27 ms·

I don't think that the problem is that Democrats didn't explain the technical definition of inflation well enough. The problem is that people can't afford to bu

I don't think that the problem is that Democrats didn't explain the technical definition of inflation well enough. The problem is that people can't afford to buy things. Having better infographics on how inflation is the derivative of price doesn't really solve that problem.

drawkward 2y ago
That's my point! By talking about how great they are doing on inflation, the DNC campaign was LOSING votes because people experience prices which don't go down when inflation is "normal".
- startupsfail 2y ago
  The media wasn’t talking about that, it was repeating in a loop: “The economy will be better with Trump”, including the media in the far left.
  - chgs 2y ago
    There’s no far left media in America?
  - wyclif 2y ago
    So I'm in the Philippines. These things have far-reaching effects outside of the US because of the dollar. This is why Filipinos (and Latinos, and Muslims) love Trump. A female Filipino business owner gushed to me a few hours ago (awkward!) about how she's happy because now she'll be able to afford to fuel her car (gas/petrol is notoriously expensive in SE Asia for most people). Point is, business, markets and consumers vote their interests. Look at Wall Street, Bitcoin, &c. in the hours leading up to the election.
    - catlover76 2y ago
      [dead]
    - startupsfail 2y ago
      Bitcoin is interesting. So far it had been responsible for a lot of waste of manufacturing mining equipment, completely unnecessary CO2 emissions, a lot of fraud and money laundering. And now we add to the record of Bitcoin some dark money donations from crypto companies to support Trump campaign. Without any way to track, if the funds were originally coming from Putin or not. Great.
  - ablation 2y ago
    I really think you need to recalibrate your political scale if you believe there is any “far left media” in the USA that has any kind of meaningful mainstream reach. It’s simply not the case.
    - startupsfail 2y ago
      I disagree. Online mainstream media seems to be operating like a polarizing algorithm, focusing on maximizing the engagement. And more traditional media is following that as well, since this is now the mainstream.
- akira2501 2y ago
  They lost because they forgot about wages and retirement savings. Inflation was uneven. It impacted prices but not wages or savings. It reduced citizen wealth directly and transferred it to corporations and the already wealthy. They wanted to publicize the problem but not actually take the cure. Now they have zero mandate in any institution. That's what selling out your base gets you.
  - Mountain_Skies 2y ago
    One factor that is invisible to most posters here is that SNAP (food stamps) are adjusted for inflation each year in October. This year, using official government figures, SNAP benefits were increased by a maximum of one dollar per person. They might as well have left them the same as last year but instead went with the insultingly low one dollar increase. SNAP recipients, who are traditionally much more likely to vote for Democrats, saw that as a middle finger to them and their food security needs. It's like leaving a dime as a tip instead of leaving nothing. To them, it was a sign of contempt. Most of Hacker News doesn't run in social circles where people are clipping coupons and going to several different stores to shop the best deals just so they can afford to eat that month, but for nearly forty million Americans who receive SNAP benefits (read that number again and let it really sink in), that's their reality. The administration looked either out of touch or even spiteful by doing a one dollar benefits increase to account for the past twelve months of inflation. I'm sure there are plenty of other similar things that are hurting the working poor that are invisible to those spewing scorn at voters who weren't concerned more about wars around the world and luxury beliefs. No one I've pointed this out to has been able to empathize with these people yet, most coming up with glib replies about how everything for those voters will be even worse now that the other candidate won. Until they can understand the plight of the people who received that one dollar increase and why it was so psychologically devastating to them the month before the election, they'll never understand why their candidate lost. Instead they'll keep pointing to GDP, the low employment numbers made possible by people working multiple jobs to survive, and how great things are for the wealthy instead of trying to actually get in touch with the daily lives of those they rarely interact with. Maybe insulting these people and calling them stupid and evil a few more times will be what finally makes them forget about their food insecurity.
