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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Is your position that all of the survey data, exit polls, and studies where people say their own economic are being forged or something? No; I'm saying it's a rosy extrapolation without knowing details; eg: quote:For example, is the hospitality worker now making $11.10/hour instead of $10.00 as duly appreciative of that 11 percent raise as NYT writer Neil Irwin thinks is the case? Has it changed the worker's life for the better, or is the worker still further behind bc of inflation? I'm also saying that Krugman is at least honest about his being part of a propaganda effort to convince voters that their lying eyes are deceiving them. Three-quarters of the U.S. isn't basing their sentiments on the economy because they're watching Fox News, so I look forward to how these propaganda efforts shake out over the next year. 
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Nov 9, 2021 21:17
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It's interesting because it looks like two things happened at once as a result of the pandemic (and, probably, as a result of the government sending people more money directly in 2020 and 2021 than ever before): 1. The gap between people's opinions of the "buying climate" (is that the same thing as "consumer confidence?") and their "personal finances" increased 2. People's perception of the national economy became more strongly correlated with the former than the latter, when pre-pandemic it had been the other way around. e: Another thing to note about this graph is that the disconnect now is similar to what it has been since summer of 2020 - which means that Trump probably would've won if people were basing their opinion of the economy on their personal finances. Sharkie posted:I think when you talk to people about how they feel that data doesn't matter, I don't know anyone who thinks yeah things own right now, this is great. I don't know why I should care about the data when it describes a world I cannot see or touch. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 21:18
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Sharkie posted:I think when you talk to people about how they feel that data doesn't matter, I don't know anyone who thinks yeah things own right now, this is great. I don't know why I should care about the data when it describes a world I cannot see or touch. That's the thing - nobody is saying "things own right now, this is great." Most people are saying "Things suck right now, this sucks." However, what's interesting is that a large number of those people are also saying "...even though I've actually got more money than I have in years." This is a really interesting gap, and it's bizarre to me that some people don't seem to want to talk about this at all or simply deny it. FWIW I don't think anyone is wrong for calling the economy bad right now, even if they personally have money. How many once in a lifetime recessions have we had? We're conditioned to always think the bottom is going to fall out at any moment. Cause it has, like a bunch of times.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:19
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The issue is that simply having money is irrelevant. The world requires more robust indecies of medical, fiscal, and emotional wellbeing to calculate that kind of thing. If I have more money now than I have ever had at the end of a month, but my debt is higher and my bills are higher and I don't see a growth in wages on the horizon and rent keeps ticking up, that feels like it sucks. People scared of drowning are watching the tide roll in, they aren't excited about finding a rock to stand on.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:26
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Hellblazer187 posted:That's the thing - nobody is saying "things own right now, this is great." Most people are saying "Things suck right now, this sucks." However, what's interesting is that a large number of those people are also saying "...even though I've actually got more money than I have in years." This is a really interesting gap, and it's bizarre to me that some people don't seem to want to talk about this at all or simply deny it. Having read about stuff like the Panic of 1893 and looking at a history of US recessions, I wonder how similar our feelings about the economy are to people in the 1870s-1890s. One financial gut punch after another with long tail effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 21:27
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Hellblazer187 posted:That's the thing - nobody is saying "things own right now, this is great." Most people are saying "Things suck right now, this sucks." However, what's interesting is that a large number of those people are also saying "...even though I've actually got more money than I have in years." This is a really interesting gap, and it's bizarre to me that some people don't seem to want to talk about this at all or simply deny it. See, this is why I'd love to see some crosstabs on the income brackets for people saving money, as well as deeper dives into other economic indicators. I don't doubt that the PMC came off of a very good year of saving money; I see it with my own eyes every day among the PMC I know. But Irwin touting 11 percent increases for lower-income workers as a harbinger of a healthy economy just comes off as bullshit absent any underlying data on how they're actually doing financially.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:28
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Mendrian posted:The issue is that simply having money is irrelevant. The world requires more robust indecies of medical, fiscal, and emotional wellbeing to calculate that kind of thing. When you ask people in the surveys, they say that they economic situation as a whole is pretty good and they expect it to get better. They also say that the economy overall is bad. It's not close, either. There is a full ~50% difference between how people assess their own personal financial situation and how they assess the economy in general. That gap never existed before and people generally rated their personal economic situation on the same level as the economy in general. That is the interesting thing. 
Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 21:30
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Mendrian posted:The issue is that simply having money is irrelevant. The world requires more robust indecies of medical, fiscal, and emotional wellbeing to calculate that kind of thing. This exactly. I am making more than I or anybody in my parents or grandparent groups ever made, but am keenly aware that one bad illness or accident could put us out in the streets. Precarity exists for nearly every person in this country and, while I don’t expect your sympathy, I understand the feeling that the economy is going great but I feel it sucks, even though I’m doing ok. For me, that vibe comes from 1. Knowing it’s work or die in this country and 2. A lot of people I know are much worse off than I and stuck in jobs they hate in hopes of avoiding precarity. I cannot overstate the level of general psychosocial health that would be improved across the entire nation if we decoupled medical care from money and jobs. I think it would be an astonishing change in how this society feels. The vibes are all hosed.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:31
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Is there a thread discussing the Arbery trial somewhere? I looked briefly and if there was one I missed it.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:32
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https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/09/econ...09T20%3A15%3A06 This is another data point that might explain why. Savings might be up for people but so are their debt loads, and it's largely housing and automobile related, so not spending that's really discretionary. If your wages are up, but your car loan is $500/month for the next 72 months you might not feel like you're doing all that great.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:36
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My relatives and I have found out the hard way that this is a really lovely time for a major appliance or a vehicle to break and need replacing. Luckily none of us are financially struggling, but the supply shortages and rising prices on stuff like gas, heating oil and food nave got to undo whatever good feeling comes from a minor pay bump. That must really get compounded if you were already in a more precarious situation before the pandemic. I might be hanging out in this forum too often because I haven't been feeling a ton of hope lately about anything getting better. I'm just fighting dread, engaging in disaster planning and hoping that whatever I can build up in terms of savings is enough to help provide for my family if I get hit with an economic reversal. Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 21:39
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Mendrian posted:The issue is that simply having money is irrelevant. The world requires more robust indecies of medical, fiscal, and emotional wellbeing to calculate that kind of thing. Willa Rogers posted:See, this is why I'd love to see some crosstabs on the income brackets for people saving money, as well as deeper dives into other economic indicators. Yeah I think these quotes kind of sum up my perspective I guess. Like I said, I don't know or see any of these people who feel like things wrt to money are doing well. You may as well be talking about data from people in Ancient Peru for all the relevance I can see in it.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:39
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rscott posted:Savings might be up for people but so are their debt loads, and it's largely housing and automobile related, so not spending that's really discretionary. If your wages are up, but your car loan is $500/month for the next 72 months you might not feel like you're doing all that great. And the corollary to that is that anybody who is a landlord, or who sold an extra house this year, is likely doing really well compared to before. It's all very America.txt innit?
