U.S. Politics, November 2024: GARBAGE DAY!!

I think voters would prefer higher pay and not having to work two jobs to even live paycheck to paycheck.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, November 7, 2024 10:48 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

number of people working two jobs was actually lower during most of biden's term than at any other point since 1994

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1ztC9

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620

That does appear to be climbing pretty steeply back to "normal" after a COVID-induced drop, though.

And the 23-24 trend line looks marginally higher than the pre-COVID years.

But none of that’s going away and will only be exacerbated so survive the next two years and maybe 2026 is a bloodbath?

i'm not arguing for any particular interpretation of that graph, which imo would be wrong--lots of things can influence the share of people working two jobs, some good some bad--just pointing out that by table's measure, the economy was better under biden than the period 1994-2010 since fewer people worked two jobs

xpost Maybe. Or Trump will be rewarded as the electorate finally realizes that inflation is under control.

Per the lame duck period in 2016/2017 we'll probably see a massive increase in people feeling positive about the economy in the next few months

Inflation is under control but rents and prices aren’t going to drop and wages aren’t going to explode.

yeah the vibes are about to get really good, republicans are gonna start saying the economy is great. i doubt they'll even wait until january

I know we're all in different stages of dealing with the post-election fallout, so I get those who feel like venting about wishing that the Trump voters become the ironic victims of their own making. But that just feels wrong.

This country is irredeemable, but individuals are not a country, and to write and think this kind of baloney shows a major lack of empathy for how the fuckwad will make things worse for individuals who are just trying to live as best they can.

I'm with The Table is the Table here, we need a system where everyone benefits, not just those who vote the right way. As angry as i am at the millions who voted for Mr. Mud Mask In Public, even those who did it for the most horrific reasons, we need to resist the calling of electoral Calvinism. Maybe I'm naive, but the Trump sycophant of today might see the light and jump ship tomorrow, and we should welcome them to the movement - they just need to know that we do not welcome [you name it]phobia, and they are good. Bob Mould said something similar about people ditching Reagan in the '80s, so who am i to argue?

Jamelle Bouie:

"as long as journalists and pundits act as if they are amateur political strategists & not people trying to understand and tell the truth about the world, they are going to take the implicit view that voters can never be wrong, which then demands endless explanation of their morally blameless choice

not me. it is not my job to say what a political party should or should not be doing. it is my job to tell the truth, and the truth is that a lot of people willingly abandoned their faculties to make a bad, destructive choice

this is not a popular opinion these days but people have agency. people are in control of the choices they make. no one is forced to do anything."

only piece of schadenfreude i'm secretly hoping for is that trump actually does the 20% tariff on all imported goods. he can repeal it after a few days or whatever i just want it to happen

the idea that individuals (voters) would look at employment numbers, decades into workers taking home less and less money, and conclude that the economy must be good, because people are working, is really idiotic. and explains a lot about why the democrats lost this election. nobody is going to feel grateful to have a job, or that other people they don’t know have jobs, if they feel — or are — poor. working a lot and having no money doesn’t feel good. people who comment on economic policy wouldn’t know this, of course, but it’s an extremely real and not very difficult perspective to understand

New: Private prison executives gleeful over mass deportation
- "unique moment in our company’s– country’s history"
- "a theoretical potential doubling of all of our services"
- potential "need for some soft-sided facilities around the country"https://t.co/7mvqlSs4be

— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) November 8, 2024

Proof that god isn’t real ‘cause he hasn’t been smiting motherfuckers

I’ve been buying Avery labels for my little record store from Amazon. It takes 15 seconds and they always have them.

After the WaPo fiasco and Trump’s win, I decided I was going to stop buying from Bezos ever again. I know, it should have come a decade or 2 earlier, but here I am.

I spent AN HOUR AND A HALF looking for the particular labels I need from independent stores — or at least ones that aren’t Amazon. ULine had a substitute. Fuck those christofascists.

I was about to give up. Amazon had them at 1/3 off the normal price I pay for them. What’s a guy to do, I can’t spend all day every day looking for every little office supply I need.

