Do you really think the desire to not have a female president is more highly valued than do me and my family have enough to eat? It could just be that the last 2 female candidates weren't very good.
I couldn't prove that without doing some kind of brainscans, but I could think of a counterfactual scenario. Let's imagine the Democrats had a guy candidate who was a lot more charismatic and energetic than Trump. Then a lot more voters would have been swayed by such a candidate and they would have rationalised their choice using other arguments: it's not his fault that inflation rose, he wasn't in the Biden administration, he publicly criticised Biden and said his approach was wrong, his record shows he disagreed with mainstream Democrats when they boosted public spending, he's gonna fix what Biden got wrong, etc. The idea is the mind decides before it rationalises. I doubt voters just sit down and put arguments in a table and blindly decide whom they'll vote purely on rational arguments and household expenses.
If voters were really that rational, they would have looked at the graphs and seen that a lot of that inflation during Biden's first part of his term came from Trumps' Corona checks and deficit spending. And that Russia invaded Ukraine and caused a global spike in energy prices everywhere, which didn't have much to do with Biden anyway. There's also the fact that companies hike prices speculatively and there's not much a president or any state official can do, barring price controls. No state official controls the price of rents or eggs. If economic agents decide to use the pretext of higher global energy prices to all hike prices, the government can't do much. Biden tried to counter this by releasing a huge quantity of oil from the national reserve, to force gasoline prices to come down. Which worked to some extent and explains why prices started coming back down during the second part of this term. But voters don't spend time monitoring graphs, global prices of commodities, historical economic trends, whatever mix of policies their government uses to fight inflation. Voters think in very impressionistic terms: the price of this was lower 4 years ago, so things are bad. They don't think: let me calculate if the overall increase in prices was covered enough by the overall increase in income I got to compensate. Nobody does that. Most think in very simple impressionistic terms: my rent is high, it's Biden's fault. And Trump looks like he's speaking like he understands us, like he's going to punish the liberals so hard, we're gonna have so much fun for 4 years.
But as I previously wrote, I have my doubts that this election was won/lost on living costs. The reasons are most likely not "rational", but more related to a wish to kick the incumbents out, to Trump using his reality TV show host entertainer skills and Biden pulling out of the race too late. Also Americans not wanting to have a female leader yet, maybe they're waiting for a bossy Latina or some Palin kind of cowgirl to persuade them.
If you know how to charm the masses, they'll vote for you even if they're a bit hungrier than last time. But it's harder to win that charm offensive when you've been in power for 4 years.
To me the image of voters sitting down and writing on paper rational reasonings for how they should vote is hillarious. Their minds have already decided whom they'll vote for before they'll rationalise it.
Do you really think the desire to not have a female president is more highly valued than do me and my family have enough to eat? It could just be that the last 2 female candidates weren't very good.
You described yourself as upper middle class, there is simply no way Kamala being president would lead you to struggle to afford to eat
In the US, people have the freedom to be put down in the streets by police without trial. They also have the freedom to incur financial ruin if they ever run into a health issue and line up the pockets of for profit health systems prior to death. Journalists are threatened under Trump. Cronies like Musk can doxx federal employees with impunity. How very free indeed.
@Goodspeed ’s recent post is, of course, the proper way to evaluate economic policy. However, this is easier said than done since (1) we can never observe the counterfactual, and (2) as @Sensei pointed out, much of the research in this area is highly partisan.
I think the main reason it's hard to do is that the economy is extremely complex and so are a lot of these laws that get passed during a president's term, as well as international trade deals, etc. Figuring out the actual effects of policies sounds really hard and time consuming. It's at least way above my pay grade. But we can make an attempt.
If there's interest in studying and discussing the economics literature on Trump's tax cuts or Obama's economic policies, I’d be happy to participate.
The first question is: How do we define economic success? This is already something we are unilkely to agree on I think. Your take?