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Nov 9, 2021 21:42
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I wonder if some of these perceptions people are sharing about the economy at large is just widespread survivors guilt or something. Due to some very bizarre circumstances the last year and a half have actually been really good for us and there aren't too many days that go by where I feel like how our situation played out is ridiculously unfair to how some other people have ended up. The thing is though we don't know anyone personally that's worse off aside from some of our single friends that just gave up on trying to meet someone during COVID. I just chalk that up to being in our bubble though.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:44
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Did anyone have "Republican candidate for Senate pulled a gun on his wife, choked her, and beat his children so badly it left marks through their clothes leads to Dr. Oz running in the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania" on their 2021 BINGO card? https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1458166259846160392
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Nov 9, 2021 21:45
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Really not excited about mandatory alcolocks.Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:- New standards and requirements for "Smart Headlights" on new cars. But I assume this finally legalizes European matrix LED lights in the US.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:49
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The problem with most optimistic economic outlooks is that they overlook key data points to make their arguments, usually intentionally in order to rationalize away calls for change. What good is low unemployment if the only jobs available are Uber drivers? What good is the stock market going up if I don’t have a 401k? What good is a pay bump if you can’t translate it into a better quality of life due to exponentially increasing rent and home prices? And all that aside there’s still the issue that capitalism is in a crisis and everyone can see it. There’s a reason the phrase “late stage capitalism” is so popular now. Even if I’m fine for now am I not justified in wondering what’s going to happen when climate change hits or the state starts being forced to roll back the empire? Six months of rising GDP doesn’t won’t change the fact that we are all apocalyptically hosed. Just saying.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:49
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Mellow Seas posted:The "data" in question is "things voters told pollsters about their feelings" so I'm not really understanding this post. I mean, the data that LT2012 posted earlier itt about Virginia voters showed that their number 1 motivation for voting republican was economic pressures. quote:quote:
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Nov 9, 2021 21:55
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readingatwork posted:The problem with most optimistic economic outlooks is that they overlook key data points to make their arguments, usually intentionally in order to rationalize away calls for change. What good is low unemployment if the only jobs available are Uber drivers? What good is the stock market going up if I don’t have a 401k? What good is a pay bump if you can’t translate it into a better quality of life due to exponentially increasing rent and home prices? Nobody is making those arguments, though. They are just looking at the economic survey data where people have large gaps between how they perceive their own economic situation and how they perceive the economy as a whole - which is a gap that has never existed in economic surveys until 2020 - and wondering why people are saying their own financial situation is good if they also think the economy as a whole is bad when they used to rate their own situation and the economy in general nearly the same. People are also optimistic about their own personal financial situation, but uncertain about whether the economy as a whole is going to be better next year. It's a survey of people's attitudes/perceptions and not a long-term economic analysis based on the damage climate change may do in 20 years. It's interesting because people have never had a gap in their assessments like that until Covid.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:56
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readingatwork posted:The problem with most optimistic economic outlooks is that they overlook key data points to make their arguments, usually intentionally in order to rationalize away calls for change. What good is low unemployment if the only jobs available are Uber drivers? What good is the stock market going up if I don’t have a 401k? What good is a pay bump if you can’t translate it into a better quality of life due to exponentially increasing rent and home prices? Yeah, I agree with this - again, it makes me kind of hopeful because our system is set up in a way where a majority of people are "doing fine" in their own perception - they can pay their bills, their debt isn't too out of control, their health care costs are manageable, etc - which really reduces the political will to do something to help other people. You see it in opposition to M4A - a majority of people tell pollsters they get "good enough" healthcare at "good enough" prices, and loss aversion makes them vote against any attempts to actually reform the system. But that same principle applies to all aspects of the economy. So the fact that people have been snapped out of that way of thinking, although it's probably bad news short-term for the Democrats, does show that there is a potential for people to realize that even if they are getting by, the pitfalls of capitalism can befall anybody at any time with little warning. That puts us in a good place to start introducing people to alternatives, and make people think about what a real social safety net would look like.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:58
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Eric Cantonese posted:Has there been more clarification on what safety measures were or weren't in place at that festival? Crowd surges are a known phenomenon and it still puzzles me how this happened. Most of the articles just kind of fixate on Scott's celebrity status and the death count. CBS had footage of people rushing the ticket gates, streaming right past the security guards in numbers too large to stop. So I’m guessing the event was over capacity as well as poorly managed.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:01
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Did anyone have "Republican candidate for Senate pulled a gun on his wife, choked her, and beat his children so badly it left marks through their clothes leads to Dr. Oz running in the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania" on their 2021 BINGO card? How many horrible things/people who have damaged our country can we link back to Oprah now? I'm having flashback's to Jeri Ryan's husband's sexual proclivities leading to Barack Obama's path to the presidency and I'm feeling kind of ill.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:02
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readingatwork posted:Even if I’m fine for now am I not justified in wondering what’s going to happen when climate change hits or the state starts being forced to roll back the empire? Six months of rising GDP doesn’t won’t change the fact that we are all apocalyptically hosed. Just saying. Climate change isn't some big, apocalyptic, singular event that is going to happen at some appointed time. The effects are happening right now, it's a gradual process. We are not going to all be dead in 10 years or whatever. Life continues, just worse.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:05
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Eric Cantonese posted:I'm having flashback's to Jeri Ryan's husband's sexual proclivities leading to Barack Obama's path to the presidency and I'm feeling kind of ill. That would make Sean Parnell (the disgraced GOP favorite) Jack Ryan, which makes Dr. Oz Alan Keyes, which means this is paving John Fetterman's path to the presidency! He's not perfect but he's probably better than Obama, right?
