Tell these Americans that the economy is humming, that median wage growth has nudged ahead of the core inflation rate, and that everything’s grand, and you’re likely to see a roll of the eyes.
the core inflation rate… excludes food and energy costs—economic indicators that affect Americans’ daily lives.
This right tf HERE.
A box of graham crackers at my local grocery store is now $6.49
A true marker of the economy.
So dont buy them. Jesus you guys act so entitled to processed fucking foods it’s a joke
Graham crackers are cookies. Just make cookies instead.
How much would it cost to make cookies from scratch? List the ingredients and prices
The comment you are replying to was dickish, but this is a porous argument. In general the price of materials per cookie is going to be very low and an equivalent batch to what you would get in a box is still going to probably be around 15-20% of what you would pay at the store. Most cookie ingredients are shelf stable, most of them are very cheap, and you generally don’t need a lot of them with the vivid that you will already be ahead material wise for the next batch.
Can we stop with these inflation indexes. Most people shop at Walmart now, an index is no longer needed, just track Walmart prices.
Maybe people realize that even if the economy is doing great they’re one medical emergency away from bankruptcy, and their kids will never afford college, and they get paid a lot less than the value they create for their employer while executives and hedge fund managers make out like bandits.
It’s ok they still have Doritos and Burger King and coke.
Interest rates were raised to kick people in the teeth, the Federal reserve says that it needs to keep kicking people in the teeth for a few more months.
Economists are saying that people are not being kicked in the teeth.
Logicians everywhere are banging their heads on their desks, as people are both being kicked in the teeth, and not kicked in the teeth.
Interest rates were way too low for way too long which led to the situation we’re in now. While the Fed will probably lower rates this Summer they really shouldn’t because inflation hasn’t stabilized at all which was the entire point in the first place
China just dropped interest rates.
This world is not the world of 20 years ago.
Currant inflation is being caused because of high interest rates. Mortgages cost more, so landlords (40% of which are small mom and pop ordinary people renting a second home) increase the rents. It takes years for all the mortgages to flip over to the higher interest rates, so we’ve see this persistent and high inflation.
Current inflation is being caused because of high interest rates
Lowering and raising interest rates directly correlates with the increasing or reducing inflation.
When rates are high there is less money in the market because people by bonds because they guarantee a return of x%. This means there is less money in the market and the currency becomes stronger.
When rates are low money floods the market as people acquire assets, property etc The decreased price of loans like mortgages results in increased demand which results in more expensive houses.
If you have a lot of cash buying a house in a high interest market is actually the best case because houses have to be priced lower to compensate for the mortgage costs.
All that being said China lowering it’s interest rate will make loans cheaper but increase inflation. They have a weird real estate market though.
Lowering and raising interest rates directly correlates with the increasing or reducing inflation.
Meh. When you raise interest rates, companies raise prices, and go on borrowing. Raising rates doesn’t help fight inflation.
We are now seeing housing starts grinding to a halt, as average people stop buying homes do to high interest rates. These stories are starting to trickle into the press. Housing developers are calling high interest rates a disaster and economic killer. Politicians and banks listen to housing developers. The anger is building against bankers that believe simple stories such as ‘Lowering and raising interest rates directly correlates with the increasing or reducing inflation’, the real world is never that tidy.
A significant portion of inflation is just corporate greed trying to camouflage itself in necessity. Actual pure economic inflation doesn’t coincide with so many businesses achieving record-breaking profits
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/Whde0
Much better than my shitty phone copypasta!
Should have known it was Michael Powell from the headline. Guy is a hack republican shill that pretends to be centrist.
Did you actually read the article? There was nothing Republican, conservative, or even centrist about it.
I have no idea why you’re being downvoted, you’re absolutely right. This article doesn’t criticize Biden or the Democrats, just the pundits who want to gaslight working-class Americans. This guy clearly didn’t read it.
Looking at his profile he’s probably 13.
Lol, ok. Talk about someone who didn’t read what they’re talking about.
The entire article is an attack on “liberal economists”, much like every Michael Powell article.
I’ve listened to literally hours of takedowns on how shitty of a “journalist” Michael Powell is. Not everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Few have struck this chord more insistently than Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize–winning economist and liberal New York Times columnist.
Hear that? No? Yeah.
You obviously didn’t read the article. Read it, then tell us the part you agree with and which part you disagree with.
Other staples of life have also grown more expensive. Gas prices have gone up by about 50 percent in the past four years. Fuel-oil prices jumped by more than half from March 2020 to March 2024
Wow what totally innocuous and unbiased dates
It’s an article about Democratic analysts downplaying inflation during the Biden administration. What date range do you want him to use, the Gilded Age? Also:
The president is more clear-eyed than his cheerleaders. Several months ago, he largely stopped touting the joys of “Bidenomics” and talked instead about challenging the corporations that raised prices and padded profits. During the State of the Union, Biden pledged to take on corporations that quietly shrink their products and hike prices out of greed.
He’s not even criticizing Biden, he’s criticizing pundits for telling Americans that their economic experience is wrong, a strategy Biden himself has moved away from. Either you judged this article before you read it or you care very deeply about Democratic PR consultants.
Gas prices are down 30% since June 2022. Dead even since March 2014. Why did he pick March 2020? Because it was the absolute lowest prices of the entire decade due to a global pandemic. Every date he picks to compare is arbitrary. It’s not a comparison of “people felt good in 202X, and now they don’t feel good. Let’s compare the data.” It’s cherry picking.
Incorrect, gas prices have gone up again, and are projected to rise above the $4 per gallon mark by May.
Which is completely irrelevant for why people were feeling bad about the economy for the last many months.
