No, tell them how it is. The economy IS booming. That fact just doesn’t have anything to do with the average Joe. Teach them ‘the economy’ isn’t on their side.
The Avarage Joe is suffering but the Genocide Joe is bankrolling.
Military industrial profits are going through the roof right now
Linkerbaan
The Avarage Joe is suffering but the Genocide Joe is bankrolling.
Military industrial profits are going through the roof right now
Did the propagandaists finally get the go ahead to start pedaling Genocide Joe now lmfao?
It’s so pathetic.
It’s so annoying because Trump would be dealing the same damage in the middle east. They are the last people who should be criticizing anyone.
Trump would be calling for Israel to go harder and calling them pussies for not eliminating Palestine before October 7th. Then after Israel flattens all of Gaza he’d call netanyahu strong for doing what needed to be done decades ago. They’re both awful in this issue but somehow it could be so much worse.
~ 1/3 military kills is definitely not “indiscriminately killing”. These numbers change everything.
It’s not a mass murder anymore. Oct7 was a justified targeted retaliation.
This is a direct quote from Linkerbaan. I would disengage; they are rather inarticulate, kind of creepy, and show a terrifying disregard for human life.
Yes, fuck Joe Biden for supporting this disgusting crusade, and fuck the two-party system for making it impossible to elect anyone who doesn’t. It does seem like Biden is cooling on Israeli military aid—it’s eating away at his ratings far more than anyone expected, and he is a politician, after all—so I’m hopeful we’ll see some policy shifts in Israel soon.
Genocide Joe is a proper name for someone who is a devoted Zionist.
Just curious, what does the term “Zionist” mean to you?
Very simple, a zionist is someone who believes jewish people have the right to colonize the country of Palestine and claim it as their own to form a homeland for jewish people.
They are very confused, because putting people on stolen land only puts them in danger.
Oddly enough, this is one of at least 3 definitions I’ve heard for the term “Zionist”. I even had one person tell me that a Zionist supports Palestinians, though I think they may have been a disinformation bot.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but the 11 million losing medicaid is due to red states choosing to “unwind” it. It’s not really an economy thing so much as a deliberate asshole thing.
Everything else is spot on though.
Child poverty too….it was way down with recovery funding from the pandemic that conservatives gleefully killed.
Right about the medicaid. The child poverty is similar (Democrats expanded Child Tax Credit, Republicans refused to extend it. Presumably because people like OP would make posts like this to complain about Democrats. It’s brutally cynical but effective.)
Republicans have also been blocking an increase in the minimum wage and attempts to eliminate student debt.
Republicans have also been blocking an increase in the minimum wage
They had help on that. 8 Democrats voted against workers and with Republicans on the minimum wage increase.
Isn’t the child poverty part related to Republicans refusing to extend the better child tax credit?
Well you know maybe people in November will think
“I really want to hurt trans people, but I kinda like not dying in a diabetic coma. Hmm better vote D this time”
I really don’t know what to say. All these people consistently voting against their own best interests. I don’t agree with the shits at Koch but I get why they do it, they want the money.
“The Economy” = The Stock Market. Nothing else, no other metric.
Or GDP, which also just says how much money a company is making but has the added bonus of making people proud of their country to where they don’t think any harder about it.
There are 2 jobs for every person, providing wage pressure on employers, and offering more choice in work people can do.
Some people are struggling, yes, and we should do things about that.
But it’s way better to be struggling when you have options than when you do not. I was poor in 2008, and it’s no fucking comparison at all.
The economy’s health directly impacts people of every income level
There are 2 jobs for every person,
Yes, unfortunately it is often the case that the same person is working those two jobs out of necessity.
That is not how open positions work.
You only have the illusion of choice, as evidenced by the “booming economy” which just actually means being extra effective at funneling all economic output straight to the top.
This doesn’t match the reality of the number of job moves and open positions.
Open positions =/= open positions that pay a livable wage.
Except having more open positions than people directly translates into higher wages, so even this broad nothing of a statement is still incorrect.
Unless the “open positions” are only open on paper, and the company has no real desire to fill them…
They’re not. That’s a fiction. A meme-tier fiction at that.
Ah, the national razor.
It’s fun to build those in Minecraft.
With a sign up top that proudly proclaims “Heroes Work Here!”