Well, we can take a single metric, e.g. inflation-adjusted wage growth or GDP growth, which presumably we agree are important components of economic success. It will still be difficult to assess the affects of policies on just these quantities. We can try to read this paper, which Wikipedia cites to say the Trump Tax Cuts didn't have a big effect on economic growth or median wages: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.38.3.61
I don't care about GDP personally. I think it's okay as a long-term (decades) metric for growth, but in the short term it's affected too much by the success or failure of very large (tech) companies. Also, GDP growth doesn't always translate to better economic outcomes for people.
Real wage growth is more like it, but it doesn't fully take into account cost of living. It also doesn't take unemployment into account (as far as I know?) so we would need to add employment stats as well. Also, in the theoretical scenario where wages increase for 90% of the population but decrease for 10%, and that 10% happened to already be struggling and this puts them into poverty, it's going to lead to increases in crime and general instability, which I would say is economic failure.
I agree to look at standard of living, but we need to look at an objective, quantitative, and easily measured metric for standard of living (or some aspect of it). E.g. the consumer price index (CPI) would be reasonable (obviously, there is more to standard of living than just the CPI).
The index you propose is an extremely broad and opaque average of 13 different things. There's no objective and quantitative metric for half of them. How are they computing a numeric score for "opportunity" or "foundations of wellbeing"? I'm sure they have a formula somewhere but there's no description on the wikipedia page, and it is going to be some sort of proxy or it's appropriateness will be subjective.
Evaluating the effects of a policy on something more simple like GDP growth or the CPI is already very hard as you say. It will be impossible to scientifically and rigorously to evaluate the effects on this index.
We shouldn't have any illusions about being rigorous, unless you want to spend weeks on this full time.
One way of doing it could be to take the 13 things that compose the index and rate a president's policy decisions on each of the 13, on a scale from 1 to 10. Then if our ratings are wildly different we can discuss why and hopefully gain some insights.
Of course, it's subjective. But the state of the economy is ultimately a subjective thing. I think the value in discussing this here is that we can give our subjective takes and discuss why we differ. For example, @Sensei mentioned that he thinks "Personal freedom" is higher in the US than in the UK, I don't agree and that could be a good discussion starter. It's a digression here because it's comparing different countries, but will probably also come up when discussing the effects of Trump's policies.
Taking a simple metric of economic growth and attempting to understand a paper or two analyzing the effects of the Trump Tax Cuts on said metric is (1) within our abilities and (2) a much more focused objective. If you're not interested in this direction, that's fine, I will try to read the paper wikipedia cites and that I linked for my own personal interest. I agree with Sensei's comment and am happy in theory to compare personal freedom in the USA and the UK, but this is quite far from the original proposal (which was to study direct effects of presidents' economic policies). Discussing freedom of speech is rather out of place in an economics conversation, even if your preferred economic metric includes "personal freedom."
@Goodspeed ’s recent post is, of course, the proper way to evaluate economic policy. However, this is easier said than done since (1) we can never observe the counterfactual, and (2) as @Sensei pointed out, much of the research in this area is highly partisan.
I think the main reason it's hard to do is that the economy is extremely complex and so are a lot of these laws that get passed during a president's term, as well as international trade deals, etc. Figuring out the actual effects of policies sounds really hard and time consuming. It's at least way above my pay grade. But we can make an attempt.
If there's interest in studying and discussing the economics literature on Trump's tax cuts or Obama's economic policies, I’d be happy to participate.
The first question is: How do we define economic success? This is already something we are unilkely to agree on I think. Your take?
Well, we can take a single metric, e.g. inflation-adjusted wage growth or GDP growth, which presumably we agree are important components of economic success. It will still be difficult to assess the affects of policies on just these quantities. We can try to read this paper, which Wikipedia cites to say the Trump Tax Cuts didn't have a big effect on economic growth or median wages: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.38.3.61
I don't care about GDP personally. I think it's okay as a long-term (decades) metric for growth, but in the short term it's affected too much by the success or failure of very large (tech) companies. Also, GDP growth doesn't always translate to better economic outcomes for people.
