, has the capitalist state done anything but austerity, union busting, and violently suppressing popular movements?
Doesn’t seem very “wealthy brainwashing”.
“I’m immune to propaganda”
Most rulers didn’t take polysci, they got law degrees.
Oh heavens, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about the law, which is completely free of the entrenched governing ideology.
Perhaps you’d like to go to bat for Sociology next? Just because I didn’t mention a major by name doesn’t mean it’s exempt from institutional indoctrination.
Idk if any of this will help, but you’re very actively involved in the discussions and I encourage that. So, as a friendly commenter who sides with your disgruntlement of the situation, I thought I would at least point out the things that I understand but don’t 100% agree with.
When it comes to degrees, I agree that it is a “machine” (education as a whole) that produces desired individuals to fulfill the roles it has established as “important/valuable”. Everyone can disagree on the opinion of what a “valuable” society is, but I digress. You have to understand that knowledge comes from experience and research though (just like you’ve probably done, just as an individual and not mandated by a course). The most succulent of critiques can come from someone deeply established in a field, kinda like how Bernie Sanders made comments about the DNC after the election and it forced the media and all of us to discuss it and the message.
The truly dangerous ones are those who can fully understand how flawed a system is, but realize they must play it to their advantage to get what they “want” out of life. I just can’t demonize the whole entire system when the people I’ve learned and read from were birthed from that experience. A lot of people realize after or during pursuing a degree, just how bad it is so it’s some kind of awareness for a certain %. Now if they’ve fully embraced the system, you just have to find the examples they choose to ignore in their flawed beliefs.
I also don’t know how effective the “per quote response” is. I’ve been guilty of it in the past, but honestly I think people just dont really read the “tit-for-tat” style comment replies (I find myself scrolling past if it’s too long). If they see one thing they disagree with then they downvote the entire comment. I try to hit the points I want but change the length and style of response in regards to how effective I can actually communicate to the person.
I’m just happy that a little bit of sanity has returned to Lemmy (obvious from the changes in what got downvoted/upvoted or discussed heavily). It felt like everyone just completely drank the kool-aid so we could “save Democracytm!!” Unfortunately, I think people sold all the common-sense realty in their head for the Blue Superhero fallacy that could save us all from all the boogeymen. It will take time for some to let their head critique things effectively, some will never come back to reality. It’s one of the reasons I just asked a simple question instead of critiquing their entire argument (I think his entire premise is flawed, and happily skewed so Biden is still a hero in their eyes). It’s mostly there so other readers can see it and makes them pause for a second instead of just “believing” it’s true. If the OP comes back with a sane comment I’ll engage in a discussion, but we see from the response to me they don’t want to discuss facts so I’m not engaging further.
If we’re going to have the superheroes, they’re going to be us, so I guess it depends how badly we want them.
I’m ootl, what monopolies got broken up? I tried looking it up but it’s not returning results.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)
The DOJ filed another suit against them for advertising practices also.
Oh so you lied.
He sued a monopoly
And (after reading) not even over being a monopoly
The user you replied to asked what monopoly got broken up. You deliberately talked past that question. You’re still lying.
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“Your specific points don’t matter to me because I can’t read”
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He could have ran on it more. Trump understands the art of putting his name on the checks.
Call Americans stupid, and we are, but I wish the party that was helping people was a bit more grandious and better about messaging then they are.
It’s also pretty hard to point to things and go “see? remember the thing we did 10 years ago? this is the effect it had!”
Many of Biden’s policies will come to fruition during the next term and Trump will falsely claim responsibility because he can point to it right away.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies
The election is over you can stop lying
implement things like click-to-cancel
Oh fuck yeah an unsubscribe link on spam emails! America is back, baby!
O BEAUTIFUL FOR SPACIOUS SKIES
invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing
I said you could stop lying. Fucking infuriating how cynical liberals are when constructing their fantasy world.
You’re taking credit for the bad bill that was supposed to be passed along with the good bill.
Except the point of separating them was to only pass the bad bill. (remember when Elizabeth “Redface” Warren RAN on pulling this shit on you?)
So now you take the full price tag of the bad bill and pretend it was for good things. Remember what we called it when we called the other bill (again, the fucking ghouls, with maximum cynicism) ‘the green new deal’? We called it the ‘toll road bill’.
You’re warping reality and history.