Can we get a plastic basket instead of a woven one?
Isn’t plastic doing enough damage to the environment as it is? Plutocrat heads should go into baskets woven from natural hemp fibers.
Okay, you’ll do the cleaning when blood pours out every which way?
That isn’t blood, it is city square paint, it paints the nation a certain shade of oligarch fear.
I believe you’re thinking of a bucket, dear Henry.
That’s for the old women who knit to get covered in, Citizen.
Cool picture you posted on the internet.
What?
Chicken butt! Wait. Is that a riddle?
I was wondering what your comment meant lol. You did make me laugh tho, I haven’t heard that joke in years.
I’ll have to start using it on my roommates every time they say “guess what” now. Thanks >:)
Guess what? Chicken butt.
Guess why? Chicken thigh.
Guess where? Chicken hair
Guess how? Chicken cow.
(My kids think I’m hilarious)
Thanks, this is some great material lol
I’ve always thought that the only meaningful measure of overall economy is real median wage. Don’t talk to me about GDP or the frankly insulting per capita GDP. I can’t spend money that’s being hoarded by price-gouging industrialists and tech-bros.
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I still think the dumbest thing we continue to do is demand a specific number…
Great fight for fifteen sounds nice, but guess what? The
assholeselected officials will drag their feet until that $15 is equal in value to what you’re getting now. That slogan was pushed around so long ago and only now is a supposedly “blue state” like NY getting minimum wage to $16/hr…We need to be demanding a living wage based on the minimum amount required to rent an apartment and buy necessities. And no, I shouldn’t have to have roommates just to afford a shit apartment. That just dilutes the requirement and allows the
assholeselected officials to drop that living wage calculation way down when “you just need roommates.”deleted by creator
I was referring to a national push.
A specific number is specific to an area not the whole country so we allow Republicans to argue “$15/hr is way too much for backwoods shithole Alabama! You’d live like a king and bankrupt all the businesses!”
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Just tie it to the CPI of the state the way social security was. If you want to pay your workers less all you have to do is convince the local government to stop NIMBYing them. Who knows maybe some bigger employees like Walmart or Amazon will actually do it.
GDP gives an idea of how much value is being produced by the economy, which can help judge what kind of further pressure should be put on price-gouging industrialists and tech-bros.
It’s funny you bring up tech bros when Lemmy is full of them.
I have no idea what people mean by that phrase.
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Idk what that other guy was on about but it’s people who super into computer tech and whatnot.
Like all the people who nonstop talk about Linux or 3d printers or wiring your entire house into an Alexa or stuff like that.
The only time I use it derogatively is when talking about tech companies that deliberately release poor quality products because they know tech bros will buy it anyway which helps drive inflation while ensuring lower quality
If that’s your measure, than it’s up:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
There was a pandemic spike that’s now gone, but it’s otherwise following the generally upward trend that it has for the last decade or so. If we want to use that, then the economy is doing pretty well.
OP gives a lot of other reasons to think otherwise. Using any one measure isn’t a good way to measure the economy.
Edit: also, people need to stop saying “inflation adjusted wages are flat since the 70s”. That was true in the years following the 2008 financial crisis, but it isn’t anymore. But as another poster in this thread points out, the working class is still not getting their fair share of GDP growth over that same time period.
Good point!
Didn’t the child poverty rate jump because so many had just been lifted out of it because of the expanded child tax credit? And similarly with medicaid, wasn’t that because of the expanded coverage due to covid? (In other words Democrats did good things but now don’t have enough seats in the Senate/Congress to keep those temporary measures permanent?)
Just seem like weird choices. “We fixed these things, Republicans broke them, the economy must be nonsense!”
People aren’t lying about their struggles or material needs not being met. Then you add the housing issues on top this. It is crazy people are still pushing forward at all.
The problem is people are talking past each other. People prioritize different metrics and they don’t all move the same direction or for the same reasons.
GDP is increasing, unemployment is low, child poverty is back up after a temporary decrease, homelessness is increasing, people reporting as “paycheck to paycheck” is down since 2019 but clearly OP thinks the overall level is still too high. Those are all reasonable things to look at, but they have to be looked at in totality. You can’t just cherry pick some factoids and indignantly declare “don’t TELL me you disagree with me”
Some measures are a lot better than others.