Real wage growth is more like it, but it doesn't fully take into account cost of living. It also doesn't take unemployment into account (as far as I know?) so we would need to add employment stats as well. Also, in the theoretical scenario where wages increase for 90% of the population but decrease for 10%, and that 10% happened to already be struggling and this puts them into poverty, it's going to lead to increases in crime and general instability, which I would say is economic failure.
I agree to look at standard of living, but we need to look at an objective, quantitative, and easily measured metric for standard of living (or some aspect of it). E.g. the consumer price index (CPI) would be reasonable (obviously, there is more to standard of living than just the CPI).
The index you propose is an extremely broad and opaque average of 13 different things. There's no objective and quantitative metric for half of them. How are they computing a numeric score for "opportunity" or "foundations of wellbeing"? I'm sure they have a formula somewhere but there's no description on the wikipedia page, and it is going to be some sort of proxy or it's appropriateness will be subjective.
Evaluating the effects of a policy on something more simple like GDP growth or the CPI is already very hard as you say. It will be impossible to scientifically and rigorously to evaluate the effects on this index.
We shouldn't have any illusions about being rigorous, unless you want to spend weeks on this full time.
One way of doing it could be to take the 13 things that compose the index and rate a president's policy decisions on each of the 13, on a scale from 1 to 10. Then if our ratings are wildly different we can discuss why and hopefully gain some insights.
Of course, it's subjective. But the state of the economy is ultimately a subjective thing. I think the value in discussing this here is that we can give our subjective takes and discuss why we differ. For example, @Sensei mentioned that he thinks "Personal freedom" is higher in the US than in the UK, I don't agree and that could be a good discussion starter. It's a digression here because it's comparing different countries, but will probably also come up when discussing the effects of Trump's policies.
Taking a simple metric of economic growth and attempting to understand a paper or two analyzing the effects of the Trump Tax Cuts on said metric is (1) within our abilities and (2) a much more focused objective.
But to me it's meaningless because the economic growth you speak of doesn't necessarily translate to better standards of living. So we would be doing all that analysis for naught. Also, we can't look at this in a vacuum because lower tax revenue means the government needs to cut spending elsewhere, and depending on the effect of that budget cut the result could still be a net loss. If the budget cuts were done in, say, public education (something republicans are generally happy to spend less on), it leads to a decrease in opportunities for upward social mobility and higher crime which I would consider more bad than economic growth is good.
Where did Trump cut spending to pay for his tax cuts?
Discussing freedom of speech is rather out of place in an economics conversation, even if your preferred economic metric includes "personal freedom."
Freedom of speech is only one aspect of personal freedom, and I would say one of the least relevant. There are many other aspects of personal freedom that are (mostly indirectly) affected by economic policy. One example is that if crime is such a problem that I'm afraid to leave my house, that makes me practically less free.
I'm still waiting on claims that Trump is better for the economy than the Biden administration (and/or Obama if you want).
See the overall discussion went from "why didn't we get harris" to which conservatives ask "trump better for economy, social and geopolitical issues be damned." From there the statement was made that Trump didn't do shit for the economy or as a president in general, which was turned around into a discussion regarding presidential influence on the economy. Having asked for substantive arguments from the conservatives, it appears that analyzing the economy is now "too hard" or very difficult for them. On what fucking basis did you vote then? See, I accused conservatives for voting over image instead of real policy. So now I'm asking which policies did the republicans have that made the economy so much better? and the onus of answering that question is on the conservatives. in my eyes "the economy" is still a cop-out and the red vote came from a place of emotion and hatred. I'm still more than willing to try to help the discussion move forward on president vs economy but to me the lack of real substance in the response of sensei/misha/etc. still kind of validates my suspicion that there is no substance. There is a semblance of substance but nothing actually there.
Like, if you voted for "the economy" and you've already voted, then surely it wouldn't be too hard to bring up why you voted for Trump. You argue it was an informed decision. Show what that information was.