Oh and he also tried to
Love when liberals take credit for not doing good things, Remember when they “tried” to raise the minimum wage but were stonewalled by an instantly fire-able employee?
pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Again, as was said to you thousands of times but you were too obstinate to acknowledge: he didn’t need congress. He could have literally thrown away the paperwork if he wanted to. Somehow the previous president had the authority to halt the loans but when the senator from MBNA took office that power suddenly didn’t exist?
You know better and you’re pretending not to.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism
Because you want to live in a fantasy world that would shatter upon literally a single fact being thrown into it
You seem… stable…
This by the way is a perfect example of how the democratic party never learns from its mistakes. Because the adults are no longer in the room and the children believe all the lies they were told growing up
Same thing happened with the republicans, just 20 years ago
And people with exactly that mindset voted for Trump, despite his vowing to make everything worse with every single policy stance.
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Raise your taxes while cutting for the Rich (AGAIN)
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Tariffing many sectors and countries, making goods more expensive and destroying US manufacturing
You forgot deporting people
Actually no, Trump deported and convicted less than Obama and Biden. Trump’s removal of holding time limitations for women and children and his removal of ICE’s criminal only focus meant resources were used up and almost always wasted.
Trump is ineffective at everything he claims to be good for.
Are we talking about what he did last time or what he said he’s going to do this time?
His plans supposedly haven’t changed, just a repeat of last time but more and worse.
He even already tried to overturn the election once before when he sent 84 fake electors to 7 states in 2020.
He has repeatedly told us he is going to do everything he did before, again.
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Would you be willing to donate $10 to Amazon?
I mean, not really, but it’s only $10 so sure.
Thank you, your $10/week subscription has been confirmed. Please call 10AM-3PM Eastern to upgrade or cancel your payment. We apologize in advance for the unusually long wait times.
No, voters punished Biden for his inability to effectively communicate what he’s done to help them. This has been a consistent problem with the democrats, and with corporate media. Democrats need better spokespeople and better messaging.
They also need to stop catering to the ultra rich and moderate republicans because that shit turns off the base faster than crap messaging. There is no “liz cheney, nikki hayley” constituency as we saw last Tuesday.
You’re right that Dems need better messaging and to stop catering to the ultra rich. At the same time, we can’t discount the propaganda messaging that the article mentions. Not being in their echo chambers means not being exposed to the bulk of it, and that is great. At the same time, it means being disconnected from what a lot of people are basing their opinions on.
For a few years, up until the start of this year, I had a job that required interacting with families in people’s homes. If I had a choice, I would’ve preferred to avoid the right-wingers… but gotta do what you gotta do.
Some households were pure poison: hate-driven parents who constantly belched up Fox news topics. These parents normally communicated with their kids through complaining and screaming. But if a kid made some quip about “Biden sucks,” they got a brief moment where their parents would actually laugh. The reinforcing power of that toxic dynamic cannot be understated.
It’s no wonder that a lot of kids in those circumstances end up eager to repeat the same crap their parents say. In the time that I worked that job, a lot of the commentary was Biden-centric, making him a convenient punching bag that even the smallest fists could reach (even if they had no idea what they were doing/saying.)
Dems have a lot of improvements to make, but it would take a lot more than “improved messaging” to overcome the sheer power of this propaganda culture.
The right has unlimited money and resources when it comes to corporate media messaging. The media will not save us. The revolution will not be televised; it’s not in the papers, it’s on the walls.
thank goodness the democrats don’t have a media apparatus and what we all consume is news and truth instead of propaganda.
it’s so comforting to be in a community of people who are immune to propaganda
Joe Biden is the best president we’ve ever had and Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign. That just doesn’t mean anything.
For how much you complain about people just downvoting instead of replying, you sure don’t like to interact in good faith once they do reply. Maybe learn how to have a serious discussion before demanding that people have serious discussions with you?
Who replied to me in this thread before you?
In what faith would you describe your response, wherein you made no statement, argument, or claim that has anything to do with anything besides you being upset with my tone?
You are exactly the type of person I’m speaking about and to. You should listen.
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Why “no”? You’re basically saying the same as the summary.
The article headline reads like voters don’t want the things Biden did. Which is a lie, and part of my gripe about messaging and the media. A better headline is “Voters don’t understand what Biden did for them, and that needs to change”.
True, headlines matter.
No, they’re basically saying the same as the summary.