no_wizard 2y ago
And with tariffs incoming, this is going to get worse, not better. Trump is very serious about tariffs, and the president has more unilateral authority in this arena than folks realize, he wouldn't even need an act of congress to do alot in this arena
- ComplexSystems 2y ago
  No arguments there. I certainly expect tariffs will lead to inflation getting much worse.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    If it hits major economic metrics in a way that makes him nervous, watch out for what he might do to the Fed. So long to a relatively-depoliticized institution. He was already grumbling about them in 2020. Hell he might just lead with politicizing the Fed. Guess we’ll see.
    - r2_pilot 2y ago
      >Hell he might just lead with politicizing the Fed. Guess we’ll see. Why would he not? It's not like he respects institutions such as the Supreme Court. And what repercussions has he ever faced for the destruction of norms and guardrails? If anything, he gains even more support.
      - vundercind 2y ago
        I’m banking on the resulting stupid-low interest rates to refi my mortgage to help survive the guaranteed crash after. Not even joking. Great sympathy to those for whom that’s not an option. I figure there is an outside chance that such a move will fail to drop rates to the level it normally would because banks will also be worried, in which case I guess I’m just screwed as much as everyone else. Damn whoever used that “may you live in interesting times” curse once to many times.
        2y ago
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> I don't think that the problem is that Democrats didn't explain the technical definition of inflation well enough. it's clear that at least half all American voters don't understand technical definitions or explanations (this was Obama's problem too). "Drill Baby Drill", "Lock her up", and "cheap gas" is about their comprehension level.
- nwienert 2y ago
  This (incorrect) attitude is another big reason beyond economy for the D loss.
  - drekipus 2y ago
    as an outsider this is the biggest thing. It's like D-voters don't even understand how unhinged they are. "Everyone is stupid but me" doesn't do anyone any favors and doesn't fix any problem. "I have the makings of a plan" is 100x more attractive to people who need change.
    - robotnikman 2y ago
      >"Everyone is stupid but me" doesn't do anyone any favors and doesn't fix any problem. This, this, so much this. No one has ever been persuaded by calling them idiots, bigots, or any other insult. In fact, it does the opposite and drives them further away from what you are trying to persuade them to do/ I recommend people read 'How to win friends and Influence people' and 'Rules for Radicals' if they wish to learn on how to better persuade people.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    Isn't it amazing? "Chat, is this real?"
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    If that 5th grader rhetoric, and lack of any comprehensible policy, didn't resonate with Trump voters, he wouldn't have used it consistently. So the criticism is on point. We can debate whether Harris' proposed policies would have worked or not, or good for the economy or not, but at least they were comprehensible.
jeffbee 2y ago
It's impossible to take this argument seriously when Americans are out there buying more junk than ever, from eggs to bass boats. Household debt service ratios are as low as they've ever been, significantly lower than the Trump years. Americans can very demonstrably afford these things, which is expected because their earnings are way up, more than prices are up. This article and the source material from the Economist argue that what really happened is Republicans negatively polarized themselves against the economy, and will just say anything in surveys. https://www.econlib.org/why-so-sad/ https://www.econlib.org/why-so-sad/
- pugets 2y ago
  The second graph in that article ("The Partisan Gap on Economy Ratings") is alarming. In mid-2016, ~30% of Republicans said the economy was doing good. By mid-2017, that figure passed ~80%. By comparison, optimism among Democrats fell from ~70% to ~55% over that same time period. I wonder if we'll make it to March 2025 before half of Republicans once again say that the economy is doing quite well.
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    That graph, by using rolling averages, makes the transition look less dramatic than it actually was. Expectation of future economy among Republicans in the U. Michigan survey fell by a full third in November 2020, immediately after the election. https://data.sca.isr.umich.edu/fetchdoc.php?docid=77165 https://data.sca.isr.umich.edu/fetchdoc.php?docid=77165
akudha 2y ago
