Cost of living increases in food, housing, and transportation have generally outpaced inflation and wage increases in the same period. Dems aren't doing themselves any favors sidestepping that issue. There's biases among haves and have nots in all of these areas and this is mostly why the old rust belty Blue Wall states are in a dead heat.
How does cost of living increase outpace inflation - inflation is an index of lots of cost of living increases? I'm going to need to see some graphs - most info from FRED says the opposite of what you're claiming - real wage increases - especially for the bottom quintiles
CoL and inflation are not the same https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/...-living-statistics/?t#cost-of-living-by-state Inflation and the cost of living are not one and the same. Although inflation does have a hand in determining the cost of living, low levels of inflation do not always mean lower costs of living. Data from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — a key metric from the Bureau of Labor Statistics used to measure inflation — show that prices increased 3 percent between June 2023 and June 2024. This is a slightly smaller increase than the 3.3 percent seen from May 2023 to May 2024 and a significant dip from the staggering 9.1 percent peak in June 2022 — the highest in more than 40 years. However, slowing inflation doesn’t mean prices are falling, and prices directly impact how Americans’ finances are faring. There's more in the link but main takeaways Rent and home affordability outpaced income in the last 4 years. Home and auto insurance costs are still rising. People mostly assumed food prices would regress but now we have shrinkflation and greedflation on top of it. These surveys don't mean poorer people are going underwater. Consumer debt load has been stable, but more attention should be paid upon Corporate and Government debt. When your mid-bottom quartiles in key states are claiming to live paycheck to paycheck and are voting with that as an economic indicator in mind, then they obviously don't see the same highs and booming heights as a homeowner who locked in 2.5 rates or a Mag 7 hodler.
It's all tied to the individual and how far they believe their money is stretching. During the Trump years, he managed to cut taxes for individuals and also the interest rates on housing market were low, so it generally felt like you had more money. Taxes are still low across the board since Trump's tax cuts are still in effect, but I think all the stimulus that people received during both the Trump and Biden years has finally dried up and suddenly everyone is feeling like they have less money. I'm not using fancy graphs or anything, just trying to rationalize what people believe I guess. My wages have gone up quite a bit since Biden came into office, so I have no complaints, but there are others that see less in their savings and suddenly they feel pinched. Let's face it, the stimulus checks plus the child tax credits plus those unemployment benefits were pretty damn generous. Some people were even pulling more money being unemployed than employed which is crazy. All that **** dried up and suddenly everyone feels poor again lol.
Yeah I don't really buy the bankrate explanation - like I said "cost of living" is not a thing on FRED - there's PCE and CPI and all kinds of other indices (chained etc) but there's no "cost of living" one (there's actually some regional cost of living data but it's from 1999) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/9 Every single thing I see has real wages going up from 2020 until today. "Real" definitionally means it outpaces inflation - and for the bottom levels the last 4 years they've actually had as many REAL gains for the last 4 years than they had in the preceding 20 before that I don't doubt that people still have a perception that inflation is worse than it is but frankly y that's just a cognitive issue rather than an economic one. There's just nothing economic policymakers can do about the fact that people WANT to deflate prices back to 2018 levels - because the only way to do that would be an actual economic depression many times worse than the Great Recession or the Great Depression
It depends on whether you compare 2021or early 2022 when inflation spiked or with your 2020 frame. From a fact checker. https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2024/wage-growth-vs-inflation-biden-presidency/ The bottom half brings up the point of part-time earners. Gig Economy jobs are unstable for better or worse. If people feel stretched enough to compel themselves to take on extra hours of work to keep up, then that also fuels the "cognitive issue" you brought up. Hell if libs and Never Trumpers are doing great in this economy, then jealousy or envy could also be behind that perception.
Honestly politifact can eat **** in general, but anyway doing real wages from mid pandemic doesn't really make much sense because it was an abnormal situation with high unemployment but lots of transfer payments. Anyway I don't need Politifact I can go right to FRED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PIECTR It's just not disputable that real income is higher- it just is.