But as I previously wrote, I have my doubts that this election was won/lost on living costs. The reasons are most likely not "rational", but more related to a wish to kick the incumbents out, to Trump using his reality TV show host entertainer skills and Biden pulling out of the race too late. Also Americans not wanting to have a female leader yet, maybe they're waiting for a bossy Latina or some Palin kind of cowgirl to persuade them.
If you know how to charm the masses, they'll vote for you even if they're a bit hungrier than last time. But it's harder to win that charm offensive when you've been in power for 4 years.
To me the image of voters sitting down and writing on paper rational reasonings for how they should vote is hillarious. Their minds have already decided whom they'll vote for before they'll rationalise it.
Do you really think the desire to not have a female president is more highly valued than do me and my family have enough to eat? It could just be that the last 2 female candidates weren't very good.
You described yourself as upper middle class, there is simply no way Kamala being president would lead you to struggle to afford to eat
Upper middle class for his state*
I think that, like the substance of voting for "the economy", the brag about being upper middle class is just pretend. I've dealt with people who are upper middle class or even outright billionaires. They don't spend time on a gaming forum lul
I would say that the election was won based off of the majority of Americans getting hit hard by Core CPI going through the roof for a period of time. You can make the argument that Trump didn't do anything, but just inherited the economy. I disagree, but the American people just think that "when Trump was president I was able to buy more things than when Biden was president." You might say that is so simple mindedness, but the average American can easily be persuaded by cheaper gas.
As for tariffs, I think it's a bit of a stretch to think that if Trump enacted tariffs we will lose all trade between the US and Mexico. I think it's leverage. The goal would be to force the global price of things to go up and make the other country pay for the price hike or the price goes up and the money stays within our system. Yes, that would increase prices, but money isn't leaving the system so it get redistributed to Americans. I think it might do a combo or sliding scale of these 2 things, but that is what I see when he talks about them. He could just be bluffing. Orange man says a lot of things, some I agree with and some I don't, but when Kamala spoke nothing she said would improve my quality of living or my financial situation or even overall the majority of the country as a whole.
I would say that the election was won based off of the majority of Americans getting hit hard by Core CPI going through the roof for a period of time. You can make the argument that Trump didn't do anything, but just inherited the economy. I disagree, but the American people just think that "when Trump was president I was able to buy more things than when Biden was president." You might say that is so simple mindedness, but the average American can easily be persuaded by cheaper gas.
As for tariffs, I think it's a bit of a stretch to think that if Trump enacted tariffs we will lose all trade between the US and Mexico. I think it's leverage. The goal would be to force the global price of things to go up and make the other country pay for the price hike or the price goes up and the money stays within our system. Yes, that would increase prices, but money isn't leaving the system so it get redistributed to Americans. I think it might do a combo or sliding scale of these 2 things, but that is what I see when he talks about them. He could just be bluffing. Orange man says a lot of things, some I agree with and some I don't, but when Kamala spoke nothing she said would improve my quality of living or my financial situation or even overall the majority of the country as a whole.
Do you really think the desire to not have a female president is more highly valued than do me and my family have enough to eat? It could just be that the last 2 female candidates weren't very good.
I couldn't prove that without doing some kind of brainscans, but I could think of a counterfactual scenario. Let's imagine the Democrats had a guy candidate who was a lot more charismatic and energetic than Trump. Then a lot more voters would have been swayed by such a candidate and they would have rationalised their choice using other arguments: it's not his fault that inflation rose, he wasn't in the Biden administration, he publicly criticised Biden and said his approach was wrong, his record shows he disagreed with mainstream Democrats when they boosted public spending, he's gonna fix what Biden got wrong, etc. The idea is the mind decides before it rationalises. I doubt voters just sit down and put arguments in a table and blindly decide whom they'll vote purely on rational arguments and household expenses.
