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

For those ilxors not interested in CA politics, Willie Brown was a mentor and former bf of Harris.

oh the GOP made sure we knew that

yeah people are never really wrong about their experience of struggling to economically survive so any time you quote numbers at them you really should be thing about whether your numbers are in some way bullshit

― badder living thru Kemistry (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 10 November 2024 11:55 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

so just to be clear, you think that something happened in the real economy between november 2020 and january 2021 that reduced the economic circumstances of republicans and caused them to struggle economically?

https://tinypic.host/images/2024/11/09/Screenshot-2024-11-09-at-12.41.21PM.png

and if the same thing happens in the opposite direction between now and january, you will take that as evidence that the real economy has improved and the economic struggle is reduced?

fwiw i’ve never argued that everyone is lying and the economy is amazing. the economy, especially during 2021-22, was super rough, and as i’ve said many times itt that’s my main theory for why trump won. things did improve through 2023-24 but it was too little too late and voters were still pissed.

there *are* a subset of voters who are clearly lying though: the partisan right wing voters who say the economy is bad whenever democrats are in power. there are also partisan democrats who exhibit the same phenomenon, but it’s not as strong. it’s not gaslighting to acknowledge this, and it’s ok to believe in government statistics on the economy

That graph shows partisan sorting, sure, but it also shows a median decline of about 40 points from 2020-2023 — so it's hardly meaningless!

I think it was kinda uneven tbh and maybe that’s what people are feeling?

That graph shows partisan sorting, sure, but it also shows a median decline of about 40 points from 2020-2023 — so it's hardly meaningless!

― Blitz Primary (tipsy mothra), Monday, 11 November 2024 12:05 PM (fifty seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

again my point isn’t everyone is lying and surveys are meaningless or there was no economic pain from inflation. but there is a substantial component that doesn’t track to fundamentals and moves because of things like who the president is. so a hardline position that “people are never really wrong about their experience of struggling to economically survive” can’t be true. if you want to take that hardline stance, you should be prepared to admit the economy will be greatly improved come january. i personally won’t be making that inference

Sure, I agree. Just saying the trendlines matter even accounting for people's partisan/ideologocal lenses.

One of the main problems with “real” economic numbers vs people’s lived reality is that ever-widening gap between the top earners and everyone else. There’s money being generated but most of the excess value gets slurped up by the hoarding class. The bottom 20-30% have been feeling it for decades, but now even solidly middle-class households are struggling. (Not helped by changing societal norms that say, just to pull out one example, broadband internet & every man woman & child needing cell phones is as much a necessity as electricity & water. At least you can steal food if you need to.) The fact that inflation and in some cases prices are easing isn’t felt yet, because so many people have been paying bills on credit for a few years, so even if everything becomes more affordable, lots and lots of regular folks — even white-collar ones — have these CC and LOC payments to catch up on. This’ll be hanging around necks for a long time.

The AOC/Trump voter makes perfect sense to me — I don’t think they’re lying (most of em). Resentment of neoliberalism is climbing up the rungs of the economic ladder & a big chunk of people want someone to tell them they’ll actually change the system. That Trump & co are bound to change it for the worse is secondary to the *promise of change*.

Anyway blah blah, my 2c etc

A graph of consumer sentiment doesn't tell me much about "their experience of struggling to economically survive" xp

i think we would be well served by trying to find other words to express how money works in people’s lives than “the economy” - too much gets elided

Agreed

and most recently canceled 4.5 billion (out of 200 billion canceled his whole term) in student debt in october 2024

i think some of the ppl itt are addicted to intra left factionalism like this dissent piece and it’s distorting your views of economic policy and the economy

― flopson, Sunday, 10 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

The student debt reduction was scaled back.

I'll also say Adam Tooze isn't some hard left guy.

And that also you are v much coming from an 'apolitical' economics background that is frankly shortsighted and busted politically, especially after people have said -- on here, as elsewhere -- that they are facing hardship, that economically it's a struggle and from that you can deduce the government aren't doing enough.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 10 November 2024 11:40 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

tooze didn’t write the dissent piece calling biden an austerity president i was disagreeing with in my post. that post was written by gabe winant. in fact, tooze wrote many pieces where he argued just the opposite, one of which was quoted by tracer upthread (“What​ America has avoided under Biden is austerity”). on this adam tooze and i agree

some parts of the student debt reduction were blocked by the courts, but they switched tack and used other means to pardon debt such as changing rules of the public service loan forgiveness program. the number i quoted, 175 billion dollars of debt forgiven, is accurate as of october 2024 and doesnt count any of the forgiveness blocked by the courts

i have more or less the same politics as everyone else on this thread. i want economic redistribution, generous and universal welfare state, macroeconomic full employment policies, strong labor unions, high minimum wages, universal health care and childcare programs, free public education, open and humane immigration, etc. being interested in details of economic policies and following statistics about the economy is not an “apolitical” stance that is in conflict with this ideology imho. in many of the strongest social democracies, government statistics are of extremely high quality and debates about economic policies rely on them quite significantly. policymakers also rely on them for planning purposes.