In my area, restaurant food prices are going up and up - not 5,10 percent, but 50% range or more. What cost me $10 last year, cost me 13, 15$ now or more. I dunno if this is price gouging or restaurants genuinely are paying more for their supplies. End result is the same, I am paying more if I eat out. Yes, this is anecdotal. Yes I know I should probably eat at home. I’m just saying this to show that stock markets, GDP etc doesn’t matter if people are stressed while buying groceries or having a meal at a local restaurant. None of the fancy infographics matters if I am starving
- diamond559 2y ago
  Now explain how Biden/Harris is to blame for any of the inflation and how Trump would make it at all better...
  - valval 2y ago
    You have a lot to learn about politics if you think this matters.
  - akudha 2y ago
    It is not because of Biden/Harris. Trump will not make it better, in fact he will make it much, much worse. That is the point. General public either does not understand or does not want to understand the nuances. That is the unfortunate situation we are in. To them, they are unable to afford stuff, Biden is the president, so he is to blame. And Trump capitalized on it completely. Politics is largely not a logical game, it is an emotional/knee-jerk-reaction game. If it was logical, nobody would ever vote for people like Cruz, Trump, Boebert etc.
  - lenkite 2y ago
    Trump will likely make it better by making the gas price hold at below $3 per gallon like it was for nearly all of his Presidency. This will reduce the price of food.
    - andrekandre 2y ago
beej71 2y ago
I agree. I think Democrats should have let Trump win unopposed in 2020. Then he could have dealt with the global supply chain crisis, had inflation attached to his name, been a hero for getting it back down again, etc. And then he'd be gone. At the very least we would have avoided this incredibly damaging narrative about the stolen election. And there's a chance that the country would be less polarized than it is now.
- gruez 2y ago
  >I agree. I think Democrats should have let Trump win unopposed in 2020. Then he could have dealt with the global supply chain crisis, had inflation attached to his name, been a hero for getting it back down again, etc. And then he'd be gone. Hindsight is 20/20. Also, wasn't the Democratic activist base thinking in 2020 that Trump getting elected would be the end of democracy? Good luck convincing them to stand down.
I_am_uncreative 2y ago
I don't think the average voter even knows what a derivative is, sadly.
- zero-sharp 2y ago
  and they shouldn't have to, really
- giardini 2y ago
  Half the population has an IQ below 100. On another note: Winston Churchill: "...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..." But I am increasingly of a mind that Churchill may be wrong: perhaps we should re-investigate alternatives to our current form of government and possibly to democracy itself - perhaps there is something better for us b/c today: - We know more about ourselves (e.g., the IQ note, above), - The rules have changed (e.g.,we have diluted the requirements to be a voter), and - we now can simulate group behaviors based on large populations of different individuals. I was recently surprised to learn what "sortition" is. This possible enhancement might have some beneficial value in reducing corruption but was apparently rejected by the USA's founding fathers. OTOH they weren't interested in building a democracy but wanted a republic instead, which requires an educated voting class, which we no longer have thanks to our changes in suffrage. So, in a way, the Founding Fathers set up a system where most voters had higher-than-average IQ. Succeeding generations inherited that system and, among other things, diluted voter requirements. Now we are possibly paying a price for making changes. Perhaps we're moving in the direction of a literal idiocracy.
  - refurb 2y ago
    This is a pretty long winded way of saying “we lost because the voter is too dumb to understand what is best for them”. This approach is a great way to lose elections.
  - rangestransform 2y ago
    Perhaps voters in the past were just as stupid, but the world was more easily comprehensible Try explaining MMT, interest rates, fractional reserve banking, etc. to even college educated people and you’ll just get a blank stare, but everyone can intuitively understand a gold standard
xp84 2y ago
Yes! And the way that Dems message the economy situation (which if you have ChatGPT summarize it all down to one sentence boils down to "The economy is GREAT and PERFECTLY BALANCED thanks to the President!") actually just pisses people off further because they think you aren't simply 'using a different metric in good faith' but actively gaslighting them. They're pointing at food prices being 20% higher than a few years ago, and their income being 5% higher, when many had no buffer to absorb such a price shock. It's no wonder the Harris ticket was wildly unpopular with voters concerned with prices.