They didn’t promise unicorns like the Republicans did, and voters still got mad that only some people got unicorns.
Republicans have promised to eat all the unicorns.
He literally said he would cure cancer
Yeah, the U.S. pushed for global adoption of the HPV vaccination that literally vaccinates against that cancer. That’s what he was referring to. And if people get it instead of drinking horse dewormer, it’ll stop that cancer from spreading.
“Moonshot”
One of his first acts as president was to deliberately double child poverty
Seeing a lot of silent downvotes for an objective fact recited in a value neutral manner.
That in itself says more than I could hope to about the topic of this thread
Okay, I’ll bite and take a few minutes to refute yet another of your seemingly patently false statements that you provide no evidence for.
Are you talking about the expanded child tax credit that the senate didn’t pass(the house did)? If so, that’s not on the president.
I downvoted you at almost every opportunity bc it seems like you’re just talking out of your ass, which isn’t helpful. If I missed something that you’re referring to for poverty, feel free to share and support your argument.
Are you talking about the expanded child tax credit that the senate didn’t pass(the house did)? If so, that’s not on the president.
It’s the unified government under one party of which the president is the head
You’re being a dishonest weasel
Americans are misinformed because the media has been destroyed by financial incentives and the capital class.
I am so God damn sick of reading articles from pundits who think they can just numbers-and-statistics away people’s financial experience. Listen to this shit:
America has recovered more quickly and more completely than almost any comparable country. As The Economist put it, “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” Real wages have risen fastest for those at the bottom of the income scale. Today, inflation is at 2.4%, compared with the 9.1% peak in June 2022. The fight against rising prices has essentially been won.
But few in the electorate seem aware…
Wow, the electorate sounds like a bunch of dipshits. But just for the hell of it, let’s check their source for the wages of the bottom income scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Now, inflation was 19.2% during that period, but “real wage,” means, “wage adjusted for inflation,” so I guess the author is right. The lowest income earners got a raise during the Biden years. Guess the poor are a bunch of dipshits.
But which of Biden’s policies led to these increases in wages? Well, the Economic Policy Institute says:
Between 2019 and 2023, state-level minimum wage increases along with a tight labor market have translated into faster real wage growth for low-wage workers, particularly faster growth in states (and D.C.) that increased their minimum wage during this period.
So, it sounds like the wages went up because of a competitive labor market (which the Fed intentionally killed to combat inflation) and minimum wage increases at the state level, and that states that increased their minimum wages saw more of that growth than others. So, you could make an argument that Biden deserves little credit for this increase, but let’s not even worry about that. Let’s see look at the minimum wage by state.
The EPI has a handy Minimum Wage Tracker that color-codes states by their state minimum wage against the federal minimum wage. A quick glance shows you the states with the highest minimum wage are mostly states that went to Harris. But what’s really interesting is that, of the 7 key battleground states that Harris lost, 4 of them (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) have the same minimum wage as the federal minimum of $7.25, a starvation wage that hasn’t been raised since 2009. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that in more than half the key states Harris needed win saw the smallest share of that 13.2%, but did see prices increase by 19.2%.
Now, I’m not an economist, and I don’t have hours to research this shit, so it’s entirely possible that I’m missing a lot of nuance regarding cost of living and non-minimum wage increases in these states. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve already spent more time and energy examining why people might not feel good about the economy than the sneering chud that wrote this article. And I’ll end this tirade with one last quote from the EPI report he cited:
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
Young people have no hope of buying a house in my area.
In my neighborhood all the drug store shelves are bare (Rite Aid) and there’s soon to be only one grocery store to choose from (Kroger).
When I’m getting groceries the checkers are talking about how the store is going to close if the merger happens and they’ll all lose their jobs.
No ‘media’ lied to me and convinced me that the economy is wack. I see it every day.
What I’m not hearing in the media is recognition of working folks’ struggles. Failure to address this kept Dems home.
I’m really sorry to hear that. Would it help if I showed you a graph that shows the stock market is actually doing great?
The DNC wants to know your location and give you a strategic voter outreach job.
paul krugman did exactly that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV6kHBwT7bg
Huh. I’m generally wary of any group that has an Eye of Providence in their logo or uses the term, “New World Order,” but that was cathartic to watch.
unfortunately something like this is not posted by any other channel popular enough to come up on shitty youtube search.
the guy in the video is jose vega, he ran for congress as lrp candidate in nyd 15 and got about 2.5% vote.
here is more detailed video on a more apt channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK0FivR_B1A
Oh, haha, that’s much more reassuring. I assumed it was someone affiliated in the channel, and I was like, “Uh-oh, how long before this guy launches into an antisemitic conspiracy theory about lizard people?”
this made me realise how depressing it is when even lunatic channels have more relevant content for working class than our msm with 24/7 peddling of gaslighting bs.