If voters were really that rational, they would have looked at the graphs and seen that a lot of that inflation during Biden's first part of his term came from Trumps' Corona checks and deficit spending. And that Russia invaded Ukraine and caused a global spike in energy prices everywhere, which didn't have much to do with Biden anyway. There's also the fact that companies hike prices speculatively and there's not much a president or any state official can do, barring price controls. No state official controls the price of rents or eggs. If economic agents decide to use the pretext of higher global energy prices to all hike prices, the government can't do much. Biden tried to counter this by releasing a huge quantity of oil from the national reserve, to force gasoline prices to come down. Which worked to some extent and explains why prices started coming back down during the second part of this term. But voters don't spend time monitoring graphs, global prices of commodities, historical economic trends, whatever mix of policies their government uses to fight inflation. Voters think in very impressionistic terms: the price of this was lower 4 years ago, so things are bad. They don't think: let me calculate if the overall increase in prices was covered enough by the overall increase in income I got to compensate. Nobody does that. Most think in very simple impressionistic terms: my rent is high, it's Biden's fault. And Trump looks like he's speaking like he understands us, like he's going to punish the liberals so hard, we're gonna have so much fun for 4 years.
and this
So I could see where the votes maybe came from. Even though it's of course disheartening to vote for a rapist/insurrectionist/etc.
@minimoult21 you need to be the champion of conservatives here. I really want to know what Trump did that was good for the economy in 2016's term. You're not wrong, prices were better back then than they are now. COVID and Ukraine war caused inflation here which was bad for incumbents, which helped Trump get elected. The question is, what's on Trump's 2016 record that was so good? I'm still looking for it. in good faith despite my cranky tone
But as I previously wrote, I have my doubts that this election was won/lost on living costs. The reasons are most likely not "rational", but more related to a wish to kick the incumbents out, to Trump using his reality TV show host entertainer skills and Biden pulling out of the race too late. Also Americans not wanting to have a female leader yet, maybe they're waiting for a bossy Latina or some Palin kind of cowgirl to persuade them.
If you know how to charm the masses, they'll vote for you even if they're a bit hungrier than last time. But it's harder to win that charm offensive when you've been in power for 4 years.
To me the image of voters sitting down and writing on paper rational reasonings for how they should vote is hillarious. Their minds have already decided whom they'll vote for before they'll rationalise it.
Do you really think the desire to not have a female president is more highly valued than do me and my family have enough to eat? It could just be that the last 2 female candidates weren't very good.
You described yourself as upper middle class, there is simply no way Kamala being president would lead you to struggle to afford to eat
Upper middle class for his state*
I think that, like the substance of voting for "the economy", the brag about being upper middle class is just pretend. I've dealt with people who are upper middle class or even outright billionaires. They don't spend time on a gaming forum lul
Dolan was the one who said people would rather go a little hungry then vote for a female. I didn't say in my situation Harris would've made me go hungry.
I didn't offer up my financial situation to brag I was asked. I live in a top 10 state for median income and take in around 2x the median income for the state. Is it really so hard to believe that not just poor rural people from poor states prefer Trump?
Mr. Biden said he had spoken with Mr. Netanyahu and with Prime Minister Najib Mikati of Lebanon, and “I’m pleased to announce their governments have accepted the United States proposal to end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.”
Mr. Biden said the agreed-on cease-fire will be phased in over 60 days, but that “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
But Mr. Netanyahu said in his televised address, “The length of the cease-fire will depend on what happens in Lebanon.”
“With the full understanding of the United States, we are preserving full military freedom of action — if Hezbollah breaks the agreement and seeks to arm itself, we will attack,” he said.
But as I previously wrote, I have my doubts that this election was won/lost on living costs. The reasons are most likely not "rational", but more related to a wish to kick the incumbents out, to Trump using his reality TV show host entertainer skills and Biden pulling out of the race too late. Also Americans not wanting to have a female leader yet, maybe they're waiting for a bossy Latina or some Palin kind of cowgirl to persuade them.
If you know how to charm the masses, they'll vote for you even if they're a bit hungrier than last time. But it's harder to win that charm offensive when you've been in power for 4 years.