drawkward 2y ago

That's my point! By talking about how great they are doing on inflation, the DNC campaign was LOSING votes because people experience prices which don't go down when inflation is "normal".

startupsfail 2y ago
The media wasn’t talking about that, it was repeating in a loop: “The economy will be better with Trump”, including the media in the far left.
- chgs 2y ago
  There’s no far left media in America?
- wyclif 2y ago
  So I'm in the Philippines. These things have far-reaching effects outside of the US because of the dollar. This is why Filipinos (and Latinos, and Muslims) love Trump. A female Filipino business owner gushed to me a few hours ago (awkward!) about how she's happy because now she'll be able to afford to fuel her car (gas/petrol is notoriously expensive in SE Asia for most people). Point is, business, markets and consumers vote their interests. Look at Wall Street, Bitcoin, &c. in the hours leading up to the election.
  - catlover76 2y ago
    [dead]
  - startupsfail 2y ago
    Bitcoin is interesting. So far it had been responsible for a lot of waste of manufacturing mining equipment, completely unnecessary CO2 emissions, a lot of fraud and money laundering. And now we add to the record of Bitcoin some dark money donations from crypto companies to support Trump campaign. Without any way to track, if the funds were originally coming from Putin or not. Great.
- ablation 2y ago
  I really think you need to recalibrate your political scale if you believe there is any “far left media” in the USA that has any kind of meaningful mainstream reach. It’s simply not the case.
  - startupsfail 2y ago
    I disagree. Online mainstream media seems to be operating like a polarizing algorithm, focusing on maximizing the engagement. And more traditional media is following that as well, since this is now the mainstream.
akira2501 2y ago
They lost because they forgot about wages and retirement savings. Inflation was uneven. It impacted prices but not wages or savings. It reduced citizen wealth directly and transferred it to corporations and the already wealthy. They wanted to publicize the problem but not actually take the cure. Now they have zero mandate in any institution. That's what selling out your base gets you.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  One factor that is invisible to most posters here is that SNAP (food stamps) are adjusted for inflation each year in October. This year, using official government figures, SNAP benefits were increased by a maximum of one dollar per person. They might as well have left them the same as last year but instead went with the insultingly low one dollar increase. SNAP recipients, who are traditionally much more likely to vote for Democrats, saw that as a middle finger to them and their food security needs. It's like leaving a dime as a tip instead of leaving nothing. To them, it was a sign of contempt. Most of Hacker News doesn't run in social circles where people are clipping coupons and going to several different stores to shop the best deals just so they can afford to eat that month, but for nearly forty million Americans who receive SNAP benefits (read that number again and let it really sink in), that's their reality. The administration looked either out of touch or even spiteful by doing a one dollar benefits increase to account for the past twelve months of inflation. I'm sure there are plenty of other similar things that are hurting the working poor that are invisible to those spewing scorn at voters who weren't concerned more about wars around the world and luxury beliefs. No one I've pointed this out to has been able to empathize with these people yet, most coming up with glib replies about how everything for those voters will be even worse now that the other candidate won. Until they can understand the plight of the people who received that one dollar increase and why it was so psychologically devastating to them the month before the election, they'll never understand why their candidate lost. Instead they'll keep pointing to GDP, the low employment numbers made possible by people working multiple jobs to survive, and how great things are for the wealthy instead of trying to actually get in touch with the daily lives of those they rarely interact with. Maybe insulting these people and calling them stupid and evil a few more times will be what finally makes them forget about their food insecurity.

no_wizard 2y ago

And with tariffs incoming, this is going to get worse, not better. Trump is very serious about tariffs, and the president has more unilateral authority in this arena than folks realize, he wouldn't even need an act of congress to do alot in this arena