Whatever happened to Jerome, anyway?
Biden tells the sad paid for truth, Trump sells paid for lies.
Both won’t change that most American wages aren’t going up, prices are. Certainly won’t with tariff going to 60%.
Biden didn’t really do much for the average American. He could demanded higher wages, pushed for healthcare coverage, and investigated price hiking. And arrested Trump. He did some, but for a man who is currently a sitting duck who is above the law, he’s choosing the safest/“easiest for the rich” option as a presidential RBG.
Trump won’t do much, but will loudly shit out that he did, and his followers will eat it up and ask for more.
I will give Biden credit for trying. I expect him to pull an Obama and pivot to centrist policy the second he got into office, but he really tried to pass all the progressive things he ran it. He was just incredibly ineffective at it and basically wound up with a pretty standard (though very large) infrastructure bill that he wanted everyone to pretend was a huge progressive victory.
Jon Stewart just discussed some of this on The Weekly Show podcast with Heather Cox Richardson as guest. Discussing whether the metrics that define economic success are outdated and also how poorly any of Biden’s “successes” were shared by his White House and the media. It was all framed much better than this article.
I once heard some comedian or podcaster say something to the effect of, “The media keeps telling people that the economy is doing well because of the stock market, but for most of us you could replace the words, “stock market,” with, “rich people’s feelings graph,” and it would mean about the same thing.” I think that a lot. Also, I didn’t know John Stewart had a podcast for the Daily Show, thanks for the heads up on that!
The stock market is 80% owned by 10% of people… Better stock market= more profits for rich… Those profits come from our labor… The better “the economy” is doing, the worse the workers are doing. The markets went through the roof for Trump because the rich know he’s going to let them rape and pillage without constraints of any kind.
Yeah, and here’s the trick no one talks about; since the 80s, businesses (with the help of the government) started killing off pensions in favor of 401Ks. That effectively meant the middle and lower class, who are by far minority holders in the stock market, still need it to perform well, otherwise their retirement savings will be wiped out. So they’ve basically created a system where an entire generation is incentivized to allow the 1% to be as opportunistic and greedy as they like, because the crumbs they’re going to retire on are directly tied to the success of the wealthiest Americans.
401k is superior in almost every way though. The big downside is there isn’t a mandatory contribution. Pensions forced an employee to work in the same company for 20-30 years and hope they never got acquired or went bankrupt. Then they could retire and still hope the company never went bankrupt, because the pension funds were universally underfunded. Lots of people faced their pension being reduced by a significant amount after they’ve been retired for a decade or so.
A 401k gives the worker the power to move without jeopardizing their retirement. It allows the default death benefit to be 100% transferable to another. It’s not a surprise when a 401k runs out of money. All you have to do is fill out a form when you start a job to put a reasonable percentage into it.
Huh, I didn’t think about how the 401K is transferable, but it makes sense that it’s a plus; it’s how everyone wishes health insurance worked. But does it matter if you move companies if your next employer offers a similar pension? Wouldn’t that mean you just had two smaller monthly payments vs. one larger one? And weren’t pensions protected from bankruptcy by Employee Retirement Income Security Act? I thought it was because of that Act that companies justified phasing out their pensions for 401Ks.
Sorry for all the questions. Pensions are sort of an artifact of a lost time for folks my age, but most folks that I know that are my parents’ age seem to prefer the stability of their pensions to 401Ks.
Pensions are protected from bankruptcy, but they aren’t guaranteed the same payment. There are maximum payments and it’s complicated to give an accurate number, because it depends on the type of pension plan, the age of retirement, years of service, and generally doesn’t honor bonuses like early buyouts.
Pensions have a number of multipliers that make job hopping less ideal. The formula is roughly percentVested x accrualRate x yearsOfService x maxSalary. Vesting hits 100% at 5-7 years, accrual is roughly 1.5% depending on employer. By leaving early you take big hits on the vesting and max salary multipliers that cause it to be a lot less money. One job for 30 year with 100k mak salary would be a 45k pension. 3 jobs, 10 years each with 50k, 75k, and 100k max salaries is only a 33,750 pension.