GDP is only designed to measure the size of an economy, but how well it’s serving the people who participate in it. Unemployment tells you only how many people have a “job”, but it tells you nothing about whether thirst jobs pay a liveable wage or how many people are working multiple jobs to get by.
Other measures, like homelessness and child poverty, are direct measures of his of how many people are getting completely fucked by the economy.
When combining measures, I think it makes most sense to just completely ignore metrics like GDP in favor of direct measures of well-being. No matter how high the GDP is, homeless people’s lives suck. No matter how low unemployment is, poor kids are still being set up for failure later in life. People living paycheck to paycheck can’t use a soaring S&P 500 to pay for a medical emergency.
Understandable for GDP, but unemployment should be a factor you consider in measures of well-being. Employment is one of the most important factors in a person’s life path. Unemployed people run into more financial difficulties, is associated with health problems, and results in society wide effect like increased crime.
As the person above mentioned, the employeement rate means absolutely nothing if those jobs don’t pay enough. It’s why employment is a useless metric, sure unemployment is low but how are people doing? Well, the amount of people living paycheck to paycheck and kids going hungry has skyrocketed. Shit, I’d bet half the reason jobs fill quickly is because many people are working more than one. If you need the equivalent of 3-4 working people to maintain a one bedroom apartment for two people then the economy is dog shit. People shouldn’t have to double their work just to get by but that’s what’s happening to damn near the entire generation of the most highly educated workforce of all time.
I’d say unemployment is a semi-useless metric: if it’s high, things are definitely bad, but if it’s low, things aren’t necessarily good.
This- you can’t claim unemployment when you lost one job but still have another, if you need both to get by you’re just fucked.
GDP is increasing due to inflation and speculation.
Unemployment is low because you aren’t counting the anyone who is unemployed. The workforce participation rate is hovering around the same numbers as we had in the early 1970s when women entered the workforce in large numbers. Adding this with the gig jobs and the real numbers would be even worse.
Meanwhile housing, education, medical, insurance, food, consumer goods, and any service you can name has increased in a rate above inflation since 2020. The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased as well. Everyone but the tinest fraction of the population has seen a significant hit in their quality-of-life. All the while dealing with the fallout from the virus. Plus all forms of debt have gone up.
The only good numbers are those of the stock market. Which really means very little. With interest rates so high and everyone shut out of smaller investments (you aren’t going to invest in a starter home when it is costs 900k USD) of course share prices will go up. Now who benefits from this? The dividends are basically the same, the risk is basically the same, the only thing that went up is the share price. Funneling money to the people who had more money in the past. Present money taken out of the middle class to fund old money.
So there it is. The steaming garbage heap of our economy looked in total just as you requested.
Yeah the situation is pretty bad, but it seems like it’d definitely be a lot worse without Biden’s economic policy.
How so? Just curious.
Basically we’ve been on a pretty bad track since reaganomics and this has been a major investment by the government into our economy. We were expecting a recession and supply chain crashes. Instead we’ve gotten turbulence. And I still think it’s insufficient. Though the anti trust lawsuits are giving me additional hope.
Which are?
Massive investments in green infrastructure and beginning trust busting
Oh it’s booming. It’s just not booming for you.
As George Carlin said: “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it!”
Carlin* 🤦♂️
Dammit. I blame auto carrot.
He would’ve liked you. 🤌🏼
I’d like to think so.
What a great great man.
Isn’t that the guy with the fortnite dance lawsuit?
/s
I wish. Then, he’d still be alive. 😭🤘🏼
I’m very disappointed that nobody in the media bothers with follow up questions.
“The economy is booming!”
“For who?” For Joe ‘I own a yacht’ Manchin? Yeah, I’m sure it is.
This goes back decades now with politicians on both the right and left claiming to support “middle class tax cuts” and nobody asks “how do you define ‘middle class’?”
https://www.newsweek.com/tax-cuts-republicans-middle-class-trump-701094
"House Republicans issued a fact sheet about their new tax cut plan that referred to Americans earning $450,000 a year as “low- and middle-income”—even though that income level would put those taxpayers in the top 0.5 percent of all individual Americans.
The median household income in the United States is $59,039, after all."
They’re so fucking out of touch. Man.
Everything is working as intended.