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Nov 9, 2021 22:08
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Mellow Seas posted:That would make Sean Parnell (the disgraced GOP favorite) Jack Ryan, which makes Dr. Oz Alan Keyes, which means this is paving John Fetterman's path to the presidency! He's not perfect but he's probably better than Obama, right? Obama had an N-word tape out before he ran for President and Fetterman doesn't. But, Fetterman did chase down and detain a black guy with a shotgun because a different black guy had just robbed his neighbor. In conclusion, a land of contrasts.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:12
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Mellow Seas posted:Yeah - it's almost impossible to overstate the gap in outcomes between people who rent or who bought a house in the massively inflated current housing market, who are really getting hosed, versus people who are still paying the same mortgages they had in 2019 (who are just getting hosed the regular amount). And of course renters are almost by definition one of the most vulnerable groups in our economy, and way more likely to feel their situation is precarious. I dunno. Renting and being able to move to a different market on a moments notice is really enticing.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:13
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Obama had an N-word tape out before he ran for President and Fetterman doesn't. "fetterman believes that-" "YOU MEAN THE GUY WHO CHASED A BLACK MAN????"
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Nov 9, 2021 22:18
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Obama had an N-word tape out before he ran for President and Fetterman doesn't.  If Fetterman can put aside his personal biases (like, I doubt he's much more personally racist than Biden, or LBJ for that matter) and support policy that is broadly pro-racial justice while still giving the average non-college educated white American the impression that he's "like them" it could actually be huge. I hate to say "that he can be credibly described as a racist is an electoral benefit" but... I don't know how to finish that sentence. 
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Nov 9, 2021 22:18
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How are u posted:Life continues, just worse. Literally every day about everything
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Nov 9, 2021 22:24
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Dubar posted:Literally every day about everything Such is life. The world isn't Just, and we live in an age of turmoil and decline. Work hard to try to make things better, and find a way to enjoy the small good things as best you can.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:26
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Zotix posted:I dunno. Renting and being able to move to a different market on a moments notice is really enticing. If you aren't locked into a lease that makes you pay thousands of dollars to break it
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Nov 9, 2021 22:27
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Zotix posted:I dunno. Renting and being able to move to a different market on a moments notice is really enticing. Given the costs of ownership, we are seeing the basic "owning is always better than renting" rule needing a lot of caveats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwl3-jBNEd4 rscott posted:If you aren't locked into a lease that makes you pay thousands of dollars to break it This is a horrible situation, but you may not be able to sell a house you own easily and you could end up losing a lot of money on that front too if you need to sell as soon as possible. Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Nov 9, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 22:30
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ex post facho posted:Any news on the ongoing BBB negotiations? We got a pinky-promise swear we'd see a vote by next Monday. No, but we all know how this movie ends: the CBO score will be a pretext for the "moderates" whining about debt and not voting for the bill.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:31
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rscott posted:If you aren't locked into a lease that makes you pay thousands of dollars to break it Normally if you are relocating you would get a relo package that tends to cover things like this.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:40
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:No, but we all know how this movie ends: the CBO score will be a pretext for the "moderates" whining about debt and not voting for the bill. The CBO score is anticipated to show a very minor deficit impact - apparently the tax measures in the 1.75T House bill are expected to raise about 1.5T, as analyzed by the Joint Committee on Taxation (another nonpartisan budget analyst organization). (No, a very minor deficit increase - or even a decrease - in the CBO score will probably not stop moderates from whining about the deficit.)