Well said
As soon as something is adopted as a metric it’s divorced from the reality of the market. It’s the nature of the modern soothsaying we call economics.
I don’t want to listen to what a union buster has to say about people’s economic situation
Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we’re talking about real wages?
Your point is taken that Biden is not primarily responsible for the wage increases during his time in office, but he doesn’t have the power as president to unilaterally increase the federal minimum wage. He did sign an executive order increasing the minimum wage for federal employees and contractors which, while not having a significant impact on the wage growth nationally, is a step in the right direction.
I realize your point is more that the author of this piece is a prick and he didn’t spend enough time trying to understand the bad economic vibes coming from the working class, but it seems like the Biden administration did a relatively good job guiding the economy through post COVID turmoil, which he (… And Harris by proxy) did not get any credit for. Would you agree with that?
I’m a huge fan of “sneering chud” by the way. Will be forcing that into a conversation soon.
Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we’re talking about real wages?
Mostly so I could point out in the second to last paragraph that if you weren’t on the receiving end of that 13% wage increase (as I strongly suspect is the case for many people in GA, PA, WI and NC), then you took a 20% price increase to the face.
I think the Biden administration did its best to push through the progressive platform that he ran on, and I think that they probably don’t get enough credit for that. I think Biden should have been more aggressive with Congress, especially in calling for the abolition of the filibuster early on, but I appreciate how much he did (or tried to do) through executive action. He was especially good on student loans, I honestly expected him to give up on that, but he didn’t.
However, I think both Harris and Biden lost sight of the left-wing populist message that won them the White House in 2020. Harris especially pivoted towards a centrist, “economic opportunity,” platform instead of a, “here’s how government will help you,” message. I think small business tax credits and first-time homebuyer’s assistance are pretty out of touch when you’re trying to win over people who can’t afford groceries. She had some policies that were more targeted at the working class, but they were not the centerpiece of the campaign like these middle-class focused proposals.
That being said, yeah, most of my rage here is being directed at the author of this piece. Glad you liked, “sneering chud,” I’m a little proud of that one.
I was just watching an interview last night. Maybe it was 60 Minutes, but they were talking to a woman about this. They told basically all this same info - inflation going down, gas going down, jobs increased, wages increased. The woman said, “I didn’t see any of that. My wage didn’t go up.” No idea what she does, if her job is eligible for a wage increase, but basically she was saying none of that impacted her personally or positively, so she voted for Trump.
Exactly. Democrats think that if they just tell people positive metrics enough times, these feelings will go away. They won’t. You have to look at them and say, “You’re right, things still suck for you. Things got better for a lot of people, but people like you didn’t see much of that because of [X] and [Y]. Here’s how we’re going to fix it.” Otherwise, they’re going to listen to anyone who tells them their problem is real, even a racist xenophobe that blames migrants for everything.
I think to some extent, Kamala said exactly how she planned on making things better. Trump didn’t say anything, and as usual had no plans. He still got elected. I saw an article last week about Trump saying not saying what his plans were helped him. What sense does that make, when a guy like Trump, who’s never had a plan or a rational suggestion to anything (“let’s nuke the hurricanes!”), can not say a damn thing about what his policies would be and still get elected? That tells me the Dems were drastically out of touch.
Dem technocrats are drastically out of touch and don’t realize how much aggrivement towards the status quo and desire for change there really is. Trump doesn’t do policy and it doesn’t matter because the people don’t care about policy either. We live in turbulent times, and there’s a groundswell of support for a nebulous ‘change’. Trump positioned himself as anti-establishment, persecuted, and radical in a way that was appealing enough to retain his voter base. Meanwhile, Harris’ institutionalism, focus on incrementalist policy, and boring rhetoric failed to galvanize support.
Spot on. When times are bad (whether actually true, or simply perceived that way) it should come as no surprise that the people voted for a change. Trump is the embodiment of “anti-establishment”. Progressives must take back the party from Neoliberals.
To some extent, yes, but it wasn’t the forefront of her campaign. She talked about greedflation and had a plan for price-capping groceries, but they should have been attacking this point from 2022, not the tail end of the campaign. She was far more focused on middle-class issues and an, “opportunity economy,” than the dire financial conditions of the working class.