Being out of touch implies they don’t understand the situation. They fully understand, they don’t care.
I don’t know man. My millionaire uncle was bitching today about labor costs after the minimum wage went up in his state. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it.” He says, literally hours after I spent 60k (his money) on stuff for one of his classic cars he’s restoring.
It literally isn’t even something he realizes. He doesn’t buy his own groceries. Everything he wants he gets with ease. He doesn’t have to think about the cost. In his mind, groceries cost roughly what they did in the 80s when he was getting them for himself.
He’s a narcissist, so if I were to say to him, “Bro, they’d be starving right now without it.” I could end up on a shit list.
It has been one of my big privileges having him in my life and I love him and appreciate him, but he truly is out of touch. Completely. I would have been homeless 15 times at least without his help. I have to pay him back, but it truly is a privilege being a fuckup like me and having someone look out for me like he has.
I feel guilty even using him as an example, but I’m not wrong.
Don’t feel guilty for self-survival. This is the situation capitalism has put many of us in, harming ourselves to help other people. It’s not an easy choice.
Good news. When the world economy collapses it becomes much easier to see the class divisions.
Taxing the rich when?
Increasing taxation is an incomplete band-aid.
Just keep voting Democrat, they’ll do it the next time they have the votes!
Out of curiosity when was the last time they had the votes? 2021 was only a majority with the help of 2 Independents and a VP tiebreaker, 2007 had 49 + 2 and 1 vacancy, went down to 48.
Let’s give DNC 60 seats and see what happens.
We saw. They killed the public option.
There are always enough Manchins.
Yay neoliberalism!
There are always enough Manchins.
But dont you know? We “have” to run conservatives in “purple” areas or we wont win?
/S /S /S /S
Or alternatively, " We don’t actually give a single fuck about our campaign or your political priorities. We don’t want the policies you do, we just want you to get us into power"
Last time they had 60 seats they waited until someone died so they didn’t have 60 seats anymore.
Right, I’m very forgetful I apologize, I suppose from Sept 25 2009 to February 4th they had 58 + 2 making 60, Although technically Roland Buris wasn’t actually appointed to the vacant seat left by Obama until January, meaning they were filibuster proof for 2 months.
During that time very few laws were passed but the number of Public Law numbers went from 111-63 to 111-138, most of them being the appointment of new government postal buildings and a couple veteran affairs buildings, but also including mandates Human Rights that the Justice Department had to start respecting.
I feel like they could have done better with more time than that, but you’ve made an excellent point and I concede there.
Hey you, stop it with that nuance! This is
redditlemmy!Nah actually they were right, there was a supermajority for over a month in 2010 that I forgot about.
Let’s give DNC 60 seats and see what happens.
Absolutely not. Any vote for the Democrats is a vote for corruption. Voting for another party is our only choice. I’m voting Green.
I welcome you and your option to vote green, I hope that it’s a viable choice in the upcoming election or at least that your representative gets enough votes and signatures to keep the party on the ballot next election cycle. I agree that the DNC is far too moderate as a whole to fully align with my goals. I’m sure my representatives will love caucusing and working alongside them. However, my expectations for a third party before any campaign finance laws or election reforms pass are very low, and if your district is highly contested between DNC and GOP and you decide to piss your vote away on a candidate with 6% chance, then you’re just committing self harm in my eyes.
my expectations for a third party before any campaign finance laws or election reforms pass are very low, and if your district is highly contested between DNC and GOP and you decide to piss your vote away on a candidate with 6% chance, then you’re just committing self harm in my eyes.
Third party voters know that the strategy is to force the duopoly to change in order to gain back our votes to win. That’s always been the strategy, the electoral system is in place to prevent another party from winning.
#🤣
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Yeah, because more Red voters come out. Which is the point of Dems repeating that mantra.
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Which is why we’re all pissed off.
We have the option to hold our nose and vote D and watch nothing happen except the rich get richer, we can vote R welcome a “day one dictatorship” and watch the rich get richer, or we can vote G welcome an R “day one dictatorship” and watch the rich get richer.
… someone seems to always win in those scenarios… My vote is to improve my marketable skills and gtfo of this joke of a country.
