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This literally always happens during a Democrat presidency: the numbers are good but everyone goes “well it doesn’t FEEL that way so I’m gonna ignore it.” At wh

This literally always happens during a Democrat presidency: the numbers are good but everyone goes “well it doesn’t FEEL that way so I’m gonna ignore it.” At what point are you gonna admit that your feelings are a crap metric? The fact of the matter is the feelings of public are the feelings of the rich propagandists who, on principle, don’t want a leftist in power, regardless of whether he’s good for the economy or not.

aftbit 3y ago
Counter-argument: my father generally votes right, but he claimed the best economic times of his life occurred during the Clinton presidency.
thereddaikon 3y ago
Maybe these metrics are what's crap? GDP doesn't mean much for people day to day. Neither does how high a score the stock market happened to hit in its arbitrary magic points system. People care about the job market, the cost of living, direction effects of inflation on buying goods and services. When people say they economy sucks they mean they can't buy a car right now because the bank will only give them an ass interest rate even with great credit and the price of groceries has skyrocketed. I've believed for awhile now the stock market has been a poor measure of the economy because its become decoupled from the "real" economy, ie: the things I listed above.
- csours 3y ago
  There's a saying "All Politics are Local" Maybe "All Economics are Local" too. Obviously neither of those are true in a general sense - but the local situation is what feels most important.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  When people say they economy sucks they mean they can't buy a car right now because the bank will only give them an ass interest rate even with great credit and the price of groceries has skyrocketed. With regards to grocery prices, what does corporate greed have to do with the president? As for the car, the FED has a big hand in interest rates, and yeah, Biden did choose to re-nominate Powell, but Powell was originally appointed by Trump, so I don't know how voters can really say the republican would have done better. The American economy is bad for people under a certain line, yes. The question is why does the media always overplay the economy when Republicans are in power and downplay it when Democrats are?
  - bendhoefs 3y ago
    Anti-monopoly policy is one lever the president has and has been essentially ignored since the 70s in favor talking about the fed the fed the fed all the time. As one example the meat packing industry has become highly consolidated, squeezing both farmers and consumers while extracting massive profits. But across the entire economy many industries have become highly consolidated and subsequently raised their profit margins to the detriment of everyone but shareholders.
    - dfxm12 3y ago
      OK, even if one thinks this is specifically failing of Biden (or a generic democratic president) then, realistically, what is a republican going to do about this? Trump in fact favored corporate consolidation in his 2020 Economic Report of the President. The media obviously wasn't talking about this when they were talking about how good the stock market was under Trump...
      - bendhoefs 3y ago
        Do you think I'm saying this because I'm a Republican? Biden has actually been the best president of my lifetime for these issues but that just speaks to how pathetic the Democrats have been on economic issues for decades. Barely opposition at all economically speaking, they differentiate themselves more by wearing Kente cloth and engaging in divisive culture war stuff these days.
  - thereddaikon 3y ago
    >With regards to grocery prices, what does corporate greed have to do with the president? Most people aren't extracting the root causes to high prices. They watch the news, hear there is inflation and go to the store and see prices are high. Even if they had an inclination to, that kind of economic education is not standard. The population at large is very ignorant to how the economy works. They blame the prices on inflation and companies looking to gouge prices know this and take advantage of it. But, corporate greed and monopolies have a lot to do with the president. At least Teddy Roosevelt thought it did. And he did something about it. It's not unreasonable to ask why Biden doesn't. There was a point, brief as it may have been where it at least seemed like our institutions cared more about how the economy effected the common man. >The American economy is bad for people under a certain line, yes. The question is why does the media always overplay the economy when Republicans are in power and downplay it when Democrats are? I should have made this more clear in my first post. But my core point is, public sentiment doesn't care about economic