To me the image of voters sitting down and writing on paper rational reasonings for how they should vote is hillarious. Their minds have already decided whom they'll vote for before they'll rationalise it.
Do you really think the desire to not have a female president is more highly valued than do me and my family have enough to eat? It could just be that the last 2 female candidates weren't very good.
You described yourself as upper middle class, there is simply no way Kamala being president would lead you to struggle to afford to eat
Upper middle class for his state*
I think that, like the substance of voting for "the economy", the brag about being upper middle class is just pretend. I've dealt with people who are upper middle class or even outright billionaires. They don't spend time on a gaming forum lul
Dolan was the one who said people would rather go a little hungry then vote for a female. I didn't say in my situation Harris would've made me go hungry.
I didn't offer up my financial situation to brag I was asked. I live in a top 10 state for median income and take in around 2x the median income for the state. Is it really so hard to believe that not just poor rural people from poor states prefer Trump?
"Do you really think the desire to not have a female president is more highly valued than do me and my family have enough to eat?"
It sounded like putting food on the table for your family was a concern for you but I'm glad that it's not. No worries at all.
That said, I'm still super interested in which economic metrics you were looking at when evaluating which candidate was better for l'économie. Lmk!
The charts that Misha shared are cherry-picked charts, but they show very relevant things for this election cycle. 4 years ago people didn't care about the economy because they didn't feel any cost increases. So social issues took the main stage which led to DEI and social justice being so important for that cycle. The economy was the big thing this time. You can tell someone, well you have more money now because wages went up, but people feel pain at a higher rate than they feel joy. You get 1 hit of dopamine with a pay raise, but you take a lot of hits when you fill up your tank of gas, buy groceries that are 2 or 3x as much, paying rent (Unless you are one of the lucky bastards that got those 2.3% rates on a cheap house in 2020, congrats, I wish I was one of you). The point is that raising costs of living hurts the sentiment toward the economy for the average american more than wage increases. On that front, Trump crushed it. I can't say exactly the things that he did to accomplish that, but during his time in office he did that, and people remember it. Biden did not do that. You can argue it was out of both of their hands which could be true, but it simply comes back to the average American felt their money went further under Trump. They hope to have that again so they said I pick the one that might make my money go further. I hope he can recreate whatever he did last time, maybe he can fix the housing market. Maybe in 2028 I could stomach the mortgage rates, but now we just wait and see.
How many times would you like me to post the same metrics over and over again?
Looked over your post history and couldn't find the metrics you were referring to. I did find some memes. I'll take a link to a previous post of yours if you have anything in mind that I missed.
The charts that Misha shared are cherry-picked charts, but they show very relevant things for this election cycle. 4 years ago people didn't care about the economy because they didn't feel any cost increases. So social issues took the main stage which led to DEI and social justice being so important for that cycle. The economy was the big thing this time. You can tell someone, well you have more money now because wages went up, but people feel pain at a higher rate than they feel joy. You get 1 hit of dopamine with a pay raise, but you take a lot of hits when you fill up your tank of gas, buy groceries that are 2 or 3x as much, paying rent (Unless you are one of the lucky bastards that got those 2.3% rates on a cheap house in 2020, congrats, I wish I was one of you). The point is that raising costs of living hurts the sentiment toward the economy for the average american more than wage increases. On that front, Trump crushed it. I can't say exactly the things that he did to accomplish that, but during his time in office he did that, and people remember it. Biden did not do that. You can argue it was out of both of their hands which could be true, but it simply comes back to the average American felt their money went further under Trump. They hope to have that again so they said I pick the one that might make my money go further. I hope he can recreate whatever he did last time, maybe he can fix the housing market. Maybe in 2028 I could stomach the mortgage rates, but now we just wait and see.