I’m an avid planet money podcast listener, but a recent episode pissed me off so much. They were asking why consumer sentiment is so bad when all the economic news was good. It’s like they don’t pay attention to how most leading economic indicators are nothing more than a barometer of how rich people are doing. They expect us to be happy that inflation has slowed, even though prices are still high and it took high interest rates to do it (something that punishes poor borrowers but rewards rich investors). They expect us to be happy unemployment is low when jobs pay horribly.
“You will own nothing, and be happy.”
-WEF ç 2020
Fuck that bullshit.
I feel like we should be able to quantify what “employed” is in the unemployment metrics… Like, if you barely have a job and it pays you next to nothing (below a living wage) then you should be considered to be in the unemployment pool.
I think if that was the way it was counted, then the numbers would actually look atrocious.
In all actual fact, they specifically exclude people who are not actively looking for a job from the unemployment numbers. Historically this was to reduce the unemployment numbers from all the unemployed spouses that were stay at home parents or whatever. Now it’s just a way to mask how many have gotten so thoroughly fucked by the system that they gave up.
if you barely have a job and it pays you next to nothing (below a living wage) then you should be considered to be in the unemployment pool.
They do track this. It’s called underemployment. On the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, you can find this table which indirectly gives this data: the difference between U-5 and U-6. Underemployment is about 2.4%.
2.4% is way too low.
AFAIK, underemployment is more on the lines of having someone overqualified doing the work at the pay rate of that lower worker.
Eg. A doctor working as a personal support worker.
A doctor would be horrendously over qualified for a job as a PSW, but if they’re doing that work for the same pay as a PSW, they’re under employed. This is an extreme example, but it demonstrates the point using jobs that I feel most people would be familiar with. If you’re not, then the only hint I can give is that I believe the role of PSW used to be and occasionally still is referred to in hospitals as an “orderly”.
There’s still a non-trivial number of people with doctorates working at places like Starbucks and McDonald’s… Who are underemployed, but I’m specifically saying that if you’re “employed” but you only get, say, 5 hours a week, and you have to hold four jobs just to clock 30+ hours in a week, or you need four jobs to make ends meet, then that’s an insufficiently employed person. IMO, anyone in that situation would be better off on social assistance, where available. Being incapable of finding a full time job or finding a job that will be able to provide full time hours, should be counted.
Wages, especially median wages (working class wages), have surpassed inflation almost every month this year. Are you actually rooting for deflation? And thinking that would not be worse?
Some have, many haven’t. Honestly I just don’t see those numbers in reality. All throughout this, I’ve only gotten the standard 2% annual COLA. Therefore I am down around 14% in real wages. Sorry, the idea that some median wage has gone up is little comfort. I can tell you middle class engineering salaries have not moved to match inflation, at least in my area.
And, no, a little deflation would not be bad. Sure, sustained deflation could be a problem, but after such a period of high inflation, prices going back down a little would probably spur consumer spending.
That’s my issue.
I was an engineer in 2019. Since then, I’ve completed an MBA and became a project manager with a team of engineers under me. Even though my salary looks larger, my buying power is roughly equal to what it was four years ago. Without the education and title, I’d be far worse off.
Meanwhile, I see large increases for upper management as well as the union employees who have gotten 30% raises.
I wish I had roughly equal. I’m down over $10,000. But other jobs I look at pay little more with worse befits.
I work for a city, so most have gotten the same increase. However, the new mayor did hire several “senior strategists” for much higher pay. And he also gave a massive raise to the police, and a slightly larger raise than everyone to the teamsters. But most everyone else continues to be screwed by inflation.
All throughout this, I’ve only gotten the standard 2% annual COLA
Dude, quit your job and do the same thing for someone else for a 20% raise.
Like, if you’re sticking with a place that won’t pay you, of course you’re not making more. You yourself acknowledge wages are up but you’re not doing anything to capitalize on it.
Also
would probably spur consumer spending.
Consumer spending is still through the roof. We don’t want to spur on spending right now. Inflation follows excess demand
Dude, quit your job and do the same thing for someone else for a 20% raise.
If you would read what I wrote, pay across my industry is low. Not everyone can just job-hop for an instant 20% raise. The only way I could do that is by moving to a higher COL city, which isn’t going to help (besides the issue of leaving behing family).