reports. It cares about tangible every day things like prices of goods and interest rates. It doesn't care nor understand the root causes. It blames the guy in charge. For better or worse POTUS is always to blame for the current state of the economy. It comes with the job. Instead of saying the public is stupid, I think its more productive to accept it and work out how best to deal with it. And I don't think they downplay for republicans and exaggerate for democrats. The large media corps are selling a product and outrage helps. The kind of outrage the sells best depends on a lot of things. When trump was president, it was effective to just sell him as the outrage product. Biden is a much more dour and boring person. You have to focus on other things than the personality at the top. Before 9/11, Bush was getting attacked for the economy. He presided over the dot com bust. But with GWOT most criticism for him switched to that. The 2008 recession happened while Obama was in office and had long since left the news cycle by the time he left so duh.
- jayd16 3y ago
  There's sticker shock but the jobs numbers are great.
- asfdgionoino 3y ago
  Unemployment is way down, real wages are up even compared to before Covid-19, and inflation is back to normal levels. The large majority of people are doing well. When people say the economy sucks they are largely not talking about their own economic situation. Most people believe that they, personally, are doing well, but that some nebulous "the economy" is doing badly. We have a nation of thriving people who believe everything is falling apart. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/opinion/economy-inflation-negativity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/opinion/economy-inflation...
  - thereddaikon 3y ago
    I'm going to copy paste a comment I made elsewhere to get my point across. People don't think of inflation quarter to quarter or even FY to FY. They think of it in terms of what they are calibrated to think "normal" prices are. For most people that's going to be pre-pandemic. Since prices have not returned to pre-pandemic levels the economy is bad. Especially so since their wages haven't gone up comparably to match. This is why the numbers are largely useless at gauging public sentiment. Nobody cares that this quarter the rate of inflation has slowed. They care that chicken breasts cost double what it should. They care that a Ford Mustang GT can cost $50k when they were pretty sure they were $30k. They care that fast food costs as much as a sit down restaraunt should and the sit down costs as much as a nice one should. Now you can all explain that with numbers and reports but sentiment doesn't care about that. Public opinion is an inherently irrational thing. But it is still incredibly important because elections are decided by it. It doesn't matter if GDP is positive and inflation is good right now if everyone thinks we are in a recession and the prices of everything are too damn high. You will get voted out. I'm not sure why this is a hard concept to grasp.
    - db-interface 3y ago
      > Especially so since their wages haven't gone up comparably to match. The economic data indicates that average income has gone up more than prices have since the start of the pandemic. If you look at Real Personal Income (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI) it's up 5% relative to the end of 2019. And if you think inflation is way higher than is being adjusted for, you're simply wrong. The MSRP for a 2023 Mustang GT is $38,345 (https://www.kbb.com/ford/mustang/2023/ https://www.kbb.com/ford/mustang/2023/). The 2020 was $38,320 (https://www.kbb.com/ford/mustang/2020/ https://www.kbb.com/ford/mustang/2020/). The price of Chicken Breast is up 38%, not 100% (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101). Yes, public opinion is irrational, but the more obvious political question is why public opinion is so wrong now, when often it is not so pessimistic about the economy.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gorwell 3y ago
That literally always happens with every presidency. Good luck gaslighting the working class into believing their day to day situation is something it's not. "Don't believe your lying eyes. Your grocery bills and rent and gas and car and healthcare didn't go up, and you're closer to owning a house than before! It's the bad people telling you otherwise. Trust Us. Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad."
- kouru225 3y ago
  The right seems to be able to do it constantly. The right takes control and the white working class goes “oh the economy is so good” while they privatize the services that the working class rely on and then strip them of all their assets . The white working class doesn’t ever seem to mind then.
- asynchronous 3y ago
