conclusion: So I’m extremely skeptical that the United States is going to get all or even most of the changes it needs to improve itself and to get better, and I’ve stopped thinking I possibly have any of the answers. That’s all very frustrating to think about, especially when you hear individual stories of hardship that seem avoidable — things that just straight-up wouldn’t have happened in places like Germany or Denmark. (Not that these countries are themselves perfect, or don’t have major problems of their own, or should even be directly compared to the U.S.!) On the other hand, if you zoom out, what the United States has going on is remarkable and historically unusual. Three hundred and thirty million people are living in an almost 4 million-square-mile territory in which they can go where they want, worship who or what they want (or nothing at all), and say almost whatever they want. In addition, whatever our economic woes, clearly our economy is dynamic enough to attract immigrants from all over the world, many of whom, when asked, report that they believe the United States is a great place. (Though we do need to be careful about survivorship bias here, since if someone comes to the U.S., fails to establish a foothold, and then goes back to where they came from, or to Canada, of course they won’t be captured in a survey of immigrants.) A common lefty answer to all this is that inequality is so severe that most Americans can’t enjoy all these supposed benefits. I just don’t think that’s true. Even relativelypoor Americans enjoy a quality of life that is astonishing compared to what we had three generations ago, and we should recognize that fact if only to understand how we got here and how we can prevent backsliding. That’s especially true when you consider that this generally solid quality of life is paired with a surprising amount of financial precarity. So the United States is a lot of things: it’s a big, beautiful, free-as-hell place, it is beset by political dysfunction while being pretty stable, it seems to lift a lot of people out of poverty, and its formerly strict racial caste system is rapidly on its way to a welcome and overdue destruction.1 It is a historically unusual example of people coming from everywhere in the world to join a diverse but unified whole. It is awesome and beautiful that someone can scrape and claw to get here, not speak the language, and then a few years later their kid is a bilingual American, full stop, who views this place as home, and who is, thanks to the wisdom of our Founders, just as American as any of his neighbors. It’s important to acknowledge this to fend off certain naysayers and would-be revolutionaries who, if they got their way, would choose destruction over reform. It’s also important not to get too starry-eyed, to slide into weird forms of hyper-nationalism or jingoism deaf to the many ways life here still is unfair, and to the ways we could do much better. But for now, July 6, maybe the most salient point is that much of what the United States has pulled off shouldn’t work! It hasn’t worked, historically. And the future contains no guarantees; so many things could shred what we’re lucky enough to have built. I was going to end this post with some caveats: Here’s why I’m a bit worried about November and here are the worst things that could happen. But let’s take a break from that. Let’s just bask in the afterglow for a minute and reflect on how lucky we are to live in a glorious anomaly that might not be perfect, but which is orders of magnitude better than the vast majority of alternatives humans have cobbled together in the darker days of the past. 1 The exception is certain pockets of intergenerational African American poverty. We shouldn’t ignore this, because it is a major social problem (as are intergenerational pockets of white poverty with different origin stories!), but also shouldn’t pretend that there aren’t extremely successful black immigrant groups enjoying all the aforementioned benefits of the United States. The claim that the U.S. is presently “white supremacist” in any meaningful sense is backed by little solid evidence.
For all the people who feel the economy is going terribly..... have one question. How is it that the per capita wealth (inflation adjusted) of an American has skyrocketed, but everyone seems to be struggling?
The US will undergo a transformative change when Trump wins this time. "Democracy" will be forever changed. Russia's hand will be strengthened a great deal. The US will transition to a full corporatocracy cow-towing to a would-be despot. Trump will be president for life, and when he dies, one of his children will be the next president. Trump's opponents will be investigated and jailed. Elections will be manipulated. The economic policies of the country will be designed to benefit Trump and his allies. And all the country's problems will have a scapegoat so people can still love him despite their worsening standard of living. That will be the new America. The darker days of the past will be the looked back my the vast majority as the good ole days once the new reality sets in.
Hollywood should embrace Trump. He will win and shape this country in ways we can't imagine. If the left is smart, it's the "if you can't beat him, join him moment". Trump wants to be adored. If Hollywood understood that, they have the power to put him on a stage that would put him in a state of ecstasy. Do that, and he will turn to silly putty in the hands of the left and embrace their agenda.
He might and his positions aren’t ideologically consistent. What is consistent though is his view that things like laws and ethics don’t apply to him. Even if he did embrace leftists positions because Hollywood was flattering him still wouldn’t change that he is corrupt, has and likely will abuse the powers of the presidency.
Answer to your question: The economy is relatively ok. It is no where near in crisis mode. However, there is an obvious divide with the middle class. Those falling on the stronger side of middle class are doing better and better. Those in the middle class who are struggling are declining. Can you answer my question?
Agree 100%. No matter what policies he embraces he will abuse his powers, still be unethical, and corrupt to the core. He will always be looking for quid pro quo to benefit himself, even if that means breaking a few laws along the way. It's all about him, the attention, his wealth, and the power and loyalists to keep preventing him from being prosecuted.
It is because everyone suffers from inflation, but not everyone gets benefits from inflation. Inflation is a regressive tax, and it ran out of control for a couple of years. There was never a compensatory deflation, everyone just had to accept that the dollar is worth 14% or so less than it was in 2021. If your wages increased more than 16% over that time, then great. If they didn't (and that second group is a lot of people) then you are worse off than you were three years ago, and you don't think the economy is going well.
BURRRP WRONG. Try again. Again, per capita wealth has skyrocketed EVEN when adjusting for inflation. So it's not inflation. The buying power per capital in America has continuously gone up. What's going on?