Consumer spending is still through the roof. We don’t want to spur on spending right now. Inflation follows excess demand
My point is, that economists worry about deflation because it has the potential to kill consumer spending. People will stop buying stuff, they say, if things will just keep getting cheaper, as people will just wait for the price to come down. But that behavior would require a long-term trend with deflationary expectations. Besides, with most product quality being garbage thanks to planned obsolescence, people will still have to buy stuff anyway, so I somewhat doubt that traditional wisdom.
Economists want to pretend that undoing the 20% rise in prices (much more for many items) would be catastrophic, but I highly disagree.
Economists want to pretend that undoing the 20% rise in prices (much more for many items) would be catastrophic, but I highly disagree.
“Doctors say that vaccines are safe, but I highly disagree”
There is no position that should not be able to withstand a little scrutiny (and vaccines have withstood it fine). There has been so few modern examples of deflation, it is hard for them to point to any empirical evidence. And economists, who typically see salaries supported by the rich and powerful, are not exactly unbiased.
But, yeah, fuck me for being angry that my earning power has been massively decreased.
Dudes a upper management type who spends his whole work day(wow almost like his job isn’t actually that difficult) lecturing people on Lemmy why they should just be happy or make some simple changes to fix their own problems. Read his comment history it’s hilarious.
We’re behind by decades and tens of thousands of dollars. A couple months in some jobs is fuckin’ nothing.
Okay, first:
People got ‘thrown off’ Medicaid because it was temporarily expanded under the pandemic, and lots of the people that qualified under the expansion no longer qualify now that it’s expired. Yeah, I’m in favor of Medicaid for all–or Medicare, I can’t keep them straight–but this is disingenuous.
Second, 45M people in 1.8T student loan debt is a problem, sure, but who keeps blocking forgiving that debt? If you think that not voting for the guy that did everything in his power to cancel that debt is going to fix that problem, well, you probably shouldn’t have gone to higher ed. in the first place, because it didn’t help your critical thinking skills.
Is the economy we have now–under a Democratic president, with a Democratic Senate and a very slim Republican majority in the House–better or worse than it would be under a Republican (Trump) president, Republican Senate, and Republican House? Do you really think that all of the things listed in this short, misleading blurb would be fixed if Biden loses the election? Do you think that your protest vote for a Green or Dem Soc candidate is going to improve anything, given that we don’t have ranked-choice voting in national elections?
I really hate hearing people who say they’re not going to vote for Biden because for whatever reason without realizing that not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump or any other Republican who will work against everything that will actually help people. Which is better?
Not only are you letting the other side win but the only way to get representation is to vote, if you don’t vote why would any candidate want to do anything for you? You’re no value for them.
So, you feel entitled to my vote, and get pissed if you don’t get it?
Do you think you’re replying to Joe Biden’s lemmy account?
No just vote for who ever you want to win don’t waste your vote by not voting
What a self centered and entitled little comment on your part.
Grow the fuck up you little whiny child.
Hello Pot, I’m kettle.
That only works when two things are comparable. In this case I was right and you were stupid, so it doesn’t work.
Merry Xmas!
About your last paragraph, who said this was a partisan issue? Someone who agrees with your last paragraph could also agree with the sentiment that those who tell us the “economy is booming” are often ignoring issues that affect everyday Americans.
It’s a partisan issue specifically because of who is spreading which messages.
Democrats are saying that the economy is generally moving in the correct directions, e.g., we lost a couple million people in the pandemic which lead to a labor shortage, opportunistic businesses jacked up prices leading to double digit inflation, but overall the unemployment caused by the pandemic is reduced, inflation is on the way down, and we’re doing better than we would have been doing otherwise.
Republicans are saying that the economy is trash, that everyone is hurting, everything is expensive and no one can afford shit. …While conveniently ignoring that they’re the ones that have been pushing all the policies that have led to this, while Dems have been doing everything they could to prevent a recession or depression.
If you blindly accept that the economy is bad without looking at why, then you’re biting the baited hook of the Republican propaganda machine.
Democrat here. I’ll gladly say that the economy is trash and everyone (I know) is hurting.
Democrat here. People pushing the positive economy messaging are just trying to get away with robbery. Don’t accept being a patsy because you’re scared of politics. I’ll still vote blue and still tell people when they’re full of shit.
45 million with 1.8 trillion debt isn’t even a “problem”. The meme is just throwing out big number vocabulary trying to be scary.
