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Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

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Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#901

Post by aatarax »

commandlinefan wrote: post #877
matthewdgreen wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the economy is good. But according to polling, many folks who said the economy was "poor" before the November election now believe it's doing great. All in a very partisan fashion, of course: https://jabberwocking.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/blog_mi...

Not to put words in your mouth, but this comment seems to imply that politicians successfully painted a negative picture of the economy that didn't reflect reality and used that to win the last election. While I wouldn't put that past them, why was it successful this time and not every time? Nobody even tried to pretend the economy was bad when Clinton, Bush or Obama were up for re-election, because it obviously wasn…

My guess: the COVID related inflation was visible, made for a relatable talking point, and our modern day communication technologies made it easy to repeat that talking point over and over.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#902

Post by Pigalowda »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #863
_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

I'm not saying the economy is good. But according to polling, many folks who said the economy was "poor" before the November election now believe it's doing great. All in a very partisan fashion, of course: https://jabberwocking.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/blog_mi...

Polls were very wrong - again. Their methodology is clearly flawed. I owe my friend an expensive steak dinner because I believed the polls.

In the crisis era of non-reproducible science and bad data collection is it any surprise the polls are wrong too?

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#903

Post by Tiktaalik »

_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

An idea I've seen floated is that during the pandemic a lot of people got a lot of support from the government and under Biden a lot of that was phased out.

So even if "the economy is doing fine" there would have a been a large number of people who would have had something taken away.

People got a glimpse of a more interventionist social democratic government during the pandemic and then it disappeared. So yea for people who benefited from that absolutely everything got worse after.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#904

Post by PittleyDunkin »

_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

> The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perception matters, because selective numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Well saying "the economy is good" or "the economy is bad" out of context is simply moronic. Good for whom? Bad for whom? It's no secret our entire society is stacked to favor investors and owners rather than workers. The market certainly treats people extremely differently based on where they are in society. Much of the population never economically recovered from the 2008 crash at all—something that won't be reflected by GDP, stock performance, "jobs created", or how many people are collecting unemployment (which is, confusingly, a wildly different figure from counting people who want jobs but can't find one—as best I can tell, a metric not reported by the federal government at all, but appears to be about twice as large as the "unemployment" metric pimped: https://www.richmondfed.org/research/national_economy/non_em.... And this isn't even touching underemployment). The CPI is a little better, but only by a small amount.

And you'd have to be blind to not notice a minimum wage job is no longer sufficient to afford rent in most major metro areas.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#905

Post by UncleOxidant »

aatarax wrote: post #901
commandlinefan wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to put words in your mouth, but this comment seems to imply that politicians successfully painted a negative picture of the economy that didn't reflect reality and used that to win the last election. While I wouldn't put that past them, why was it successful this time and not every time? Nobody even tried to pretend the economy was bad when Clinton, Bush or Obama were up for re-election, because it obviously wasn…

My guess: the COVID related inflation was visible, made for a relatable talking point, and our modern day communication technologies made it easy to repeat that talking point over and over.

This. Even though inflation is just about back to where it was pre-covid, the winning candidate gave his voters the impression that he could lower the prices that had gone up during the earlier inflationary period. The majority of voters don't understand the underlying economic issues: Unless you get a negative inflation rate (deflation) you're not going to see lower prices. And the only way you get deflation is during severe economic downturns - now it could be that his promise will come true and we'll get a severe economic downturn that leads to lower pries, but I don't think the people that voted his way had that in mind.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#906

Post by Akranazon »

weberer wrote: post #812
_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

Its entirely because you're looking at different numbers. When the average person complains about grocery prices doubling in the past few years, they're not looking at the GDP. People take "How much money do I get in my pocket at the end of each month?" and compare it with "How much does it cost to buy what I need?". The first answer is generally tracked by the Employment Cost Index. The second is by the Consumer Pri…

[dead]

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#907

Post by UncleOxidant »

ToDougie wrote: post #898
commandlinefan wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to put words in your mouth, but this comment seems to imply that politicians successfully painted a negative picture of the economy that didn't reflect reality and used that to win the last election. While I wouldn't put that past them, why was it successful this time and not every time? Nobody even tried to pretend the economy was bad when Clinton, Bush or Obama were up for re-election, because it obviously wasn…

iirc Trump campaigned on the sluggishness of the Obama-era economy. It was characterized as burdened and shackled, but not downright terrible.

Yeah, there was a perception then (in 2016) that the economy was growing too slowly when in fact it was doing pretty well. Yes, the recovery from the '08 Great Recession was very slow, but by 2016 things were pretty good. Then this time around he ran on the economy being supposedly better during his first term when in fact most of that was just inherited from Obama. Towards the end of Trump's first term inflation was already starting to heat up due to the trade wars and tariffs he started. Covid hits and that inflation goes into high gear. Most of it was from covid and supply chain issues - not really Biden's fault, but it was easy for him to pin it on Biden.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#908

Post by dannyobrien »

Just to throw in another opinion, one that I think will be guaranteed to annoy the majority of commenters so far: This piece argues that the US isn't doing that well economically in absolute or historical terms, but only looks like that way because the popular point of comparison, Europe, is doing even worse:

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/12/04/us-economy...

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#909

Post by pavlov »

commandlinefan wrote: post #877
matthewdgreen wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the economy is good. But according to polling, many folks who said the economy was "poor" before the November election now believe it's doing great. All in a very partisan fashion, of course: https://jabberwocking.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/blog_mi...

Not to put words in your mouth, but this comment seems to imply that politicians successfully painted a negative picture of the economy that didn't reflect reality and used that to win the last election. While I wouldn't put that past them, why was it successful this time and not every time? Nobody even tried to pretend the economy was bad when Clinton, Bush or Obama were up for re-election, because it obviously wasn…

In 2016 they absolutely pretended that the economy was very bad, and then suddenly it was very good in February 2017.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#910

Post by RationPhantoms »

_1tem wrote: post #658

For some reason I can’t help but think of the analogies of our current situation to the last years of the Soviet Union, when on paper it looked like a juggernaut albeit with decrepit leaders, but the numbers were lies, more lies and statistics. The elites were filthy rich but the situation on the ground was unraveling - basic services were starting to fail (analogies to Private Equity ruining everything in America fr…

I think I'd pay a premium to ensure the company I'm dealing with is not run by private equity. Is there a way to see that as a common citizen in the US?
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