Finally, right on Avery’s website, I was able to source them — and wait! I can get them in a no-chlorine post-consumer-recycled version, for 1/5 of the price I normally pay from Amazon for the bleached virgin fiber version! GODDAMMIT

I can do this. I can do this little tiny thing. Now I just do it 100 times in a year, and keep doing it for the time I have left in the world.

the idea that individuals (voters) would look at employment numbers, decades into workers taking home less and less money, and conclude that the economy must be good, because people are working, is really idiotic. and explains a lot about why the democrats lost this election. nobody is going to feel grateful to have a job, or that other people they don’t know have jobs, if they feel — or are — poor. working a lot and having no money doesn’t feel good. people who comment on economic policy wouldn’t know this, of course, but it’s an extremely real and not very difficult perspective to understand

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Friday, November 8, 2024 12:10 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was a long time ago now and narratives have shifted to a much bigger focus on cost of living issues, but the persistent underemployment in the decade after the great recession was a real crisis and that had terrible impacts of the economy and the labor market. inflation was persistently below target during that time, but politicians were afraid to do anything aggressive to stimulate employment for fear of stoking inflation. it is good that the labor market recovered much more quickly after the covid recession, and that there wasn't a prolonged period of high unemployment. it wasn't a given that that would happen; it's partly the result of different and imo better policy choices that were more aggressive in juicing economic demand via big fiscal stimulus in coordination with accommodative monetary policy. obviously it would be great if policy makers could deliver high employment and low inflation at all times, but those things are usually perceived to be in tension, and because the true relationship is highly unstable and uncertain, risks have to be taken. during the 2010s, no one was willing to risk even modest increases in inflation to get unemployment down. obviously it would've been great if biden could've delivered high employment and low inflation, but it's not obvious how or whether that could've been achieved. irrespective of whether voters appreciate it or not, i think he did the right thing

excuse the rando with an opinion but easy image embed with the vote totals for MI/PA/WI and Jesus Christ just such a coin flip away from a marginally better world.

Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin ended up being so close that Harris might well have won the election if she had leaned into Walz-style populism instead of Cheney-style conservatism. pic.twitter.com/fOxDW8PTPI

— Jake Werner (@jwdwerner) November 8, 2024

175,000 votes away from abolishing the electoral college once and for all

Re tension between inflation and employment, remember Larry Summer almost salivating when he talked how unemployment was just gonna have to go up? He's probably still pissed he didn't get the suffering he wanted. It was definitely the right thing to do, politically as well — as terrible as the inflation and the hit from it was, 8 percent unemployment would have been worse.

don't think you can tax the rich your way out of post-pandemic supply-chain driven inflation. at least i'm not aware of any precedent for that in any country in history.

Isn't asking for precedents for any way to handle a post-pandemic situation illogical since, by definition, a pandemic of this magnitude worldwide was without historical precedent?

re: turnout, it seems like turnout is fairly steady in the swing states (maybe a little bit behind population growth idk) but in some safe states, both blue and red, there's large drops in dem turnout which seems to be the key factor behind most of the more significant swings, and surely why trump was able to win the popular vote

okay flopson mcgaslighter, are those two full time jobs? or does that take into account two or more jobs of any kind? half of the people i know work a full time, have a weekend gig. i work two “part time” (aka would be considered full time if this country weren’t insane or i was tenured) jobs and at one point was doing that and working a weekend gig. all while going to school, and barely having any money much of the time. so shove your stats up your ass.

obviously it would've been great if biden could've delivered high employment and low inflation, but it's not obvious how or whether that could've been achieved. irrespective of whether voters appreciate it or not, i think he did the right thing

― flopson, Friday, 8 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

This piece talked about targeted price controls:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/inflation-price-controls-time-we-use-it

"Today, there is once more a choice between tolerating the ongoing explosion of profits that drives up prices or tailored controls on carefully selected prices. Price controls would buy time to deal with bottlenecks that will continue as long as the pandemic prevails. Strategic price controls could also contribute to the monetary stability needed to mobilize public investments towards economic resilience, climate change mitigation and carbon-neutrality. The cost of waiting for inflation to go away is high."

Again, not buying that this is post covid clearing out of governments. The governing class don't give enough of a shit, and flopson's stats have been met with a response at the ballot box.

Either listen or lose.

ULine had a substitute. Fuck those christofascists.

Fuck them indeed. Here's an alternative for anyone who may need it.

https://refuseuline.com/

sorry for being so aggro there, flopson— just frustrated that the very thing i have been talking about for months was being enacted on this thread, namely the Dems not recognizing or outright dismissing the economic pain a lot of people are feeling with graphs, charts, and “well, actually” statements. i know you didn’t mean to upset me, but you did— just feel like an alien in this space at times.

in the meantime, has anyone made the point that both recent losses by Dem women had VP choices of dudes with the first name ‘Tim.’ NO MORE TIMS

The Tims, they aren’t a-changing

Tim Harrington would make a great VP.

everything that flopson posted may be correct, i’m not qualified to talk about economic policy on that level. but you don’t have to be able to do that to make the obvious point i’m going to make, which is that the job of the politician and the political party is not just to pull the correct policy levers but also to communicate w/ the electorate in a way that effectively explains and sells your governance. to speak not to logic but to emotions. if you can’t do that then you might lose elections even if you did the right things. democrats being blindsided by the idea that inflation would matter more to people than unemployment is completely exemplifies their disconnection from the voter and their abdication of their duty to strategize the winning of the election

not sure how biden and harris were blindsided by how inflation mattered to folks

now communicating that? sure, i feel you on that. but that's the fault of our shit media landscape--which i think the dems do not understand at all.