I understand the sentiment though I'm truly afraid that inflation is a global phenomenon which wasn't directly tied to any presidential policy. Things were just good pre-COVID and i can't seem to find what it was that Trump did that made things "good", which generally leads me to believe that he didn't do much of anything. Among other things, I think you're just feeling the effects of rampant capitalism
A cursory analysis shows a lot of stock buy backs happened thanks to Trump's "tax cuts" and that the people who fueled this were consumers and citizens. Biden didn't look like he reigned it in that much but I have doubts that Trump will do better and would probably do significantly worse in this capacity.
Sorry about finding a good mortgage, it's pretty rough for sure, I think we're well over 6% on ours
I'm still waiting on claims that Trump is better for the economy than the Biden administration (and/or Obama if you want).
See the overall discussion went from "why didn't we get harris" to which conservatives ask "trump better for economy, social and geopolitical issues be damned." From there the statement was made that Trump didn't do shit for the economy or as a president in general, which was turned around into a discussion regarding presidential influence on the economy. Having asked for substantive arguments from the conservatives, it appears that analyzing the economy is now "too hard" or very difficult for them. On what fucking basis did you vote then? See, I accused conservatives for voting over image instead of real policy. So now I'm asking which policies did the republicans have that made the economy so much better? and the onus of answering that question is on the conservatives. in my eyes "the economy" is still a cop-out and the red vote came from a place of emotion and hatred. I'm still more than willing to try to help the discussion move forward on president vs economy but to me the lack of real substance in the response of sensei/misha/etc. still kind of validates my suspicion that there is no substance. There is a semblance of substance but nothing actually there.
Like, if you voted for "the economy" and you've already voted, then surely it wouldn't be too hard to bring up why you voted for Trump. You argue it was an informed decision. Show what that information was.
I haven't actually stated the claim that Trump is better for the economy. You asserted that Obama deserves all the credit for the strong economy under Trump with zero supporting evidence. If you actually read what I wrote, all I say in recent posts is that it's quite hard to rigorously evaluate the effects of economy policy, so most conservatives default to their beliefs "tax cuts = growth" and democrats default to "trickle down economics = bad."
The charts that Misha shared are cherry-picked charts, but they show very relevant things for this election cycle. 4 years ago people didn't care about the economy because they didn't feel any cost increases. So social issues took the main stage which led to DEI and social justice being so important for that cycle. The economy was the big thing this time. You can tell someone, well you have more money now because wages went up, but people feel pain at a higher rate than they feel joy. You get 1 hit of dopamine with a pay raise, but you take a lot of hits when you fill up your tank of gas, buy groceries that are 2 or 3x as much, paying rent (Unless you are one of the lucky bastards that got those 2.3% rates on a cheap house in 2020, congrats, I wish I was one of you). The point is that raising costs of living hurts the sentiment toward the economy for the average american more than wage increases. On that front, Trump crushed it. I can't say exactly the things that he did to accomplish that, but during his time in office he did that, and people remember it. Biden did not do that. You can argue it was out of both of their hands which could be true, but it simply comes back to the average American felt their money went further under Trump. They hope to have that again so they said I pick the one that might make my money go further. I hope he can recreate whatever he did last time, maybe he can fix the housing market. Maybe in 2028 I could stomach the mortgage rates, but now we just wait and see.
I'm still waiting on claims that Trump is better for the economy than the Biden administration (and/or Obama if you want).
See the overall discussion went from "why didn't we get harris" to which conservatives ask "trump better for economy, social and geopolitical issues be damned." From there the statement was made that Trump didn't do shit for the economy or as a president in general, which was turned around into a discussion regarding presidential influence on the economy. Having asked for substantive arguments from the conservatives, it appears that analyzing the economy is now "too hard" or very difficult for them. On what fucking basis did you vote then? See, I accused conservatives for voting over image instead of real policy. So now I'm asking which policies did the republicans have that made the economy so much better? and the onus of answering that question is on the conservatives. in my eyes "the economy" is still a cop-out and the red vote came from a place of emotion and hatred. I'm still more than willing to try to help the discussion move forward on president vs economy but to me the lack of real substance in the response of sensei/misha/etc. still kind of validates my suspicion that there is no substance. There is a semblance of substance but nothing actually there.