Yeah, but Biden didn’t become president in 2022 or 2014; he picked 2020 because Biden was elected in 2020, when gas was 50% cheaper. The increase isn’t Biden’s fault, but it’s one reason why a lot of Americans don’t feel like the economy got better during his presidency. He’s looking at data from 2019/2020 to 2023/2024, AKA just before the last election until just before the next election. That’s not cherry picking, it’s just examining the relevant time period.
Also, you understand you’re doing the exact thing the article is about, right? This whole-ass article is, “Democratic pundits think Americans should feel good about the economy because of [X data point], but if you look at [Y data point], you can see why they still feel like they’re doing poorly.” Your response is, “How dare he bring up [Y], doesn’t he know about [X]?!?!?”
Maybe you’re right about this guy is a conservative hack; I’m really not familiar enough with him to say. But I did read this article, and it’s not a conservative hit-piece. It raises some really good points about why Americans are not responding well to liberal pundits’ economic messaging. It doesn’t at any point attack Biden’s economic strategy, and even compliments him for addressing voters’ concerns head on. It really looks like you just read the headline, saw the author, decided the article was anti-Biden without reading it, and are now trying to force evidence to fit that conclusion.
Not sure how to break this to you, but Biden was not elected in March 2020. He wasn’t even president in 2020. The last 3 years isn’t the last 4 years, which isn’t the last 5 years.
My point is if Powell wants to compare dates in good faith, he would make them consistent and reflect on that. “Groceries are up X% in the last 2 years but gas is down Y% during that same time. Maybe people find groceries more compelling than gas.” These are the types of things that legitimate economists and journalists do. Powell is not. He instead cherry picks smatterings of years to make the big numbers and incredulously claim that “smug liberals can’t look at the data.” But they are, and that’s why they’re baffled. He is just looking to dunk on “liberal elites”.
Really shitty discourse to accuse someone of not reading the article when I’m literally quoting it, but do you.
He’s not cherry picking random dates, he just using different dates to compare different data. If he had compared the gas prices from 2020 to 2022 in order to make the increase of prices seem higher than it was, that would be bad faith, but he didn’t do that. If he had compared the increase of food prices between 2022 and 2024 while ignoring a large drop in food prices between 2020 and 2022, that would bad faith, but that didn’t happen.
Bad faith is pretending that comparing the gas and food prices and randomly speculating on how they make Americans feel is something, “legitimate economists,” do. Bad faith is saying that, “[Biden] wasn’t even president in 2020,” as though the state of the economy just before he took office isn’t relevant to this conversation. Bad faith is pretending I said you never read the article when I clearly said you didn’t read the article before you started criticizing it. But hey, you do you.
It seems to me the most important element of this conversation is wage growth and unemployment versus inflation.
My understanding is those numbers being favorable are what make economists scratch their heads on why everyone feels so negatively and why the economists say the economy is doing great. The most convincing explanation I’ve seen that mirrors my own feelings is that wage growth feels like I’ve earned it through my own hard work but inflation feels like I’m being cheated, so even though overall people can buy more than before they don’t feel good about it.
This article doesn’t really address this big point at all.
It’s mostly because these numbers are averages and the majority of wage growth is seen by those switching jobs. We’re also talking about really small numbers here, wage growth isn’t beating inflation by much, it about a single point difference, that’s 10s of dollars per month difference. It also doesn’t account for the massive inflation in previous years, so even if you got a good raise this year it likely brought you to the same level as pre-2020.
If you haven’t changed jobs in over three years and have been getting sub 5% raises, you are well over 10% worse off than 3 years ago.
To add to that, yes people get paid more switching jobs, but it’s incredibly stressful. Also seems to be the only way to get that raise.
Management has seen to be at odds with white collar workers, fighting against work from home. It has not been a stress free ride since the pandemic. Companies keep thinking there will be a recession, and getting the raise is difficult and stressful.
who the heck can buy more than before. I make effectively half of what I did in 2020.
That’s unfortunate and hopefully you can get a raise or a better job but apparently unemployment is low overall and wage growth is outpacing inflation for most people.
Who can buy more than before? I can’t. Fuel, mortgage, insurance, food, alcohol, electricity, entertainment, services ect have all gone up way more than my wage has. Mortgage alone means i have less money each month than before interest rates and inflation went up.
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The issue with this thesis, as with the other theories on this topic who want to pin this conversation on arrogant, disconnected economists, is that the data don’t seem to support any such hypotheses. If sentiment is linked to uniquely bad rates of inflation experienced by the poor, why isn’t there a greater divergence in the sentiment numbers between rich and poor? Sentiment is down for everyone, even people for whom the economy seems to be doing quite well.
This is why economists have largely settled on the vibes theory. While I do have some skepticism of it myself, these populist alternatives in the media and online just don’t have much, if any, supporting evidence.
Exactly. instead of writing this whole mountain of speculation, they could have google “food price inflation” and compared that to other inflation, and see the numbers are mostly the same.
Working blue collar people are hit hard, yes they are getting raises, but housing is still unaffordable. Yes wages are up, mainly for blue collar workers, but these wages were low to begin with.
Tech firms, and large white collar employers have either had mass layoffs or keep threatening mass layoffs. The middle class feels like it’s been in a recession for several years. Wages in the middle class have been stagnant.
For the rich. The stock market isn’t fun anymore, it’s been gamed. Fewer companies listed. Mostly gamed by a couple of giant investors, so it’s fixed. Can’t invest money into China. Though the housing market is hot, it’s not a great investment, as it takes years to build from greenfield.
You can spin a compelling narrative for any of these but if you want to make a real case then there needs to be a real assessment of the data. Whenever I’ve investigated these types of ideas, I haven’t found them to be very well-supported.
I general I do think the best hypothesis is that people are telling the truth about how they are doing, but the data are somehow missing exactly what is going on. But we need more than speculation to demonstrate exactly what it is.
Poignant.
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