  Great account name to go with this comment. Ministry of truth trying to tell you your dollar isn’t evaporating on a daily basis.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Rents around me are going down. Gas is under $3/gal here. I filled up my ICE about a week ago for ~$2.75. Lots of staple foods have dropped closer to pre-pandemic price levels but many do remain high but have seemed to stabilize. I'm obviously only looking at a small part of the overall US, but if we're going to go by what we as individuals see the numbers I'm personally seeing largely match the trends I see from the BLS.
csours 3y ago
This sort of thing happens with subjects where it's difficult, time consuming, expensive, or risky to get the actual information you want. Feelings are more present and real. It's a mistake to expect that anyone will ignore their feelings. The question is how to get upstream of those feelings. I had a big anger problem when I was a kid - my dad told me that if someone can make you angry, they control you. It's hard to tell someone they are being controlled while they are angry though. Sometimes people are happy to be angry because it makes the world simpler. All I have to do is be angry, and this guy will fix things for me. And maybe that guy fixes things, or fixes one thing, but later things get worse again, because just being angry and trusting someone to fix things doesn't work. Humans are very smart animals, but the world is very complicated.
justin66 3y ago
> This literally always happens during a Democrat presidency: the numbers are good but everyone goes “well it doesn’t FEEL that way so I’m gonna ignore it.” A common and easily mocked media meme. On the New York Times Pitchbot humor account, an hour ago: "We're not in a recession. So why does it feel like we are?"
jandrese 3y ago
One thing I do like about Democratic presidencies is that it makes the Republican party care about the deficit again. Every time we elect a Republican president they explode the deficit and lie to our face that deficits don't matter.
- fny 3y ago
  No one cares about the deficit. It’s just a talking point.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    The Republicans are willing to shut down the government over it, and set it up such that they get to have this battle over and over again just to make the point.
    - LastTrain 3y ago
      How does temporarily shutting down the government help the deficit? When they had all three branches of government they didn’t do squat about the deficit, in fact they cut taxes making it worse.
- yardie 3y ago
  The Democrats don't care about the deficit at all. The Republicans also don't care about the deficit, except when they're not the predominant party. Then all they do is talk about the deficit. Debtors really don't care about the deficit. There's not a lot of places to park large quantities of cash. Even if the US Treasury was offering a measly 1% most bond buyers would still take that over any higher yielding riskier debt. It still confounds the typical US taxpayer that other countries buy our sovereign debt because that is how they insure their currency.
  - landemva 3y ago
    You are correct that Republicans only talk about the deficit. When it comes to financing more deficit spending, the House Rs keep passing debt limit increases and CRs to kick the can down the road. Yes, it is all talk and the actions are more spending.
deltarholamda 3y ago
>the numbers are good The numbers are meaningless, even if they are accurate, which I sincerely doubt. GDP is up 5%? My salary hasn't gone up 5%, but my grocery bill has gone up way more than 5%. Health insurance costs went up more than 5%. Maybe all those increases in prices are boosting GDP, but wages aren't keeping up. Maybe the numbers are hand-waving nonsense. People know whether they are doing okay or not. GDP is a blunt instrument metric of little value except as a broad comparison. But noting that it "happens during a Democrat presidency" is quite telling.
- the_rat_bastard 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - test77777 3y ago
    We can’t have a good debate on this site because calling someone trite is now too mean, but saying the government is evil is a political statement.
- boc 3y ago
  Do you even remember 2008? If this is a bad economy for you, imagine actually entering a recession and you lose your job + house.
  - bendhoefs 3y ago
    I don't want 2008 to be the benchmark for a good economy.
    - elteto 3y ago
      It’s a benchmark of a truly _bad_ economy.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  If you make $100k and your grocery bill is $10k a year, a 5% increase in groceries (to $10.5k) only needs an 0.5% increase in salary to offset.
paczki 3y ago
Feelings of the public matter when groceries start costing double, or triple in some cases. What once filled my entire fridge now gets me one shelf. Rich propagandists don't feel this. Everybody in my life that I talk to however, do.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Your truthiness sensor needs adjusting!