The AOC/Trump voter makes perfect sense to me — I don’t think they’re lying (most of em). Resentment of neoliberalism is climbing up the rungs of the economic ladder & a big chunk of people want someone to tell them they’ll actually change the system. That Trump & co are bound to change it for the worse is secondary to the *promise of change*.

Agree. A lot of people care less about left-right ideology and more about perceptions of change vs. status quo, insider vs. outsider, authentic vs. phony, etc. AOC and Trump both critique the hated establishment and don't talk like other politicians.

so a hardline position that “people are never really wrong about their experience of struggling to economically survive” can’t be true.

"Their experience of struggling" is key here, tho - NV never said ppl couldn't be lying about financial struggles they in fact did not undergo.

A graph of consumer sentiment doesn't tell me much about "their experience of struggling to economically survive" xp

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 11 November 2024 12:28 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

consumer sentiment is based on a series of questions such as “how are your personal finances now compared to a year ago?”, so yes it does tell you about that

"Their experience of struggling" is key here, tho - NV never said ppl couldn't be lying about financial struggles they in fact did not undergo.

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 11 November 2024 12:54 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

unfortunately these two often diverge. people are much less sanguine about the overall economy than their own personal finances

A majority of Americans think the economy is in bad shape, but at the same time say their own finances are good, finds a new poll out from Quinnipiac University this week.

Why it matters: Since 2020, people's perceptions of the economy haven't quite lined up with, well, how the economy is doing. This latest poll offers a new way of looking at the phenomenon.

By the numbers: In the telephone survey of 1,818 adults Aug. 10-14, 71% of Americans described the economy as either not so good or poor. And 51% said it's getting worse.

But 60% said their financial situation is good or excellent.

https://www.axios.com/2023/08/18/americans-economy-bad-personal-finances-good

Ryan Broderick suggests some "possible Joe Rogans of the left":
https://www.garbageday.email/p/where-is-the-lib-joe-rogan

lol @ the Fantano write-up

Unfortunately, his fans, the music industry, and the internet at large all sort of hate him. If he can fix that, he’s in a good spot.

I vote for Kyla Scanlon.

Yeah at the time I thought that Qunnipiac Poll from last year was really illustrative, and it goes back to the literal truth vs figurative truth point upthread.

Whether it feels true that the economy is bad or that (to the extent it isn’t) the gains are being soaked up by the super-rich, the literal truth is that household wealth actually increased quite a bit in the four years to December 2023 and the gains were unusually equitably distributed (relatively speaking; I’m not saying “equitable” in a hard sense) for the USA:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianweller/2024/04/02/wealth-gains-across-income-groups-show-a-strong-and-equitable-economic-recovery/

This doesn’t detract from the individual lived experience of people who are struggling economically but rather than just dismiss the available data on the basis that it doesn’t describe everyone’s lived experience (or their perceptions of other people’s lived experience) we do have the option of just trying to think harder about the connections between the two.

I would think the "Joe Rogan of the left" would be more like Smartless or Talk Easy or something, since Rogan isn't an overtly political podcast rather than a "hanging out" one, and balances three hours of someone like Colin Quinn shooting the shit with someone like RFK doing the same.

xp - doesn't that show that the majority of the 'wealth gains' for the bottom quintiles came in housing equity (which is not particularly useful if you're not looking to sell and as as the housing market slowed thanks to interest rate increases) and the the liquid capital of the bottom quintile dropped 20%?

When the value of your house increasing just means higher property taxes and insurance rates, how much does that feel like a win?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Jesus christ

i saw they were considering vivek so maybe we got off easy here

iran war feeling inevitable

rubio is more sane than ramaswamy in any scenario

Actually, it probably means we stay in NATO fwiw.

To give y'all an idea: most Cubans my parents' generation despise him as a moron, a spineless bimbo, and a come mierda....but he's not a Democrat, so he automatically gets thumbs up.

Rubio will be fired and labeled a RINO cuck before August.

I think this is why Ted Cruz keeps winning, too.

Xpost to Alfred

Maybe its just me , but could www.hulu.com be the single most important website in the history of the world? Its lavenous!!!