Like, if you voted for "the economy" and you've already voted, then surely it wouldn't be too hard to bring up why you voted for Trump. You argue it was an informed decision. Show what that information was.
I haven't actually stated the claim that Trump is better for the economy. You asserted that Obama deserves all the credit for the strong economy under Trump with zero supporting evidence. If you actually read what I wrote, all I say in recent posts is that it's quite hard to rigorously evaluate the effects of economy policy, so most conservatives default to their beliefs "tax cuts = growth" and democrats default to "trickle down economics = bad."
I hate answering with questions but:
- Do you think Obama's administration failed in its management of the 2008 sub-prime crisis?
- Do you believe that Trump inherited a poor economy when he took office in 2016?
- You haven't stated that Trump is better for the economy but then why did Trump get your vote?
I'm still waiting on claims that Trump is better for the economy than the Biden administration (and/or Obama if you want).
See the overall discussion went from "why didn't we get harris" to which conservatives ask "trump better for economy, social and geopolitical issues be damned." From there the statement was made that Trump didn't do shit for the economy or as a president in general, which was turned around into a discussion regarding presidential influence on the economy. Having asked for substantive arguments from the conservatives, it appears that analyzing the economy is now "too hard" or very difficult for them. On what fucking basis did you vote then? See, I accused conservatives for voting over image instead of real policy. So now I'm asking which policies did the republicans have that made the economy so much better? and the onus of answering that question is on the conservatives. in my eyes "the economy" is still a cop-out and the red vote came from a place of emotion and hatred. I'm still more than willing to try to help the discussion move forward on president vs economy but to me the lack of real substance in the response of sensei/misha/etc. still kind of validates my suspicion that there is no substance. There is a semblance of substance but nothing actually there.
Like, if you voted for "the economy" and you've already voted, then surely it wouldn't be too hard to bring up why you voted for Trump. You argue it was an informed decision. Show what that information was.
I haven't actually stated the claim that Trump is better for the economy. You asserted that Obama deserves all the credit for the strong economy under Trump with zero supporting evidence. If you actually read what I wrote, all I say in recent posts is that it's quite hard to rigorously evaluate the effects of economy policy, so most conservatives default to their beliefs "tax cuts = growth" and democrats default to "trickle down economics = bad."
I hate answering with questions but:
- Do you think Obama's administration failed in its management of the 2008 sub-prime crisis?
- Do you believe that Trump inherited a poor economy when he took office in 2016?
- You haven't stated that Trump is better for the economy but then why did Trump get your vote?
I would say Obama did fine. He maintained an economy inline with inflation. Given the financial crisis in 2008 that's good.
Trump inherited a fine economy. IMO obama gave him a small loan of a million dollars and he built an even better economy from the perspective that money went further under trump.
Biden had covid to work through and his response to it led the country to where it is now. Sometimes you get blamed for things that are outside of your control, but when people are struggling it's hard to talk about theory or who to blame when the results are quite bad for the average American. The biden administration will be blamed for the bad economy during their time in office.
I'm well off so I can patiently wait until housing prices come down, but I know some friends that just will never own a house if things don't change. If I were to vote, I would have voted for Trump.
It's pretty simple, this is why Trump won. Despite the fact that his presented economic policies will not make things cheaper, people vote based on how the past 4 years have gone. It's the same reason why Biden won in 2020. Ironically covid probably caused trump to lose in 2020 and kamala to lose in 2024.
How many times would you like me to post the same metrics over and over again?
Looked over your post history and couldn't find the metrics you were referring to. I did find some memes. I'll take a link to a previous post of yours if you have anything in mind that I missed.
Two posts on page 1296. I listed 4 economic metrics which I believe have the greatest impact on how people view the strength of the economy and whether it is good or not. They were wage growth, employment, peoples savings and inflation. These are basically encompassed by CPI and the wage growth vs. inflation metrics that others just mentioned.
I'm glad you found the memes. I've posted some good ones.
