The US economy is doing well. President Biden wants to know why so many Americans are still feeling bad
The US economy is doing well. President Biden wants to know why so many Americans are still feeling bad
By many metrics, the US economy is humming along. The jobs market is robust; consumers are spending again; and inflation has eased to a three-year low.
#1 Rent and housing - costs of housing are unsustainable
#2 Affordable transit - prices and sizes of cars are unsustainable
#3 All other cost of living - people buying groceries on emergency funds
Nearly all of this can be pointed at a number of big business cartel-like behavior: Air BNB, Price Fixing, Layoffs, Inexplicably high corporate profits, fraud and abusive behavior by individuals and businesses.
Fund the welfare state for god's sake.
"The US economy" means "the flow of money for the rich minority of people" that's why. I work at least 50 hours a week and still can't make ends meet because my partner is severely underemployed by a corporation who won't schedule her enough hours for the amount of work she's expected to do, she doesn't have adequate health insurance, I'm watching it destroy her body before my fucking eyes exactly the same way her mother died before her and am stuck at my own shitty job figuring out what the fuck I'm gonna do about it if and the worst comes to pass.
Fuck this economy, burn it to the ground
Okay, I'm someone who has mostly benefitted here. I got a really well paying job, I snagged a house before the rates started getting too high, moving to an area with a lower cost of living (i.e. lower grocery prices). I'm fully aware that my experience is a lot better than many people who are still suffering from how bad prices have gotten.
The reason I'm upset is because of goddamn motherfucking privitization, and subsequent enshittification, of so many important things. There's been the recent pushes from the right to shutdown public services like libraries, encourage homeschooling or other "alternative education" away from our already insufficient public schooling, etc. We already know how awful things get when they're fully privatized, as in health insurance, prisons, and HOA's, but it feels like while democrats are making good policy decisions, they're completely ignoring this issue. So, the right keeps pulling things down, but the left is doing basically nothing to keep it afloat, let alone making things better.
TL;DR: "Health Insurance" companies can eat my ass
Because his economists aren't treating income & wealth disparity as indicators of economic health.
Because the US economy isn't doing well. The metrics that lead to that statement are wholly and completely disconnected from the American people who, except for a very, very select few, are not rich shareholders and really don't care how the S&P is doing if their pockets are constantly empty.
Rents are systematically high. Wages are systematically low. There is no end in sight. It's disconcerting that someone elected to represent me doesn't see that.
“But for all we’ve done to bring prices down, there are still too many corporations in America ripping people off. Price gouging, junk feeds, greedflation, shrinkflation,” Biden added. “America – we’re tired of being played for suckers!”
The headline makes it sound like he doesn't know what's going on. It's rather that he is leveling an accusation and makes the media cover this. But even then this CNN article does it's best to not cover root causes.
Doing well for who? His campaign donors? I'm still going to vote for him because the alternative is worse, but all this talk about how well the economy is supposedly doing seems horribly out of touch.
Edit: I really should read the article or at least pay more attention to what website the article is on.
If he were to do something about corporations or hell even individuals owning multiple rental properties and essentially using software as a virtual oligopoly to systemically raise the cost of living maybe us normal people would notice. Or maybe do something about greedflation sucking every last dime from us.
I make 80% more than I did 20 years ago and I feel poorer now than I did then.
Well, over the last four years I've only received a 3-4% annual raise. This means that, because of inflation, I've seen an effective pay cut of ~10%. Meanwhile the CEO of the company I work for just bought his third condo/apartment (or whatever) overlooking Manhattan's Central Park while full on doubling his take-home in 2022. That'd be a huge reason as to why I feel like shit Uncle Joe. Not like Trump and the Republicans would make things any better or do anything about it... they're more on the billionaire take than the Democrats only plus the GOP apparently is just openly talking about wanting to overthrow the government. I'll hold my nose once again to vote for a Democrat, but they've seriously got to pull their heads out of their asses.
The jobs market is robust
Which is why every big corp is doing layoffs right now, with hire freezes, wage increase freezes, and shoddy layoff schemes designed to avoid having to pay unemployment.
Even ignoring all the insane foreign policy and fake as hell local policy that will never see the light of day much like the Obama administration, exactly what metric are these fools using to evaluate the economy?
Because if it's the Federal Reserve, then of course those banking moguls are having a hell of a time.
The stock market is a measure of how much wealth has been taken from workers.
Because rent is $2000/month and most places require proof that you make 3 times that amount.
I've never met any motherfucker that makes $6k a month, Joe. Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck.
It's getting increasingly more difficult to give a shit about the social contract when people like Elon Musk have all the fucking money and the rest of us would starve if we got sick.
Fuck.
shareholders raking in more money
Prices are still ass for the average American expenses
"The economy is doing great why you feel bad?"
EDIT: This is actually the media screwing us over here, Biden actually touches on why, bad headline
Because COVID let everyone see what live would be like without having to work shitty jobs, and Biden got everyone back to those shitty jobs. It is like that Greek myth of the person in hell that is surrounded by undrinkable water that gets a drip of water on his tongue as mercy, only to have that memory be even more tourturios.
Well. It's almost like wages haven't kept up with inflation for decades and this last sprint broke something. Just because we're not seeing 20% food price inflation now does not mean the prices magically dropped. They're still high, and wages still aren't enough to make up that difference.
A good job market is great news because you need 3 jobs just to have a place to live.
We need a new New Deal.
It's not working for the middle class. It's working for another class.
Because the wealth gap still grows.
It’s not rocket science Joe.
Hmm , in 2020 the interest rates for buying a house was around 3.1%, now it's around 6.8%. When we're pricing people out of the ability to afford housing (interest rates going up affects rent prices too, who knew) people will be rather upset... especially given that they see little to no benefit from this "good economy" given the layoffs in certain sectors, the gas prices being over 9000, and not one, but two wars abroad where at least one of the parties in each is perfectly fine targeting civilians.