ComplexSystems 2y ago
No arguments there. I certainly expect tariffs will lead to inflation getting much worse.
- vundercind 2y ago
  If it hits major economic metrics in a way that makes him nervous, watch out for what he might do to the Fed. So long to a relatively-depoliticized institution. He was already grumbling about them in 2020. Hell he might just lead with politicizing the Fed. Guess we’ll see.
  - r2_pilot 2y ago
    >Hell he might just lead with politicizing the Fed. Guess we’ll see. Why would he not? It's not like he respects institutions such as the Supreme Court. And what repercussions has he ever faced for the destruction of norms and guardrails? If anything, he gains even more support.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      I’m banking on the resulting stupid-low interest rates to refi my mortgage to help survive the guaranteed crash after. Not even joking. Great sympathy to those for whom that’s not an option. I figure there is an outside chance that such a move will fail to drop rates to the level it normally would because banks will also be worried, in which case I guess I’m just screwed as much as everyone else. Damn whoever used that “may you live in interesting times” curse once to many times.
      - 2y ago

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> I don't think that the problem is that Democrats didn't explain the technical definition of inflation well enough. it's clear that at least half all American voters don't understand technical definitions or explanations (this was Obama's problem too). "Drill Baby Drill", "Lock her up", and "cheap gas" is about their comprehension level.

nwienert 2y ago
This (incorrect) attitude is another big reason beyond economy for the D loss.
- drekipus 2y ago
  as an outsider this is the biggest thing. It's like D-voters don't even understand how unhinged they are. "Everyone is stupid but me" doesn't do anyone any favors and doesn't fix any problem. "I have the makings of a plan" is 100x more attractive to people who need change.
  - robotnikman 2y ago
    >"Everyone is stupid but me" doesn't do anyone any favors and doesn't fix any problem. This, this, so much this. No one has ever been persuaded by calling them idiots, bigots, or any other insult. In fact, it does the opposite and drives them further away from what you are trying to persuade them to do/ I recommend people read 'How to win friends and Influence people' and 'Rules for Radicals' if they wish to learn on how to better persuade people.
- mistermann 2y ago
  Isn't it amazing? "Chat, is this real?"
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  If that 5th grader rhetoric, and lack of any comprehensible policy, didn't resonate with Trump voters, he wouldn't have used it consistently. So the criticism is on point. We can debate whether Harris' proposed policies would have worked or not, or good for the economy or not, but at least they were comprehensible.

jeffbee 2y ago

It's impossible to take this argument seriously when Americans are out there buying more junk than ever, from eggs to bass boats. Household debt service ratios are as low as they've ever been, significantly lower than the Trump years. Americans can very demonstrably afford these things, which is expected because their earnings are way up, more than prices are up. This article and the source material from the Economist argue that what really happened is Republicans negatively polarized themselves against the economy, and will just say anything in surveys. https://www.econlib.org/why-so-sad/ https://www.econlib.org/why-so-sad/

pugets 2y ago
The second graph in that article ("The Partisan Gap on Economy Ratings") is alarming. In mid-2016, ~30% of Republicans said the economy was doing good. By mid-2017, that figure passed ~80%. By comparison, optimism among Democrats fell from ~70% to ~55% over that same time period. I wonder if we'll make it to March 2025 before half of Republicans once again say that the economy is doing quite well.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  That graph, by using rolling averages, makes the transition look less dramatic than it actually was. Expectation of future economy among Republicans in the U. Michigan survey fell by a full third in November 2020, immediately after the election. https://data.sca.isr.umich.edu/fetchdoc.php?docid=77165 https://data.sca.isr.umich.edu/fetchdoc.php?docid=77165

akudha 2y ago

In my area, restaurant food prices are going up and up - not 5,10 percent, but 50% range or more. What cost me $10 last year, cost me 13, 15$ now or more. I dunno if this is price gouging or restaurants genuinely are paying more for their supplies. End result is the same, I am paying more if I eat out. Yes, this is anecdotal. Yes I know I should probably eat at home. I’m just saying this to show that stock markets, GDP etc doesn’t matter if people are stressed while buying groceries or having a meal at a local restaurant. None of the fancy infographics matters if I am starving