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Nov 9, 2021 22:41
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If people are personally doing great but feel that the nation at large is doing terribly, I don't see why that's so hard to believe. People believe poo poo that isn't true all the loving time, and this vague general perception stuff is exactly where it tends to happen the most. For example, the crime rate plunged during the 1990s, 2000s, and most of the 2010s, but polls consistently found that a majority of Americans felt that the crime rate was rising every year.   Note also the big gaps between how people felt about the crime rate in their immediate community vs how they felt about the crime rate nationwide. Even if they felt that crime wasn't rising in their own area, they felt that crime was rising in other areas they had no direct experience with. To quote Pew in 2016, "Voters’ perceptions of crime continue to conflict with reality". And it doesn't really make sense to respond to that with the assumption that statisticians or pollsters have simply gotten things wrong for nearly three straight decades. And honestly, I don't really see why it's so surprising that people hold perceptions of the national situation that's out of line with both statistical reality and their own personal experience. If you've ever had an ultra-conservative relative who doesn't even lock their doors at night but is terrified of being mugged or carjacked if they go within 20 miles of a major city, you should understand. These perceptions either act as proxies for some other ideological stance (just look at how often people will cite "crime" as an excuse for segregationist or anti-poor policy), or are influenced by media. By "the media", I don't just mean the news (though respectable journalism loves outrage tales of crime), but also stuff like the rise of crime dramas and police reality TV. And social media algorithms love to feed negative thinking in general, even before you factor in networks like Nextdoor that are practically designed to encourage paranoia. And speaking of paranoia, the rise of various IoT home security gadgets from major tech companies has led to a boom in advertisements talking about what YOU can do to keep criminals out of YOUR house and YOUR neighborhood! It's not like any one person can have direct sense of the broad situation nationwide on any issue. They get it from information sources. If their perception of the national situation differs from their perception of their own situation and that of their immediate family and friends, then the cause is likely rooted in those information sources, rather than some newbie-tier statistical mistake on the part of pollsters. Economics is a much larger and more complex subject than crime, of course. But the fact remains that it's easy for people who are economically doing fine to get an incorrect sense of what other people's economic status is like. And the fact that people are seeing the larger American economic situation as terrible even when they perceive their own economic situation as great is a big warning sign of a perception gap. And a perception gap is actually really loving important, because if people's stances are informed by narrative rather than reality, then passing new policy won't change those stances - even if it's laser-targeted at what the stance is supposedly about. Meanwhile, poo poo that apparently doesn't change the situation at all can suddenly cause big swings just by influencing the narrative. For example, in KFF's PPACA's favorability rating was consistently underwater until Trump took office, at which point the favorability started trending upward while the "Don't Know" answers dropped sharply. Did the ACA or healthcare in general suddenly get a lot better in the lame duck period? Or did the media narratives surrounding ACA shift now that there was a real chance of it being repealed?
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Nov 9, 2021 22:41
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Zotix posted:Normally if you are relocating you would get a relo package that tends to cover things like this. No, that's not normal. But now I can see what income you're coming from, and that's informative. Speaking of home ownership, lets check in on Canada. 
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Nov 9, 2021 22:42
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Zotix posted:Normally if you are relocating you would get a relo package that tends to cover things like this. That kind of assumes that you are relocating because of a job. I've never had a job each time I've relocated across the country over the last decade.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:44
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Mellow Seas posted:The CBO score is anticipated to show a very minor deficit impact - apparently the tax measures in the 1.75T House bill are expected to raise about 1.5T, as analyzed by the Joint Committee on Taxation (another nonpartisan budget analyst organization). I guess we'll see, but I'm not expecting much from the Democrats to be honest with you. Not trying to be a doomer; just realistic about the party and how it usually works. The bill passing would be great, but it's still woefully smaller than what should be passed.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:44
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How are u posted:Climate change isn't some big, apocalyptic, singular event that is going to happen at some appointed time. The effects are happening right now, it's a gradual process. I mean there is a chance that we heat up the seas to the point where we boil all the algae and make the air unbreathable but yes, I take your larger point. That said i think the idea that life will stay the same but get worse is a bit too optimistic. Things will definitely change in ways that cause mass death and major societal upheavals, even if they don’t happen all at once.
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Nov 9, 2021 22:44
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