aftbit 3y ago

Counter-argument: my father generally votes right, but he claimed the best economic times of his life occurred during the Clinton presidency.

thereddaikon 3y ago

Maybe these metrics are what's crap? GDP doesn't mean much for people day to day. Neither does how high a score the stock market happened to hit in its arbitrary magic points system. People care about the job market, the cost of living, direction effects of inflation on buying goods and services. When people say they economy sucks they mean they can't buy a car right now because the bank will only give them an ass interest rate even with great credit and the price of groceries has skyrocketed. I've believed for awhile now the stock market has been a poor measure of the economy because its become decoupled from the "real" economy, ie: the things I listed above.

csours 3y ago
There's a saying "All Politics are Local" Maybe "All Economics are Local" too. Obviously neither of those are true in a general sense - but the local situation is what feels most important.
dfxm12 3y ago
When people say they economy sucks they mean they can't buy a car right now because the bank will only give them an ass interest rate even with great credit and the price of groceries has skyrocketed. With regards to grocery prices, what does corporate greed have to do with the president? As for the car, the FED has a big hand in interest rates, and yeah, Biden did choose to re-nominate Powell, but Powell was originally appointed by Trump, so I don't know how voters can really say the republican would have done better. The American economy is bad for people under a certain line, yes. The question is why does the media always overplay the economy when Republicans are in power and downplay it when Democrats are?
- bendhoefs 3y ago
  Anti-monopoly policy is one lever the president has and has been essentially ignored since the 70s in favor talking about the fed the fed the fed all the time. As one example the meat packing industry has become highly consolidated, squeezing both farmers and consumers while extracting massive profits. But across the entire economy many industries have become highly consolidated and subsequently raised their profit margins to the detriment of everyone but shareholders.
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    OK, even if one thinks this is specifically failing of Biden (or a generic democratic president) then, realistically, what is a republican going to do about this? Trump in fact favored corporate consolidation in his 2020 Economic Report of the President. The media obviously wasn't talking about this when they were talking about how good the stock market was under Trump...
    - bendhoefs 3y ago
      Do you think I'm saying this because I'm a Republican? Biden has actually been the best president of my lifetime for these issues but that just speaks to how pathetic the Democrats have been on economic issues for decades. Barely opposition at all economically speaking, they differentiate themselves more by wearing Kente cloth and engaging in divisive culture war stuff these days.
- thereddaikon 3y ago
  >With regards to grocery prices, what does corporate greed have to do with the president? Most people aren't extracting the root causes to high prices. They watch the news, hear there is inflation and go to the store and see prices are high. Even if they had an inclination to, that kind of economic education is not standard. The population at large is very ignorant to how the economy works. They blame the prices on inflation and companies looking to gouge prices know this and take advantage of it. But, corporate greed and monopolies have a lot to do with the president. At least Teddy Roosevelt thought it did. And he did something about it. It's not unreasonable to ask why Biden doesn't. There was a point, brief as it may have been where it at least seemed like our institutions cared more about how the economy effected the common man. >The American economy is bad for people under a certain line, yes. The question is why does the media always overplay the economy when Republicans are in power and downplay it when Democrats are? I should have made this more clear in my first post. But my core point is, public sentiment doesn't care about economic reports. It cares about tangible every day things like prices of goods and interest rates. It doesn't care nor understand the root causes. It blames the guy in charge. For better or worse POTUS is always to blame for the current state of the economy. It comes with the job. Instead of saying the public is stupid, I think its more productive to accept it and work out how best to deal with it. And I don't think they downplay for republicans and exaggerate for democrats. The large media corps are selling a product and outrage helps. The kind of outrage the sells best depends on a lot of things. When trump was president, it was effective to just sell him as the outrage product. Biden is a much more dour and boring person. You have to focus on other things than the personality at the top. Before 9/11, Bush was getting attacked for the economy. He presided over the dot com bust. But with GWOT most criticism for him switched to that. The 2008 recession happened while Obama was in office and had long since left the news cycle by the time he left so duh.
jayd16 3y ago
There's sticker shock but the jobs numbers are great.
asfdgionoino 3y ago
Unemployment is way down, real wages are up even compared to before Covid-19, and inflation is back to normal levels. The large majority of people are doing well. When people say the economy sucks they are largely not talking about their own economic situation. Most people believe that they, personally, are doing well, but that some nebulous "the economy" is doing badly. We have a nation of thriving people who believe everything is falling apart. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/opinion/economy-inflation-negativity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/opinion/economy-inflation...
- thereddaikon 3y ago
  I'm going to copy paste a comment I made elsewhere to get my point across. People don't think of inflation quarter to quarter or even FY to FY. They think of it in terms of what they are calibrated to think "normal" prices are. For most people that's going to be pre-pandemic. Since prices have not returned to pre-pandemic levels the economy is bad. Especially so since their wages haven't gone up comparably to match. This is why the numbers are largely useless at gauging public sentiment. Nobody cares that this quarter the rate of inflation has slowed. They care that chicken breasts cost double what it should. They care that a Ford Mustang GT can cost $50k when they were pretty sure they were $30k. They care that fast food costs as much as a sit down restaraunt should and the sit down costs as much as a nice one should. Now you can all explain that with numbers and reports but sentiment doesn't care about that. Public opinion is an inherently irrational thing. But it is still incredibly important because elections are decided by it. It doesn't matter if GDP is positive and inflation is good right now if everyone thinks we are in a recession and the prices of everything are too damn high. You will get voted out. I'm not sure why this is a hard concept to grasp.
  - db-interface 3y ago
    > Especially so since their wages haven't gone up comparably to match. The economic data indicates that average income has gone up more than prices have since the start of the pandemic. If you look at Real Personal Income (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI) it's up 5% relative to the end of 2019. And if you think inflation is way higher than is being adjusted for, you're simply wrong. The MSRP for a 2023 Mustang GT is $38,345 (https://www.kbb.com/ford/mustang/2023/ https://www.kbb.com/ford/mustang/2023/). The 2020 was $38,320 (https://www.kbb.com/ford/mustang/2020/ https://www.kbb.com/ford/mustang/2020/). The price of Chicken Breast is up 38%, not 100% (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101). Yes, public opinion is irrational, but the more obvious political question is why public opinion is so wrong now, when often it is not so pessimistic about the economy.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gorwell 3y ago

That literally always happens with every presidency. Good luck gaslighting the working class into believing their day to day situation is something it's not. "Don't believe your lying eyes. Your grocery bills and rent and gas and car and healthcare didn't go up, and you're closer to owning a house than before! It's the bad people telling you otherwise. Trust Us. Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad."

