politics

There's not much Biden can do about late stage capitalism. We're reaching the end game. Where companies take us for just nearly everything we have to where we "survive" enough to keep working and paying them but just barely.

Inflation is back near normal, but prices are not, and wages have not shifted to match those prices (partially due to the government fighting "wage inflation"). People are still worse off than they used to be. I don't think this is Biden's fault, but here we are anyway.

That's not why people are feeling pessimistic. Too much of the economic recovery is going to corporate profits and capitalist shareholders. The federal minimum wage is still half of a poverty wage, and the rent is still too damn high. The hyperinflation of the pandemic has made working for a living unsustainable. Taking inflation from 9% to 3% is great (setting aside for this conversation that any President shouldn't really take credit for economic matters) but it's reduce the rate at which a bad thing is getting worse. Existence is still unaffordable even with everybody employed. That's not spin, that's just the reality we've all been living in for a long time. The twin disasters of Trump and the pandemic put it all in stark relief, laying bare the grift of conservativism.

Biden is struggling because he's trying to play old politics. We've crossed the rubicon. Going back to normal isn't enough for people to feel hopeful, and reducing the rate of collapse isn't leadership. Biden thinks being at the helm while the ship slowly rights itself is the same as leadership, and there are enough people attacking him from the extreme other side that nobody is particularly happy with him.

The looming recession talk is over. They’re ready to start making real money in the stock market again and are tired of the impact the recession talk had this year. It’s no surprise that it’s been about bang on a year since the recession talk started as we came into 2023 and the stock market hit record highs as we’re coming into 2024.

It was all fabricated for… reasons. Big orgs wanted to lay people off for some reason. Investment bankers wanted to gobble up securities for cheaper. Real estate firms wanted to drive down the real cost of homes (higher interest rates = lower sale price but higher cost to families, firms benefit by paying cash). They wanted it so they made it happen. They no longer want it so it’ll end.

That's true but peoples wages haven't gone up at a rate that keeps pace so everyone still feels poor and can't buy the things they need. That's the big issue. That's not been fixed and there is no plan to fix it. Now we all just have to wait around until our wages start to increase but we all know how long that takes.

Americans are not stupid. You will not convince them the economy is good by spitting out some numbers twisted from the data. They feel it. They know how easy or hard it is to make ends meet. They know their rent goes up every year while their wages do not.

And the harder is gets, the more radical the population becomes. Establishment democrats like Biden will not be able to maintain the status quo. Normally I wouldn't care but their incompetence has consequences. A Trump victory at this point may signal the end of the US as we know it. We cannot continue to stay asleep at the wheel.

Your purchasing power has fallen over 20% in the last 3 years. We're talking and average of around 7% real inflation per year. Not the official "~3%" the government puts out. That's over 3x higher than average over the last 4 decades.

No one has been talking about a recession lately. The stories have all been shit is too expensive for the majority of Americans.

And...well...they're true.

The economy is doing great. Except for one thing. It's all being sucked up by the people who are already rich.

Everything we do to help just gets sucked up by the megacorporations and the already rich. I'm sure you know the feeling.

When they report that the economy is great, always ask for whom...

Well, Trump was adversarial to certain media outlets. Others, like FOX News, were All-But-State TV. They'd parrot whatever he said as the god given truth and he'd parrot whatever they said as truth. If Trump said that the election was stolen and COVID was no big deal, that's how FOX reported it. If they said that vaccines were dangerous and that immigrants were replacing "real Americans" (read: white people), he'd parrot that right back.

Also, adversarial relationships are good to a point. Biden is asking the media to cover things honestly. Trump was calling the media "The Enemy Of The People" and threatening to go after them (or encouraged his supporters to go after them) unless they fell in line. There's a huge difference between those two adversarial relationships.

Do we have to label calling people on their shit "adversarial"? To me that word has a connotation of reacting unreasonably.

What the hell are you talking about? Trump did massive damage to journalistic integrity as a whole. You ever hear the words "fake news" before he used it?