But hey, at least Google and Amazon are raking in the profits, I guess.
‘We got it back to the same as it ever was. Why are you upset?’. smh
Economy isn't everything. People need more like believing in the future, a sense of community, etc. A lot of things incompatible with neoliberalism that the dems embraced in the 80s.
This push them in the arms of the extrem right. Don't take me wrong. Extrem right isn't better, it's worse. But they are the last untried thing and extrem right as a rhetoric that hide the reality.
The dems have to change in deep to address the real issues like inequality, housing, belonging to a group, etc. It's placing the human in the center.
“$1 in 2018 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $1.22 today, an increase of $0.22 over 6 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.38% per year between 2018 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 22.10%.”- in2013dollars.com
Most of us didn’t get 22% raises over the pandemic and rent, electricity, and grocery prices went up, Joe
The Economy is doing well...for the rich.
It's not doing well for everyone else, you old baffoon.
So why do i know so many people that don't have enough? I didn't used to
Disinflation is different than deflation. Prices aren’t changing, that’s good. Prices changed to be bad and aren’t changing, that’s bad.
Now, while I don’t think we want deflation amok, because that’s insanely bad for everyone, what I think we can all agree with is wages need to go up or there needs to be some price control the likes this country hasn’t seen before.
That’s the problem with the economy. This new normal isn’t comfortable. While we’re finally solidifying what this new normally is and volatility is going down, what we’re settling on isn’t good. And pretending that eventually wages will come to match, that’s not realistic. Playing the waiting game is going to wreck a lot of jobs.
President feigns ignorance of basic domestic economics to appear sympathetic going into an election cycle
The US economy is doing well for rich people.
FTFY
What a senile old pos classist fuckface.
"Your corporate masters are happy, why aren't you slaves smiling?"
Well, I don't know. What a mystery!?
Because we've had about 90 years of decline in the power of labor, and everyone knows they're being exploited all the time and there's no way to get ahead if you don't already have money.
Some companies raised prices and made greedy money. And those companies don't want to lower the prices back.
Shameful.
Funny how out of touch, these questions are from the out of touch.
Greedflation, but he has already commented on being concerned about it.
This is the same as when Trump says the economy is great, its just great for stockholders. Biden knows this, hell half the people he's speaking to know this but will believe him anways. It's okay though, next time a republican is elected they'll go back to remembering that 'the economy' is just code for rich peoples investments. But not a moment before then, because they're utterly terrified of critisizing Democrats.
The reporting on the economy is very much in line with the sentiment "The surgery was a success. Unfortunately, the patient perished." Different metrics matter to different people. Food prices climbed faster than gas or housing, so inflation feels high (we have to make different choices to afford to eat), but it's not actually as high as it feels.
The employment rate (yes, that one, not the unemployment rate) is still not great, and lots of companies in the tech sector are tightening their belts to try to deliver on the sky high expectations they've been selling. The whole thing looks hollow.
@return2ozma That's not my economy.
You can never be critical enough on the party that supposed to represent the people doesn't do a fucking thing to help. Fascism vs. indignation. What a fucking country we live in.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That disconnect looms large over Biden’s political prospects, with White House advisers and campaign officials acknowledging that how Americans feel about the economy could be decisive in determining whether the president can win a second term in November.
But one senior adviser to the president told CNN the one thing they have not offered Biden is a prediction for when the American public’s psychology about the economy will have meaningfully improved.
There is also a delicate balancing act for the president to execute: Touting economic progress while being publicly sympathetic to the reality that many Americans still feel burdened by high prices, including on rent, housing and food.
To that end, Biden has started testing out lines that point the finger at some corporations that he says are taking advantage of the fact that prices were at record highs for so long.
And as Biden addressed culinary union workers at a hotel cafeteria in Las Vegas on Monday morning, he pointed to a classic American candy bar to gripe about shrinkflation.
A recent New York Times op-ed by the chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management that used the price of Snickers bars to examine why so many Americans are still unhappy – despite falling inflation – had caught the president’s eye.
The original article contains 858 words, the summary contains 212 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Mandate WFH for companies that have proven they can do it especially for those of us who would rather die than be in a room full of people.
That article seems like utter bullshit designed to make Biden seem out of touch. There’s no proof, it’s all hearsay about him supposedly seeking questions from his advisors. What is CNN’s angle here?
During the orange stinker's rule eight out of ten were living pay check to pay check. Under Biden six out of ten say they are living pay check to pay check. It's math
Aside from economic issues, I dislike him because he won't declare the GOP a Clear And Present Danger and obvious terrorist threat because he has republican friends and he wants to reach across the aisle and work together with the opposition party in a bipartisan spirit of aloha because we're Americans and at the end of the day that's all the really matters
The oligarch-owned media tells Americans things are bad because they want the party they own back in power. The right-wing media and left-wing media both tell Americans things are bad because they both want a political revolution and things must always be bad to justify that.
And that's basically all of the media that people consume. NPR can only do so much.
i think in part because our best hope for change for the next 4 years, as dictated purely by the DNC and the man himself, is 90, is doing genocide, and let abortion get taken away under his watch!
Everything in economics comes at its cycle. The economy improves, hiring picks up, and if jobs exceed workers by enough, eventually, wages go up. Even then, it takes a while for workers to feel confident. Corporations generally will put more hiring and wage raises off as long as possible.
This cycle is not in sync through the country. Hot areas will have to respond faster. Cooler area may not respond at all. Red states are generally in cooler regions. Austerity does not promote growth.
It’s called a mirror.