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Voters were right about the economy

politico.com

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Re: Voters were right about the economy

#31

Post by sobellian »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #23
lapcat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's extremely unlikely that this team, led by a U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, just messed up something obvious: https://www.lisep.org/team

It's likely the problems are all in the politico framing of it. U7 seems useful. U7 being 24% feels right-ish. That's on Ludwig. Implying that 24% is worse than normal when it's likely one of the best values we've had in decades? That's on Politico.

AFAICT the article was written by the guy that germinated the concept in the first place. You can see the paper at https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63ba0d84fe573c7513595d6e/...

tl;dr It is very highly correlated to U-3. The paper doesn't include 2024 in the data series but the figure the article cites, 23.7%, is very near all-time best. That's pretty deceptive framing IMO.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#33

Post by lapcat »

sobellian wrote: post #31
bryanlarsen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely the problems are all in the politico framing of it. U7 seems useful. U7 being 24% feels right-ish. That's on Ludwig. Implying that 24% is worse than normal when it's likely one of the best values we've had in decades? That's on Politico.

AFAICT the article was written by the guy that germinated the concept in the first place. You can see the paper at https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63ba0d84fe573c7513595d6e/... tl;dr It is very highly correlated to U-3. The paper doesn't include 2024 in the data series but the figure the article cites, 23.7%, is very near all-time best. That's pretty deceptive framing IMO.

I feel like you both may be missing the point. The article isn't just about the present. It takes a very long view:

> The problem isn’t that some Americans didn’t come out ahead after four years of Bidenomics. Some did. It’s that, for the most part, those living in more modest circumstances have endured at least 20 years of setbacks

> The bottom line is that, for 20 years or more, including the months prior to the election, voter perception was more reflective of reality than the incumbent statistics.

In other words, the official statistics have been misleading for a very long time, misleading in the sense of not showing the true hardships of the economy on the voters.

"Year X is better/worse than Year Y" is not really the point.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#34

Post by vaidhy »

jhp123 wrote: post #2

> I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a po…

It is even worse if you consider the actual reality. US poverty measures OPM and SPM both underestimates the actual poverty. OPM is set to 3x USDA "low cost" food plan and was created in 1960s. It has only been adjusted for inflation. SPM is better, but is not official.

If you tie poverty as the bottom quartile (adjusted per person + addl. impact of children), you are likely to have a poverty wage of around $32,000 (a bit higher than SPM and much higher than OPM). That makes the functionally unemployed much higher. Add to the fact that your benefits like SNAP have a steep drop-off.. you earn $5 more per hour and suddenly, you lose all the benefits and you can see this in the making.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#35

Post by [deleted] »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #18
bell-cot wrote: post #7

Sounds right. I'm in a major university town in SE Michigan. In recent years, apartment rents rose by ~4X the "official" gov't rate of inflation. Supposedly, the townies and students are diehard Democratic liberals. But especially around campus, voting statistics show Trump getting many more votes last November (and Harris many fewer) than the stereotypes would suggest.

Are you sure the Socialist party candidate didn't siphon off Harris voters?

[deleted]

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#36

Post by toomuchtodo »

more_corn wrote: post #13

There are two economies. The one inhabited by wealthy owner class (they own homes, stock, have paid off cars and disposable income) their economy is great. For everyone else it sucked. The metrics tend to focus on the former and ignore the “outlier data” caused by the latter.

The problem is the electorate is angry and impatient. The only way for wages to go up is organizing, unionizing, and to further take advantage of structural demographics compressing the working age population cohort. The only way for prices to go down is a deep recession.

Instead, they believed what someone told them (“I will make prices go down”). And when they get the obvious outcome (price levels remain where they are at, or more inflation with tariffs), they are still going to be mad. Facts and data are no anecdote for bitterness and anger, which has been decades in the making (since Ronald Reagan).

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#37

Post by bryanlarsen »

lapcat wrote: post #33
sobellian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT the article was written by the guy that germinated the concept in the first place. You can see the paper at https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63ba0d84fe573c7513595d6e/... tl;dr It is very highly correlated to U-3. The paper doesn't include 2024 in the data series but the figure the article cites, 23.7%, is very near all-time best. That's pretty deceptive framing IMO.

I feel like you both may be missing the point. The article isn't just about the present. It takes a very long view: > The problem isn’t that some Americans didn’t come out ahead after four years of Bidenomics. Some did. It’s that, for the most part, those living in more modest circumstances have endured at least 20 years of setbacks > The bottom line is that, for 20 years or more, including the months prior to the el…

> It’s that, for the most part, those living in more modest circumstances have endured at least 20 years of setbacks

Then they should have made up a new number that proves that point rather than making up a new number that seems to imply the opposite.

> In other words, the official statistics have been misleading for a very long time, misleading in the sense of not showing the true hardships of the economy on the voters.

There is a relevant official statistic: the poverty statistic.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#38

Post by taylodl »

kazinator wrote: post #16
tensor wrote: post #12

This is wildly misleading. You can argue that we should use a different metric, sure, but then you must look at all of history using that metric to compare "the economy now, to the economy before." The data was not wrong just because you choose to use a new metric. The data would be "wrong" if it was collected in a way that introduced errors.

Story says that the data gathering is good, but interpretations are flawed and have been consistently so for decades.

Goes back to the Reagan era. They needed to hide the data in order to hide the fact their policies were decimating America's manufacturing base. That's when America transitioned to a so-called "service economy." We've been getting poorer ever since.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#39

Post by nuancebydefault »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #26
nuancebydefault wrote: post #6

The statements in the article are as good as impossible to verify, no clear metrics, no formulas, no charts. Also the pretext that 'voters' vote around 'the economy' is hard to qualify nor quantify. What's clear to me is that a lot of voters believed someone who repeats things over and over and promises to 'fix' things with zero evidence to show for. It tells us more about effectiveness of repeating, fear mongering a…

> " Also the pretext that 'voters' vote around 'the economy' is hard to qualify nor quantify. " It's not that difficult to Google for poll results: Pre-election: " As concerns around the state of the economy and inflation continue, about eight-in-ten registered voters (81%) say the economy will be very important to their vote in the 2024 presidential election. " ( https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issue…

I did not search for such polls, thanks for that. If it is true, what I still find hard to believe is that there is a link between yelling 'I fix it' and the effect on the economy. Economic history teaches that starting a trade war on terms of 'they are treating us badly' or not, has consequences that are bad for the economy. One of the Bushes has tried the same thing and had to roll it back because the heavy backfiring. Yelling 'I will stop this and that war using my charms' doesn't appear to have successful precedent either.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#40

Post by bell-cot »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #18
bell-cot wrote: post #7

Sounds right. I'm in a major university town in SE Michigan. In recent years, apartment rents rose by ~4X the "official" gov't rate of inflation. Supposedly, the townies and students are diehard Democratic liberals. But especially around campus, voting statistics show Trump getting many more votes last November (and Harris many fewer) than the stereotypes would suggest.

Are you sure the Socialist party candidate didn't siphon off Harris voters?

In the official results, the vote totals for all the 3rd party candidates add up to ~2%. And Green Party is the by-far largest piece of that.
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