As you rightfully note the relationship between federal economic policy and economic outcomes is complex and it’s not easy to tease apart cause and effect. Having said that Democrats have through history presided over MUCH better economic outcomes than Republicans, and Biden is no exception. Yet, voters consistently believe that (generic) Republicans are better for the economy than generic Democrats.
Democrats are broadly better, but they’ve created a lot of the conditions that are killing the working class now. Bill Clinton was the one who passed NAFTA, which was the biggest blow to manufacturing jobs in American history. Obama had a similar trade deal, the TPP, which most likely would have been equally devastating had Trump not killed it (which probably had more to do with his obsession with tearing down the achievements of the first black President than helping workers, but I doubt that mattered to the TPP’s opponents).
Even when Democrats aren’t directly the result of harm, their solutions are no longer the grand, ambitious plans from their New Deal glory days. Take Obama’s promises to create a foreclosure prevention fund, which got whittled down to HAMP, a mostly impotent refinance scheme that seems to have been designed more for banks than borrowers (despite large Democratic majorities). I’m sure it was better than whatever the Republicans would have come up with, but I doubt that mattered to people who were two months behind on an underwater mortgage.
Biden and Harris started with a strong vision, but they couldn’t get it through Congress and instead pivoted to telling people that actually, they were doing great, and the economy was good again. That will always be a losing message with people who aren’t doing well. The Democrats need to double down on a progressive message that does not compromise, with bold plans like a $20 minimum wage indexed to inflation, Medicare for All, and UBI. If they keep tinkering around the margins and giving people statistics when they say they’re doing poorly financially they will never be relevant again.
I agree with you that the Biden/Harris approach to economics is dead. There are virtually no voters left in the middle, so shifting to the right doesn’t help the Democrats like it used to. I also think the policies you propose will help a significant share of voters.
The bigger issue is communication. If these policies aid a significant part of voters, how can we convince them of this in the face of the right wing propaganda machine? That battle is as important as the policy platform, and it’s a very tricky challenge to overcome.
Another worry I have is that the Trump government will be more evil and less like a shitshow than his previous stint. Unfortunately, I think many voters will get behind evil stuff like rounding up migrants if it’s done in an organised manner.
I think you’re right about Trump. I think he was a shit-show last time because he didn’t expect to (or, in my opinion, want to) win, and now he has an apparatus that is set up to enable him. I’m very afraid of what a competent fascist movement looks like.
Communication is certainly a problem for Democrats; Trump was able to talk for 3 hours on Rogan, while Harris went on Call Her Daddy for less than s full episode and told a well rehearsed anecdote I’d heard twice before. They’re too obsessed with legacy media and polish to sound authentic. But the platform has to come first. If they fix every problem with this campaign’s communication in 2028 but run another middle-class opportunity platform with Mark Cuban, they will lose.
The bigger issue is communication. If these policies aid a significant part of voters, how can we convince them of this in the face of the right wing propaganda machine? That battle is as important as the policy platform, and it’s a very tricky challenge to overcome.
I think a big part of this comes down to the messenger here. The Democrats need a charismatic individual who is credible to voters. Unfortunately, they’ve only got Bernie to fit the bill for someone who had half a chance at being electable, and the DNC did everything they could to sideline him whenever they had the chance. Instead, they trot out establishment, corporatist party members and policy wonks to get the messaging out, or do absolutely baffling stuff, like sending Ritchie Torres to campaign for them in Michigan. It’s bad enough to send out bland candidates who may have a less than stellar recording for really fighting for the working class and holding the line to get them what they need, but for a key swing state with a huge Muslim population that has signalled many times they may not vote for Harris because she hasn’t indicated any shift in her policy on Gaza, you send the most rabidly Zionist, anti-Palestinian Rep you could pull from the Democratic bench? That’s an absolute own goal. It’s like sending a rep named Che Castro that tweets constantly on ending the embargo on Cuba to stump for you in Miami, then wondering why Cuban voters went to the other guy.
Unfortunately, I think it will really take a while for the Democrats to dig themselves out of this hole and have someone with a record long enough for people to find them credible when they say they’re going to fight for the working class as the rule, rather than the pleasantly surprising exception.
Newspaper and politicians are never going to challenge capitalism.
Let voters get what they deserve.
Republican voters are the biggest simps for big business that I’ve ever seen. It’s like if slaves in America cheered on the confederacy during the Civil War.