kouru225 3y ago
The right seems to be able to do it constantly. The right takes control and the white working class goes “oh the economy is so good” while they privatize the services that the working class rely on and then strip them of all their assets . The white working class doesn’t ever seem to mind then.
asynchronous 3y ago
Great account name to go with this comment. Ministry of truth trying to tell you your dollar isn’t evaporating on a daily basis.
vel0city 3y ago
Rents around me are going down. Gas is under $3/gal here. I filled up my ICE about a week ago for ~$2.75. Lots of staple foods have dropped closer to pre-pandemic price levels but many do remain high but have seemed to stabilize. I'm obviously only looking at a small part of the overall US, but if we're going to go by what we as individuals see the numbers I'm personally seeing largely match the trends I see from the BLS.

csours 3y ago

This sort of thing happens with subjects where it's difficult, time consuming, expensive, or risky to get the actual information you want. Feelings are more present and real. It's a mistake to expect that anyone will ignore their feelings. The question is how to get upstream of those feelings. I had a big anger problem when I was a kid - my dad told me that if someone can make you angry, they control you. It's hard to tell someone they are being controlled while they are angry though. Sometimes people are happy to be angry because it makes the world simpler. All I have to do is be angry, and this guy will fix things for me. And maybe that guy fixes things, or fixes one thing, but later things get worse again, because just being angry and trusting someone to fix things doesn't work. Humans are very smart animals, but the world is very complicated.

justin66 3y ago

> This literally always happens during a Democrat presidency: the numbers are good but everyone goes “well it doesn’t FEEL that way so I’m gonna ignore it.” A common and easily mocked media meme. On the New York Times Pitchbot humor account, an hour ago: "We're not in a recession. So why does it feel like we are?"

jandrese 3y ago

One thing I do like about Democratic presidencies is that it makes the Republican party care about the deficit again. Every time we elect a Republican president they explode the deficit and lie to our face that deficits don't matter.

fny 3y ago
No one cares about the deficit. It’s just a talking point.
- jandrese 3y ago
  The Republicans are willing to shut down the government over it, and set it up such that they get to have this battle over and over again just to make the point.
  - LastTrain 3y ago
    How does temporarily shutting down the government help the deficit? When they had all three branches of government they didn’t do squat about the deficit, in fact they cut taxes making it worse.
yardie 3y ago
The Democrats don't care about the deficit at all. The Republicans also don't care about the deficit, except when they're not the predominant party. Then all they do is talk about the deficit. Debtors really don't care about the deficit. There's not a lot of places to park large quantities of cash. Even if the US Treasury was offering a measly 1% most bond buyers would still take that over any higher yielding riskier debt. It still confounds the typical US taxpayer that other countries buy our sovereign debt because that is how they insure their currency.
- landemva 3y ago
  You are correct that Republicans only talk about the deficit. When it comes to financing more deficit spending, the House Rs keep passing debt limit increases and CRs to kick the can down the road. Yes, it is all talk and the actions are more spending.

deltarholamda 3y ago

>the numbers are good The numbers are meaningless, even if they are accurate, which I sincerely doubt. GDP is up 5%? My salary hasn't gone up 5%, but my grocery bill has gone up way more than 5%. Health insurance costs went up more than 5%. Maybe all those increases in prices are boosting GDP, but wages aren't keeping up. Maybe the numbers are hand-waving nonsense. People know whether they are doing okay or not. GDP is a blunt instrument metric of little value except as a broad comparison. But noting that it "happens during a Democrat presidency" is quite telling.

the_rat_bastard 3y ago
[flagged]
- test77777 3y ago
  We can’t have a good debate on this site because calling someone trite is now too mean, but saying the government is evil is a political statement.
boc 3y ago
Do you even remember 2008? If this is a bad economy for you, imagine actually entering a recession and you lose your job + house.
- bendhoefs 3y ago
  I don't want 2008 to be the benchmark for a good economy.
  - elteto 3y ago
    It’s a benchmark of a truly _bad_ economy.
renewiltord 3y ago
If you make $100k and your grocery bill is $10k a year, a 5% increase in groceries (to $10.5k) only needs an 0.5% increase in salary to offset.

paczki 3y ago

Feelings of the public matter when groceries start costing double, or triple in some cases. What once filled my entire fridge now gets me one shelf. Rich propagandists don't feel this. Everybody in my life that I talk to however, do.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Your truthiness sensor needs adjusting!