Sure. Go back to your regularly scheduled program of swing state voters and poll respondents being low information Fox News watching morons.
I mean maybe they're just racist ****s and general assholes who want to make others suffer regardless of GDP or PCE or their 401k - this seems way more consistent with the data on MAGA support
You waste a lot of time on here writing diatribes about racists and assholes from the other party while being an ******* who uncleverly skirts the line of being a bigot, so it might be convenient for you but that hasn't neatly explained how razor thin these elections have been for the past 12 years. Again, if you frame from when Biden took total full control from 2021 onwards then wage growth (yes real) did not outpace inflation https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/macroblog/2024/06/27/are-real-wages-catching-up https://www.bankrate.com/banking/fe...ndex/#bankrate-s-2024-wage-to-inflation-index Percentage discrepencies hits The Poors harder even if you can blab away about bottom-quartiles faring better from your econometrics.
What should I spend my time doing instead? I'm a bigot, for citing FRED? Jesus what the **** is wrong with you - even @AroundTheWorld is clicking like on your post so...yeah. Anyway you sound kinda insane - elections have generally not been close the last few years, Democrats have won by *millions* of votes every year since 2004. Anyway if you can explain what the hell you're on about - go ahead. I think Trump voters are racist **** sticks which is why most of them are white & wealthier, on average, than most Dem voters, but if you want to take the other view - open to hear it. Anyway it's kind of funny you're accusing me of being to blasé - you're basically taking the NYT- approved "economic anxiety" apologia for the trash deplorables and tossing it at me - fair enough, where's the data? How did that work out in the midterms? Etc.
For real, @Invisible Fan - you saw Trump's "closing argument,," on Sunday at MSG. I'm not just talking about the insult comic guy yelling about "blacks carving watermelons" and ******** on Boricua - the whole 6 hour thing was a promise to hurt people. I can assure you not a single sentence was uttered about Real wage quintiles vs PCE deflator - the entire thing was a Klan rally , start to finish. Why are you clinging to .... whatever it is?
the bankrate is a quasi lobbying/influencing group, the less-then-infomred informed Invisible is using their one-sided spin as gospel, LMAO reminiscent of Invisible parroting this meaning less claim "the Fed is wrecking its balance sheet", never mind that "balance sheet" is not in the Fed's charter
The economy under democrats in the last 50 years has always been better than the ones under the GOP. Trickle down has failed, and caused a massive divide in our country. DD
My 401K did great under trump and did great under Biden. I have ladies in my office who constantly complain about prices at HEB and how its so much higher under Biden. No use trying to explain the reasons to them but in general I think President`s get too much credit and too much blame when things like gas goes up or down or the price of eggs skyrocket. I have one particular lady in my office who is voting strictly based on this issue, she thinks trump will do it because it was low when he was in office, when I asked her what she thought about the tariffs she said she didn't care as long as the food prices came down.........................very silly reasoning IMO but that's how she sees it, people like her scare the hell out of me from a "voter" perspective Our company had major supply chain issues during Covid and our prices went up by 35%...........................think we ever went back to a cheaper price That would be NO.......it just became normal. Our dear friends at HEB would never price gouge us
Invisible points to the self-proclaimed fact checker ' SamFisher easily poke holes in the so-called fact checking methodology if only Invisible understand economics!
my advise to low-information parrots, such as you ,is to think before you post read the Federa Reserve's charter before posting intellectually dishonest spins that "Fed is wrecking its balance sheet; balance sheet is not in Fed's charter read and understand the self-proclaimed fact-checker's fact-checking methodology before post their spin their methodolog is flaw
You can bellyache and twist what I wrote all you want. Not all the sources I posted are from bankrate, though bankrate is friendlier to read. Polling still show a majority of Americans unhappy with the economy and plan to punish Biden/Harris for it. My original reply is why they think that way since many in this thread are baffled why. Maybe rename it Harrisnomics! and label underwater groups racists and morons.
