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> Average voter: I can't afford groceries at the store. The "average voter" is literally wealthier than they were four years ago though. Median real wages (wh

by ajross 2y ago

> Average voter: I can't afford groceries at the store. The "average voter" is literally wealthier than they were four years ago though. Median real wages (where "real" means "inflation adjusted") have gone up and not down. This isn't it. The average voter "feels like" they can't afford groceries, maybe. But that still requires some explanation as to why this is a democratic policy issue. Clearly this is a messaging thing. Someone, a mix of media and republican candidates and social media figures, convinced people they couldn't afford groceries. They didn't arrive at that conclusion organically.

radicalbyte 2y ago
That depends on distribution; from what I know of wealth distribution in the US it is extremely likely that the bottom 50% are absolutely NOT wealthier than they were four years ago.
- ajross 2y ago
  It's a median statistic. So no, that's wrong. It's literally about the 50th percentile. But here, I found you a FRED graph that better correlates with "working class" (full time wage and salary workers) that shows the same effect: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Again, I know it's very tempting for you to believe this. That's probably why voters do! But it's wrong. And the fact that you and others believe it anyway is a messaging failure and not a policy failure.
glitchc 2y ago
It's possible for the price of groceries to grow faster than the median wage. You can still have wage growth coupled with reduced affordability.
- ajross 2y ago
  I really don't think the upthread comment was about "groceries" specifically, it was a claim that people are poorer. And they aren't.
  - glitchc 2y ago
    Groceries are simply an example. There's a metric called the PPP: Purchasing Power Parity. It is possible in a short period of high inflation for goods and services to outpace wage growth. So, despite wage gains, the PPP of the median American may be lower in 2024 compared to 2019. People are going to feel that as an affordability crunch.
    - ajross 2y ago
      > It is possible in a short period of high inflation for goods and services to outpace wage growth. It is possible. But it hasn't happened! That's what I'm trying to point out in this weird subthread. People (on both sides of the candidate divide!) believe something that ssimply isn't true. And not in a subjective "mostly untrue" sense. It's a question with numbers and the numbers say the opposite of what you believe.
_huayra_ 2y ago
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N Notice the flat line after the pandemic? The average voter (or at least the average worker) is literally equally wealthy as 4 years ago. Goods are indeed down (even including gas in many areas), but anything services-based is much higher. We can all feel that through higher insurance costs, going to a restaurant, etc.
- ajross 2y ago
  Did you link the wrong chart? The slope is clearly positive over the last four years. Ergo people are getting wealthier, on average, even accounting for inflation. If you want to make a point that "Trump won because of service economy price increases, whereas cheaper good and fuel didn't help Harris as much", that's a rather more complicated thing. Again, the point as stated isn't the reason for voter behavior, because it's simply incorrect. Voters didn't vote because they're poorer, because they're not poorer. QED.
  - drawkward 2y ago
    It is far less positive than the general trend prior...
    - ajross 2y ago
      Only a little, and there are plenty of actual downturns and flat spots on that chart that didn't cause voter realignment. Again, all I can say is that this argument as framed is simply wrong. Voters weren't angry because they were poorer, period.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - _huayra_ 2y ago
    Oh wow $50 annually since 2020, sorry I didn't realize, but now I see when I zoomed in. They're not poorer. They're exactly one used Xbox richer. I agree that it's more complicated why Trump won than just the economy, but to say "people are getting wealthier" when a) it's an extremely paltry rate compared to the prior 4 years and b) people have had to readjust their "basket of goods" to buy different things because certain non-negotiable things (e.g. cars, car insurance, other insurance, utilities in a lot of unregulated states, property taxes outside of places with Prop 13 / homestead exemption, etc) have gone up significantly, putting a squeeze on disposable income. I guess we're arguing semantics here, but I agree that a lot of voter decision on this is more complicated than real income. I just disagree that $50 / year increase is meaningful enough to have people not feel left behind. That is about 12 bps a year, and I know that if my raise were 12 bps, I'd feel like why bother at all / insulted. If I were a moron, I would blame the current president, but I'm not naive enough to think that it's Biden's fault.
gitremote 2y ago
> Someone, a mix of media and republican candidates and social media figures, convinced people they couldn't afford groceries. They didn't arrive at that conclusion organically. This is a wild take that sounds it's coming from an affluent tech worker. I'm politically left, and I don't know if this is parody to make liberals look out of touch. Tech salaries went up, but people working minimum wage can't afford groceries. Federal minimum wage was increased to $7.25/hour in 2009, 15 years ago. Medians don't tell the full story, because of the K-shaped recovery graph. The upper half gained wealth but the lower half lost wealth. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/the-covid-recovery-still-has-a-k-shape.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/the-covid-recovery-still-has...
- ajross 2y ago
  The article you link is from April 2021, before the inflation burst and the subsequent recovery. You're not seriously saying that people are voting against economic conditions that prevailed three months into the Biden presidency? Again, this idea is just wrong! And I hear it from people on, as you point out, both the left and the right. And it's wrong, as a simple matter of data! Something terrible happened with messaging this cycle.
  - gitremote 2y ago
    The discovery of not being able to afford groceries is organic and real. The attribution of it to Biden is organic but mistaken. Regular people confuse correlation with causation. You are projecting your data-driven decision making to regular people who don't do that. Depending on how neurodivergent you are, you will eventually learn that you can't model how typical people think based on how you think. People aren't looking at hard numbers. People try to find patterns in what they experience.

