the economy is not great but he has changed the trajectory. it took obama two terms to normalize after bush jr and unfortunately it was not so great that trump did not make it way worse. ironically mostly by not continuing gradual interest rate increases which forced the severe ones now.
Public demand and competition drove prices down. Since Covid reset prices, and stockholders demand growth, companies will continue to price gouge until customers say it’s enough.
This is just what capitalism looks like.
The problem is where things are getting the most expensive, that being food and housing, the markets are captured. You can’t just say no to having food and housing.
This is where regulation is supposed to step in.
Food tracks the general inflation closely, it hasn’t actually gone up faster than the inflation in any meaningful way
Food tracks the general inflation closely
That’s a fine bit of bit circular logic there. The price of food is used in the BLS’s basket of goods for calculating the Consumer Price Index (CPI). So yes, the goods used to track inflation do, in fact, track with inflation.
That said, the US economy (at a macro level) is doing rather well considering that we weathered a global pandemic, we have a war on in Europe involving one of the world’s major oil and gas suppliers and inflation has been stubbornly high. Yet somehow, wages are up and unemployment is at historic lows. Seriously, if the administration could actually do something about the housing situation and prices rising, this election would look a lot more like 2008 than 2016. But unfortunately, people vote based on how they feel, not on an analysis of macro-economics. So long as people fell like the gains they have made are being squeezed back out of them via rising prices, the incumbent president is in trouble. When you get down to it, it’s still the economy, stupid.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
It’s not like we don’t have inflation excluding food
All items excluding food and energy: 3.8%
Food: 2.2%
most of the increases were actually before this last year. im not sure that is the best time frame. at least for me the big effects where seen in a year or two of inflation but its tapped down now comparatively.
Yeah, when Russia was blocking the Black Sea and Ukrainian farmers couldn’t get the grain out. Can only blame Biden for not shipping enough weapons to Ukraine
Public demand and competition drove prices down.
Prices have never gone down.
Costs for the corporations may have, but that has never (and will never) been passed on to customers.
It’s not hard to find examples of products where prices have gone down. Prices for literally all electronic goods have been decreasing for a long time, for example.
The way that we measure the economy is disconnected from the quality of life of most residents.
The economy is “good” when the rich are getting richer.
So the system isn’t broken and needs fixed, it’s working as designed and needs destroyed. Got it.
Rent is outrageous and getting worse every year. The dream of owning a home is dead for my generation (xennials) and newer. Utilities and other basic costs of living have skyrocketed and continue to get worse. The environment is starting to fall apart and insurance companies are starting to drop people, refuse coverage, and skyrocket rates when it IS available. Fascists continue to dismantle any and all social safety nets while pushing tax burdens onto lower income households, cutting their own tax responsibilities, and also creating inventive ways to loot public coffers.
Cancelling a little bit of student debt (without ever solving the core problem, btw) isn’t “turning around” - it’s barely a wiggle on the steering wheel. We’re all screwed and nobody is doing anything about it.
360º turn, got it!
Absolute shit to shit is some sort of change.
deleted by creator
Confusedtravolta.gif
Neoliberalized Democrats wouldn’t say better. This why people doesn’t trust and believe in them anymore. They became neolib like every others and they are chasing the myth of the middle voter.
One result is abstention. The second is people voting for the far right.
“Don’t vote”
lol. No.
deleted by creator
Biden has done much better than I would have guessed, especially considering how fucked everything was when he took office. He’s not a star candidate and I have plenty of criticism, but Biden has done infinitely better than the last 5 Republican presidents.
That said, even if I thought Biden was amazing, he’s basically a walking ghoul at this point. The president (and supreme court justices) should be sharp, at the peak of their game, not in their last dwindling years. I’ll still vote Biden, because the alternative is one of the dumbest and biggest pieces of shit in American history. Maybe some day we’ll have better choices.
You took the words out of my mouth
Have you considered that the economy is a lagging indicator meaning it can take years for any policy good or bad to take effect?
Obama inherited bad fiscal policy. Trump inherited the economy that Obama put into place with his policies guiding America through the recession. That’s why the economy under Trump was “good” Covid, major war, supply shortages, inflation got us here. Biden has spent the last 4 years turning this around but it is an uphill climb.