That number averages out to 40k a person. 40k after 4 years of college with long term low interest to pay it is not done huge problem. The problem are for people who got scammed by for profit colleges and those with ridiculous levels of debt, and this administration is addressing those.
In NL the govt switched from a scholarship-like student loan program to a regular loan program (which has been reverted since the start of this college year), and students racked up 60k debts over 4-5 years of study.
And that’s in a country where the government also sets the student fees (2k a year now, somewhat following indexed inflation), which means about 8-10k is for study. The rest is additional cost and due to stories of low interest (0% for years, but now it’s 2.4%) causing 18-22 year olds to be maxing out this loan to enjoy the student life and paying it off using the bank interest.
Then the 2021-23 inflation skyrocketed and that loan started going up faster than it could be paid off, as paying off is on an income-based monthly amount. Meanwhile, this loan does get subtract 1.5x from your potential mortgage sum.
Edit: all prices in EUR of course
That has absolutely nothing to do with the economy booming -that has to do with you electing legislators to enact appropriate legislation. That’s not a failure of the economy, that’s a failure of the voters.
The American people voted for exactly this.
Yes, but to be fair a lot of us were swindled into it. District moving, lies, misinformation, voter suppression, and many are working so much there’s hardly time to verify what’s-what. Then when voting day comes along the ballots are worded so obscurely that the average person has no idea what the fuck they’re actually voting for/against. I get lost in the wording at times as well!
I vote, and I vote for the best interests of the majority because I’m wired that way. Many others are… confused
The stuff in the post isn’t really caused by any issue that you might vote for at the polls, but by politicians who may be gerrymandered into place. The child poverty increase is likely a speedy result of Rs killing the child tax credit, and covid assistance programs running out. The people getting booted from Medicaid is the result of income restrictions that were loosened during covid getting tightened again. Biden has tried student debt relief, but the supreme Court decided to overreach and kill his initial program.
I’m not saying that these things aren’t a problem, but that I think it’s likely that the people posting this kind of stuff are trying to frame it specifically as failures of the Biden admin, with the goal of getting people to not vote, waste their vote on a spoiler candidate, or vote for Trump.
Sure, yeah. My comment was just in relation to the previous comment stating that we voted for what we have- I wasn’t saying Biden is a bad choice. I voted for him and will vote for him again. It’s more the other side of things. The republican side that blocks a lot of people-friendly legislation and are blatently scamming simple folk into voting against their best interests
All that said, if there was a viable alternative to what we have now I would take it. But a vote against Biden (at this point) is just shooting oneself (and frankly most everyone else) in the foot
What’s the point of this statement? Both groups of things can be true. The economy of the US, as a whole, can be booming while simultaneously having those other things be true too. The economy isn’t a measure of how individuals are doing. It’s a measure of how well the bullshit of capitalism is working. Seems to be working as intended…
You answered your own question. The point was to explain exactly what you also chose to explain.
It chose to explain what I explained by making the exact opposite point? You’re not making any sense. Either that stuff is related to the economy or it’s not. You can’t have it both ways.
That’s like saying “Don’t tell me the Lions are doing well when tickets to their games cost $15/seat”. The Lions can be doing well and the seats can be cheap right now. One is not necessarily reflective of the other.
You’re stupider than you give yourself credit for.
And you’re just as stupid as you sound and look. I’m sure you’d love to enlighten me on exactly why I’m stupid?
Well if you were smart you wouldn’t have to ask.
Ahhh yes… the deflection. The expected response of projection and mental vacuousness.
Dumb people don’t ask. Smart people do. Seems you have it mixed up.
No he’s right. Why do you think I think you’re stupid?
No, it’s a fact. Intelligent people are able to determine their own lack of capacity and failure and are able to learn and educate themselves beyond their current capacity.
You’ve proven you can’t. If you could you’d be able to identify your own failures and how they don’t align with reality.
Also, when your business plan relies on the government giving food stamps to your workers, you don’t have a viable business plan.
“Just learn how to budget and you’ll be fine working just under the number of hours that requires us to provide you with benefits” (as long as you work another job also without benefits and don’t waste money on frivolous expenditures like food)
What if you are the guy who makes the food stamp credit card things the government buys from you?