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 31, 2009

Damn. Scanned that one too fast. Retracting lol. Will ask a mod to delete.

Checked to see what Rubio was up to in 2009, and he was ... one of Alfred's colleagues?

as a faggot i don’t really mind that definition being there but i am also the type of person who describes himself as a faggot

so the harris campaign is $20 million in debt despite raising like a billion dollars? this is why they are still emailing people asking for money? (or so I'm told; I got off that mailing list a long time ago).

They paid Oprah a million dollars to make an endorsement appearance. Wild.

i think that money went to harpo to oranize the concert but still.

I keep requesting money from them on Venmo.

See how it feels?

Sounds like this should be a bigger scandal pic.twitter.com/7gFEN6Oid7

— Toby Muse (@tobymuse) November 11, 2024

You coulda gotten 345,323,678 anarchopunk bands for that

I wonder how much they paid Freeway

I assume they didn't pay Meek Mill, cuz he's free.

Waltz is a proponent of considering Mexican drug cartels like ISIS.

He co-led, and introduced, House legislation to provide authorities so an admin can use "military cyber, intelligence, and surveillance resources" against cartels.

Considers "Colombia Plan" a model.

— Alex Ward (@alexbward) November 12, 2024

Three-front war with China, Iran and Mexico. They’re going to have to raise the draft age high enough to put ILXor at risk.

xp - doesn't that show that the majority of the 'wealth gains' for the bottom quintiles came in housing equity (which is not particularly useful if you're not looking to sell and as as the housing market slowed thanks to interest rate increases) and the the liquid capital of the bottom quintile dropped 20%?

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 12 November 2024 01:03 (three hours ago) link

The article suggests that the bottom quintile saw such a large increase in (a) home equity and (b) mortgage debt in part because lots of people in that quintile bought property for the first time in the early years of the pandemic, assisted by wage gains and (at that point) low interest rates.

There was a similar dynamic in Australia, but because we don’t have long-term fixed rate mortgages (usually you can only fix rates for a few years), as interest rates have gone up a lot of first home buyers have had to sell (often at prices below that at which they purchased) because they can’t afford to keep their loans.

The key bit of the article is this:

“Debt is the other side of the ledger. Obviously, as homeownership increased among lower-income households, so did mortgages. The average amount of mortgages spread across all households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution went up by 16.7%. At the same time, consumer credit – credit cards, car loans and student loan debt to name the most important ones – fell especially sharply among lower-income households. Average consumer debt dropped by 10.4% for households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution. In comparison, it declined by 10.0% for households in the second quintile, by 11.6% in the middle fifth, and by 3.9% in the fourth quintile. It increased by 20.4% among households in the top fifth of the income distribution. Since more households owe consumer credit than owe mortgages at the bottom of the income scale, the drop in consumer credit offset most of the increase in mortgages. The sum of mortgages and consumer credit grew by only 2.6% for low-income households. In the second quintile, the sum of mortgages and consumer debt declined by 4.6% over the four years from December 2019 to December 2023. Households at the bottom of the income scale swapped out costly and risky debt for more secure debt that helps to build wealth through homeownership.”

Swapping out “bad” debt for “good” debt at long-term fixed low interest rates is a pretty good story overall (though it’s no reassurance to those who didn’t manage to buy a property before interest rates rose sharply).

But the combined debt grew for people in the lowest quintile vs dropping for those in the quintile one above, and presumably dropped in the one above that?

In other news --

Up for a potential fast-track vote next week in the House of Representatives, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as H.R. 9495, would grant the secretary of the Treasury Department unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a “terrorist supporting organization.”

The resolution has already prompted strong opposition from a wide range of civil society groups, with more than 100 organizations signing an open letter issued by the American Civil Liberties Union in September.

“This is about stifling dissent and to chill advocacy, because people are going to avoid certain things.”
With Trump set to return to office, it’s more urgent than ever to beat the legislation back,

https://theintercept.com/2024/11/10/trump-nonprofit-tax-exempt-political-enemies/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter

xxp - those numbers seemed questionable compared to anything I've read about consumer debt in the last several years - the Fed says that consumer debt is higher across the income spectrum compared to pre-pandemic times

https://www.newyorkfed.org/outreach-and-education/household-financial-stability/the-state-of-low-income-america-credit-access-housing-jan-24

also relevant, credit card debt to income ratios

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/may/which-us-households-have-credit-card-debt

delinquencies began to rise sharply in mid-2020 and continued on (though they've declined over the last year I think)

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/may/broad-continuing-rise-us-credit-card-debt-delinquency