diamond559 2y ago
Now explain how Biden/Harris is to blame for any of the inflation and how Trump would make it at all better...
- valval 2y ago
  You have a lot to learn about politics if you think this matters.
- akudha 2y ago
  It is not because of Biden/Harris. Trump will not make it better, in fact he will make it much, much worse. That is the point. General public either does not understand or does not want to understand the nuances. That is the unfortunate situation we are in. To them, they are unable to afford stuff, Biden is the president, so he is to blame. And Trump capitalized on it completely. Politics is largely not a logical game, it is an emotional/knee-jerk-reaction game. If it was logical, nobody would ever vote for people like Cruz, Trump, Boebert etc.
- lenkite 2y ago
  Trump will likely make it better by making the gas price hold at below $3 per gallon like it was for nearly all of his Presidency. This will reduce the price of food.
  - andrekandre 2y ago

beej71 2y ago

I agree. I think Democrats should have let Trump win unopposed in 2020. Then he could have dealt with the global supply chain crisis, had inflation attached to his name, been a hero for getting it back down again, etc. And then he'd be gone. At the very least we would have avoided this incredibly damaging narrative about the stolen election. And there's a chance that the country would be less polarized than it is now.

gruez 2y ago
>I agree. I think Democrats should have let Trump win unopposed in 2020. Then he could have dealt with the global supply chain crisis, had inflation attached to his name, been a hero for getting it back down again, etc. And then he'd be gone. Hindsight is 20/20. Also, wasn't the Democratic activist base thinking in 2020 that Trump getting elected would be the end of democracy? Good luck convincing them to stand down.

I_am_uncreative 2y ago

I don't think the average voter even knows what a derivative is, sadly.

zero-sharp 2y ago
and they shouldn't have to, really
giardini 2y ago
Half the population has an IQ below 100. On another note: Winston Churchill: "...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..." But I am increasingly of a mind that Churchill may be wrong: perhaps we should re-investigate alternatives to our current form of government and possibly to democracy itself - perhaps there is something better for us b/c today: - We know more about ourselves (e.g., the IQ note, above), - The rules have changed (e.g.,we have diluted the requirements to be a voter), and - we now can simulate group behaviors based on large populations of different individuals. I was recently surprised to learn what "sortition" is. This possible enhancement might have some beneficial value in reducing corruption but was apparently rejected by the USA's founding fathers. OTOH they weren't interested in building a democracy but wanted a republic instead, which requires an educated voting class, which we no longer have thanks to our changes in suffrage. So, in a way, the Founding Fathers set up a system where most voters had higher-than-average IQ. Succeeding generations inherited that system and, among other things, diluted voter requirements. Now we are possibly paying a price for making changes. Perhaps we're moving in the direction of a literal idiocracy.
- refurb 2y ago
  This is a pretty long winded way of saying “we lost because the voter is too dumb to understand what is best for them”. This approach is a great way to lose elections.
- rangestransform 2y ago
  Perhaps voters in the past were just as stupid, but the world was more easily comprehensible Try explaining MMT, interest rates, fractional reserve banking, etc. to even college educated people and you’ll just get a blank stare, but everyone can intuitively understand a gold standard

xp84 2y ago

Yes! And the way that Dems message the economy situation (which if you have ChatGPT summarize it all down to one sentence boils down to "The economy is GREAT and PERFECTLY BALANCED thanks to the President!") actually just pisses people off further because they think you aren't simply 'using a different metric in good faith' but actively gaslighting them. They're pointing at food prices being 20% higher than a few years ago, and their income being 5% higher, when many had no buffer to absorb such a price shock. It's no wonder the Harris ticket was wildly unpopular with voters concerned with prices.