Per capita wealth is just total wealth divided by population. That doesn't at all address what I posted. If you have 10 people and one of them had their wealth increase by 10 dollars and 9 of them had their wealth decrease by 1 dollar, per capita wealth has increased. The 9 people who are worse off in that scenario are not going to think things have improved because the per capita wealth increased. The fact is that there are many people who are worse off now than they were in 2019. Those people don't think things went well, even though they are more than offset by the people for whom things are better.
The wealth increase has been incredible. It's growing faster than at any point in our history and post-COVID - it's accelerated to double digit increases PER YEAR - and that's OVER inflation (meaning it's even more when you don't count inflation). So how is it that the wealth in this country is increasing so rapidly, but the average person sees none of that? Is that because of China? Is it Biden's fault? Is it Trump's? Is it the liberal's? Why? I am curious to know your thoughts.
ur wrong, the uber rich is immuned from inflation. also, inflation provides another excuse for unscrupulous companies to gouge prices; recent eg include McDonalds, Wendys, Target, Walmart, Starbucks, etc. that's just lack of understanding on your part; why is it so difficult for you to understand this simple explanation?
CORPORATE Greed - by corporations paying off the GOP primarily they no longer stop monopolies and as such they are price gouging and their is no competition there to check it.... Thus we have RECORD corporate profits, while ignorant people blame inflation, when it is nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with profiteering. IT IS NOT INFLATION! DD
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4759665-axelrod-trump-biden-debate/ 16 minutes ago Axelrod asks why Trump is 'uncharacteristically holding fire' as Biden teeters by Nick Robertson Senior Democratic strategist David Axelrod raised questions Monday about former President Trump’s current strategy of keeping quiet amid rising concerns over President Biden’s health and candidacy. “Trump's not talking much about Biden's bad debate. Trump's campaign is not blitzing ads about it. And Lara Trump said last week it would be an affront to democracy if Biden were not the nominee,” Axelrod wrote in a social media post. “Question: Why do you think they are uncharacteristically holding fire?” Axelrod, a longtime adviser to former President Obama, has been an outspoken critic of the Biden campaign in recent weeks as the president struggles to recover from a poor debate performance. A rising number of Democrats have called on Biden to leave the race and make way for a different candidate in recent days. Former Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), a former chair of the House GOP campaign arm, said last week that Trump’s strategy is simply to let Biden hurt himself with the negative attention. “When your opponent is blowing himself up, don’t interrupt. … There’s no reason to insert yourself in that conversation,” Stivers told The Hill. “The discipline is smart on this topic, and he’s done a good job at that.” “Nobody in the Democratic Party cares about what Trump thinks whether Biden’s the candidate, so why talk,” he continued. “I’m glad to see he’s learned from 2020, because he wasn’t very disciplined then. I think it speaks to him learning from the past.” Axelrod has dismissed the calls for Biden to leave the race as “irrelevant,” saying he doesn’t believe the president will end his campaign. But he’s also been openly critical of Biden, calling him “dangerously out-of-touch” Friday. “The president is rightfully proud of his record. But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacities moving forward and his standing in this race,” Axelrod wrote in a post on the social platform X. “Years ago at this time, he was 10 points ahead of Trump. Today, he is six points behind.” On Sunday, the strategist said it’s clear that Biden is “not winning this race.” “If you just look at the data and talk to people around the country, political people around the country, it’s more likely that he’ll lose by a landslide than win narrowly this race,” Axelrod said. “And if the stakes are as large as he says, and I believe they are, then he really needs to consider what the right thing to do here is.”
It is because there are fantastic wealth generation engines that are far more accessible to people that have more money available. The stock market, real estate, cryptocurrency, etc. can provide enormous wealth to those who are invested in them (potentially enormous losses as well, but the trend line is generally positive over time and having money already means you are better able to ride out short term losses). It is certainly possible to generate wealth through only salary. Doctors, lawyers, athletes, entertainers, etc. do it all the time. It is just more difficult and generally results in smaller scale fortunes. I suppose if you had to find someone or something to blame, it would be capitalism. No, they are just better able to deal with the negative effects. Everything still costs more for them, they can afford the higher costs more easily (and also tend to receive some benefit from higher costs because they have businesses that are charging the higher costs). As I said, it is a regressive tax. Scrupulous or unscrupulous, those are the increased costs, yes. I understand it fine, it just doesn't address what I said. The fact that per capita wealth increased adjusted for inflation does not at all counter the point that for many, their wealth declined as a result of inflation. I gave you an illustrative example, but apparently it was too difficult for you to follow.
The stock market is a reflection of wealth - as share value in companies are increasing dramatically. GDP in this country has also outpaced inflation significantly. Point is - America has never been flush with more wealth - not just in terms of cryptocurrency and paper, but in total value of goods and services produced. Only thing is, the vast majority of the country doesn't get any of that. That's because the pay increases have been tilted towards upper management who's salaries increase dramatically, where as everyone else has not. It is the main driver of increased cost in education and health care. Doctors salaries have no increased at a significant rate - but the administrators have. Point is the increases in wealth from innovation and productivity - doesn't go to the workers, it goes to the folks at the top. So people can complain it's China, or inflation, or this or that. But the truth is...it's just greed.
Your message is all over the place. I am not sure what you're ultimately trying to say. Corporations are greedy? Rich keep getting richer? Americans are doing better? The trouble with models is they quickly become outdated. Whether you're talking about employment numbers, GDP, inflation or any of the other metrics, its nearly impossible to generate a model that fits everyone.