You’re right… we should elect the pussy-grabbing, whiney-ass, treason-weasel who will further shitcan everyone just to stick to Biden.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, nobody said anything about Donald Trump.
It is absolutely possible that Biden can start to do better. For some reason a lot of people on the internet want him to not even have to try to do better. I just don’t understand why our expectations are lower because the other guy sucks. He can and should have high expectations, meet them, and be better than the other candidate.
Because you have to be smart enough to pick and time your fights. Biden has done some of the best work we’ve seen in a long time.
I think you know this, though.
Dude, I’ve been voting since Obama 1. Every election is a crisis, every election is “just trust me bro, this one is too important, you can pick your principles out of the dirt next election, please, bro, I mean it”. I’ve become convinced that this is a situation where tomorrow never comes. The republicans leapfrog is into fascism, and then the democrats keep us right where the Republicans left us, saying ‘oh, man, if only we had four more years, or a few more legislators. Oh well, here’s a new bipartisan domestic surveillance bill.’
I’ve never voted for a Republican and I don’t intend to start, but I’m sick of being clowned on with this fucking line. I know I’m being played, and you can’t make me like it.
Every presidential election is important, and it never makes sense to make a “protest vote”. That’s just not how voting works.
I’m sure somebody has cried wolf at every election, but McCain and Romney never aimed to become dictators. Republicans currently have a published plan to institute fascism. It’s pretty obvious that these elections actually are exceptional.
Every Presidential election is too late. The elections to sway things start at the party and local level and continue on up. Most people aren’t involved in those and so they’re left with the choices at the end that were long since selected by others.
I don’t know what crowds you’ve been running in, but Obama and McCain had pretty similar platforms. Like, that was the big criticism of that election until McCain picked Palin as his running mate and crazy entered the limelight.
The Obama vs Romney election was rather uneventful.
Hillary vs Trump was a clown show, but not many were doomsaying. I think most just expected Trump to stuff his pockets and hoped not much would change. But he went rabid and we have been in crisis mode ever since.
Obama and McCain felt very different in the moment. Obama was promising healthcare reform with a national public insurance option, McCain wanted to let health insurance companies sell Arizona policies in California and voce-versa. McCain casually joked about bombing Iran, while we were already balls deep in two wars; Obama was planning on ending the Iraq war (though Tbf, I can’t recall if that was an Obama I or Obama II promise). Obama Romney was, OTOH, much more of an election of their character than their policies- as far as I recall, there was very, very little difference on the policy front, which is why that election was down to shit like Romney having binders full of women. To be fair, I eagerly voted for Obama in both of those, and it’s only in hindsight (and towards the end of Obama II) that I realized that Obama was really, really super moderate. But still, both of those elections definitely had the “oh fuck, oh God, the republicans want to start World War Three as a gift to Lockheed Martin, this is too important!” mood, IIRC. That got turned up to 11 in HRC/DJT, and I’m frankly a little surprised that you don’t remember this kind of rhetoric from that election, as it was even part of the DNC strategy of highlighting Donald Trump. The whole point of focusing on Trump was “look at this fucking guy, he’s unelectable, he’ll burn the whole country down, so you’d better hold your nose and vote for Hillary OR ELSE”. FWIW, I did hold my nose and vote for Hillary because it was “too important”.
I’ve been voting for quite a bit longer than you have and I’m sick of it, too. I personally feel Obama was an absolutely horrible president. Biden isn’t doing all of the good shit, but he’s probably done the most good shit I’ve seen since Clinton. Of course, things are so messed up, that one almost has to try or they just accidentally do good shit at this point.
I would love to see ranked choice voting implemented so that we could finally have a chance to maybe vote for someone we want instead of against the fascist.
We have two options in the upcoming election. This isn’t about expectations being lower, it’s about unifying against Donald Trump, the worst president in modern history. If you can’t see that, you’re probably trolling. If you’re not trolling, you’re probably not well educated on current politics.
Im saying we can walk and chew gum at the same time. In fact, it is utterly irresponsible to not do better as a party given that that stakes are so high this election. Youd think we’d want every edge we can get.
The problem is that most people can’t. In their minds you must be willing to idolize the Democratic party else you’re a Trump supporter.
I criticize the Democratic Party specifically because they are the only ones that can get us out of this mess, which makes it all the more troubling that they don’t seem competent enough to. It’s increasingly difficult to not feel hopeless.