but they understood inflation was a big deal. she talked about lowering perscription drug costs and grocery costs. but we've done well as an economy w/inflation vs other countries. that's not biden or harris's fault if people don't understand that

We're going in circles. If people don't understand, then it IS the fault of the explainers. I don't call my students stupid if they don't get my instructions.

no one's calling anyone stupid here

At some point, as an American citizen, it's on you to understand how our system operates, within our country and the world.

That attitude loses elections.

Everyone knows how the system operates - it doesn't because it's fucked!

Civics classes are not offered in a lot of schools now, and it shows.

Tim Walz was engaging and popular and should have been listened to over Kamala’s stupid Uber c-suite techbro in law whose big ideas tanked her primary run in 2020. Where is Uber dude’s trifecta, huh?

civics classes would be a nice start. dems being able to storytell better--a point I conceded above--would be another start

I do think this is largely a messaging/brand problem. In polls, people generally respond well to specific Democratic economic policies, even if those policies are insufficient at addressing deep structural inequalities. But a lot of people simply feel more affinity for Trump and other Republicans because they are able to give voice to their grievances in emotionally satisfying ways, even if the policies they propose are absurd and unworkable. What Democrats need to do to win on the economy is less a matter of coming up with better policies than with getting people to trust them and see them as their champions.

its crazy that repubs can promise stuff and never deliver and people's lives get worse and as a result people get angrier and then they just end up voting for more...repubs. because they are the party for pissed-off people. what a world we live in. and quite a racket they have going.

What flopson pointed to as the tension between inflation and unemployment is just one of the contradictions in our political economy that makes progressive policy difficult to enact. Improve one area and another one goes out of whack. As long as the profit motive is the engine of investment and economic growth it is hard to actually hard to take control of our own society. Some kowtowing to the investor class is probably necessary? Unless we can build a completely different kind of system.

I was historically really resistant to this idea and thought pro-worker policies could be done, it was only greed that allowed the erosion of strong welfare states in europe and america, bernie-ism could be achieved with enough political will. But now I think the problem is more difficult and structural and bigger than messaging. Perhaps voters intuitively grasp this and don’t even try to understand the real policy positions of the candidates. They vote on vibes or to troll

I will always vote for and support the leftmost democrats. This is my politics. I think if you work 40 hours a week you should not be living in poverty. If you can’t work for some reason, you still shouldn’t be living in poverty. And healthcare and housing are human rights.

But these are moral positions not pragmatic ones. What would have happened if bernie won and had a mandate? If he was able to do whatever he wanted? What roadblocks would he have faced, what unforseen consequences?

"They vote on vibes or to troll"

People were so distracted by their phone they didn't vote! That's it!!

Maybe they were wishcasting with a vote for trump, who after all was inspired long ago by norman vincent peale, this very american positive thinking bullshit.

It’s not very meaningful in any sense. Realistically trump will not help the working class.

At some point, as an American citizen, it's on you to understand how our system operates, within our country and the world.

― a (waterface), Friday, November 8, 2024 10:01 AM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I can barely wrap my head around that kind of stuff (e.g. "we've done well as an economy w/inflation vs other countries"). I mean, I CAN wrap my head around it, but the economic systems that dictate or describe how that is happening are pretty much inscrutable magic to me. Upbeat economic reports on the front page of the NYT do feel like gaslighting, and what I tell myself is "you don't understand this and I imagine it actually takes a long time to reinvigorate the economy after a downturn." But I have a steady job (not great pay, but decent benefits, and steady) and a lot of patience. I struggle with car repairs and dentist bills and shit, but I at least feel like there is an arc toward economic progress, even if we're dealing with more expensive hot dogs these days.

Just saying that most people don't have (some combination of) 1.)inclination 2.)intelligence/education 3.)time to figure out why hot dogs cost more. They just hope new guy fix it.

xp Trump'll make them feel better temporarily by enacting awful policies that directly hurt immigrants, minorities and women. that, he'll definitely follow through with

And he was saying idiotic things. He is going to reduce prices while imposing 20% tariffs on all imports? He is pro worker but admired Musk’s “strength” in dealing with unions? Venezuela is deliberately “sending” criminals and mentally ill people? I truly think he believes the word asylum has to do with insane asylums because he is illiterate.

because they are the party for pissed-off people

This is where Dems are wrong.

Dem voters are pissed-off, too. Everyone is pissed-off.