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Voters were right about the economy

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Re: Voters were right about the economy

#41

Post by jsbisviewtiful »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36
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…

> they are still going to be mad.

Historically it seems like they will be happier despite no change or worse change as long as their "team" won.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#42

Post by toomuchtodo »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #41
toomuchtodo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> they are still going to be mad. Historically it seems like they will be happier despite no change or worse change as long as their "team" won.

Yeah, fair. Tribalism and all that.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#43

Post by lapcat »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #37
lapcat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vot…

But look at the charts in this whitepaper: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63ba0d84fe573c7513595d6e/...

Their proposed unemployment rate tracks the official rate fairly well; the difference is that their rate is a lot higher than the official rate at almost every point in time over the past 30 years.

The author also notes that the rates can vary significantly by circumstances, such as geographical location, race, and educational attainment. Increasingly, in recent times, the Democrat/Republican voter divide is becoming a college degreed/non-degreed divide.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#44

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #39
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " 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 backfir…

Oh, believe me, I agree with you that the voters have made a spectacularly poor choice if they were hoping to get the economy improved. But that's not the topic; the question is how the Democrats failed to understand the economic hardship of the voting public when it's literally their job to be in tune with voters and why there's still some level of denialism hanging around with Democratic leaning voters about the state of the economy.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#45

Post by atmavatar »

aweiland wrote: post #20
theandrewbailey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to point out that 2019 was a very good year for the economy. It worked well the first time, so why not again?

2019 things started slowing down followed by a brief pre-lock down recession in 2020. I don't think things were as good as you remember.

Even if they were, I find it interesting that Trump gets a total pass on COVID, while Biden's held to a standard as if he didn't have to deal with COVID's aftermath.

In some cases, it's actually worse: I've had to listen to some people complain about price increases, citing artificially low prices deep in the heart of the COVID lockdowns as if they were the benchmark for a great days' past economy they wish we could return to.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#46

Post by bryanlarsen »

lapcat wrote: post #43
bryanlarsen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 vot…

But look at the charts in this whitepaper: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63ba0d84fe573c7513595d6e/... Their proposed unemployment rate tracks the official rate fairly well; the difference is that their rate is a lot higher than the official rate at almost every point in time over the past 30 years. The author also notes that the rates can vary significantly by circumstances, such as geographical location, race,…

You're saying U6 unemployment + poverty is greater than U6 unemployment which is greater than U3 unemployment.

X + Y is generally higher than just X, yes.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#47

Post by bell-cot »

radlad wrote: post #22
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.

So, having grown up in Ann Arbor, it's pretty clear that's the city you're talking about. Ann Arbor has had a big issue with NIMBY-ism preventing new developments for decades, and that's nothing new. Additionally, the entire city council and mayor are registered "Democrats" but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are progressive - or even if they are, that they care about housing as a primary issue. 70% of voters…

Un-rounded, county-wide, it was a ~1.5% drop in votes for the Dem presidential candidate (from 2020 to 2024).

Along with that, the voter turn-out dropped by ~2.2%, in a heavily Democratic County.

Nationally, the Dem's went from Biden's 2020 51.3% of the popular vote, to Harris' 2024 48.3%. Darn close to what you'd get by extrapolating the county numbers.

(I agree with your comments on A2's local issues - but from coverage of the RealPage scandal, NIMBY-ism elsewhere, etc., I suspect we're not too unusual that way. And rather large quantities of high-rise rental housing have been going up around campus and downtown A2 in the past decade.)

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#48

Post by lapcat »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #46
lapcat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But look at the charts in this whitepaper: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63ba0d84fe573c7513595d6e/... Their proposed unemployment rate tracks the official rate fairly well; the difference is that their rate is a lot higher than the official rate at almost every point in time over the past 30 years. The author also notes that the rates can vary significantly by circumstances, such as geographical location, race,…

You're saying U6 unemployment + poverty is greater than U6 unemployment which is greater than U3 unemployment. X + Y is generally higher than just X, yes.

> You're saying

It's the author's argument. I'm just trying to interpret it correctly.

> X + Y is generally higher than just X, yes.

The author's point is that their rate, the higher rate, is a better reflection of how the voters are doing economically and explains why their perception of the economy can be very different than the perception of many leaders in Washington, who are puzzled about why the voters are upset.

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#49

Post by TMWNN »

"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it"

—Jeff Bezos https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>

Re: Voters were right about the economy

#50

Post by ryandrake »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #44
nuancebydefault wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 backfir…

Oh, believe me, I agree with you that the voters have made a spectacularly poor choice if they were hoping to get the economy improved. But that's not the topic; the question is how the Democrats failed to understand the economic hardship of the voting public when it's literally their job to be in tune with voters and why there's still some level of denialism hanging around with Democratic leaning voters about the st…

I don't think either major party denies the economy is bad or that the public is suffering economic hardship. One just repeats without evidence that only they can fix it, and the other probably can fix it but chooses to do nothing.

The only people who think the economy is great are the top 0.01% who get richer and richer every year, regardless of "good" or "bad" times.

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