by ajross 2y ago

radicalbyte 2y ago

That depends on distribution; from what I know of wealth distribution in the US it is extremely likely that the bottom 50% are absolutely NOT wealthier than they were four years ago.

ajross 2y ago
It's a median statistic. So no, that's wrong. It's literally about the 50th percentile. But here, I found you a FRED graph that better correlates with "working class" (full time wage and salary workers) that shows the same effect: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Again, I know it's very tempting for you to believe this. That's probably why voters do! But it's wrong. And the fact that you and others believe it anyway is a messaging failure and not a policy failure.

glitchc 2y ago

It's possible for the price of groceries to grow faster than the median wage. You can still have wage growth coupled with reduced affordability.

ajross 2y ago
I really don't think the upthread comment was about "groceries" specifically, it was a claim that people are poorer. And they aren't.
- glitchc 2y ago
  Groceries are simply an example. There's a metric called the PPP: Purchasing Power Parity. It is possible in a short period of high inflation for goods and services to outpace wage growth. So, despite wage gains, the PPP of the median American may be lower in 2024 compared to 2019. People are going to feel that as an affordability crunch.
  - ajross 2y ago
    > It is possible in a short period of high inflation for goods and services to outpace wage growth. It is possible. But it hasn't happened! That's what I'm trying to point out in this weird subthread. People (on both sides of the candidate divide!) believe something that ssimply isn't true. And not in a subjective "mostly untrue" sense. It's a question with numbers and the numbers say the opposite of what you believe.

_huayra_ 2y ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N Notice the flat line after the pandemic? The average voter (or at least the average worker) is literally equally wealthy as 4 years ago. Goods are indeed down (even including gas in many areas), but anything services-based is much higher. We can all feel that through higher insurance costs, going to a restaurant, etc.

ajross 2y ago
Did you link the wrong chart? The slope is clearly positive over the last four years. Ergo people are getting wealthier, on average, even accounting for inflation. If you want to make a point that "Trump won because of service economy price increases, whereas cheaper good and fuel didn't help Harris as much", that's a rather more complicated thing. Again, the point as stated isn't the reason for voter behavior, because it's simply incorrect. Voters didn't vote because they're poorer, because they're not poorer. QED.
- drawkward 2y ago
  It is far less positive than the general trend prior...
  - ajross 2y ago
    Only a little, and there are plenty of actual downturns and flat spots on that chart that didn't cause voter realignment. Again, all I can say is that this argument as framed is simply wrong. Voters weren't angry because they were poorer, period.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- _huayra_ 2y ago
  Oh wow $50 annually since 2020, sorry I didn't realize, but now I see when I zoomed in. They're not poorer. They're exactly one used Xbox richer. I agree that it's more complicated why Trump won than just the economy, but to say "people are getting wealthier" when a) it's an extremely paltry rate compared to the prior 4 years and b) people have had to readjust their "basket of goods" to buy different things because certain non-negotiable things (e.g. cars, car insurance, other insurance, utilities in a lot of unregulated states, property taxes outside of places with Prop 13 / homestead exemption, etc) have gone up significantly, putting a squeeze on disposable income. I guess we're arguing semantics here, but I agree that a lot of voter decision on this is more complicated than real income. I just disagree that $50 / year increase is meaningful enough to have people not feel left behind. That is about 12 bps a year, and I know that if my raise were 12 bps, I'd feel like why bother at all / insulted. If I were a moron, I would blame the current president, but I'm not naive enough to think that it's Biden's fault.

gitremote 2y ago

> Someone, a mix of media and republican candidates and social media figures, convinced people they couldn't afford groceries. They didn't arrive at that conclusion organically. This is a wild take that sounds it's coming from an affluent tech worker. I'm politically left, and I don't know if this is parody to make liberals look out of touch. Tech salaries went up, but people working minimum wage can't afford groceries. Federal minimum wage was increased to $7.25/hour in 2009, 15 years ago. Medians don't tell the full story, because of the K-shaped recovery graph. The upper half gained wealth but the lower half lost wealth. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/the-covid-recovery-still-has-a-k-shape.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/the-covid-recovery-still-has...

ajross 2y ago
The article you link is from April 2021, before the inflation burst and the subsequent recovery. You're not seriously saying that people are voting against economic conditions that prevailed three months into the Biden presidency? Again, this idea is just wrong! And I hear it from people on, as you point out, both the left and the right. And it's wrong, as a simple matter of data! Something terrible happened with messaging this cycle.
- gitremote 2y ago
  The discovery of not being able to afford groceries is organic and real. The attribution of it to Biden is organic but mistaken. Regular people confuse correlation with causation. You are projecting your data-driven decision making to regular people who don't do that. Depending on how neurodivergent you are, you will eventually learn that you can't model how typical people think based on how you think. People aren't looking at hard numbers. People try to find patterns in what they experience.