Hacker News

Democrat non-voters

Trump voters

You can experience that emotion and then logic your way to "it probably doesn't make sense then to vote for massive tariffs." If you don't logic your way to that next point, then yeah, you're making a bit of an emotionally-tainted decision.

Except that at the the lower income bracket, there are many more Democrats than Republicans (58% to 36% according to Pew[0]). So I don't think the election turned on poor people not being able to even afford food.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship...

Thing is, people will say stuff like this and them foam at the mouth at the mere mention of the phrase "food stamps". Methinks this sudden empathy is a load of crocodile tears.

Harris had proposed policies? That's news to me... Only think I remember is abortion abortion abortion.

A change to SNAP benefits beyond the statutory amount referenced in the TFP would require legislative action. Both increases in existing benefits and an extension of the temporary benefits that had been in place were champion by many Democrats, but ultimately died through lack of bipartisan support as such I don’t think we can lay the blame for this particular government failure at the feet of the outgoing administration. It was this fight and others like it that the GOP saw as strategically important to regaining executive power.

As a non-US citizen, I find it shocking that such a high number of US citizens need to live on food stamps, so I checked the numbers.

Indeed, it's 41.2 million out of a total of 334.9 million U.S.-Americans, or 12.3 % or more than one in ten folks - that this is more than one in hundred suprised me because the US are by some counts the "richest" country on the planet.

It's merely the country with the richest few, perhaps this calculation is just a way to show statistically what many believed all along, namely that the so-called "American dream" is a pipe dream for most, in the sense that the majority of people simply fund a tiny fews success in the way lottery ticket buyers fund a few select millionaires that don't deserve it.

In case anyone is curious, the $1 is the increase in the maximum SNAP benefit per month for an individual, from $291/month to $292/month. (The increases for larger households are similarly small.)

This is not the actual increase of the benefit amount. In particular, it appears the cost of living adjustment this year is 2.5%. I have been unable to find statistics on how many people/households actually receive the maximum amount, but I don't have a particular reason to believe it is large. (The average benefit amounts are significantly below the maxima.)

Tldr: the average SNAP benefit amount received by people has increased and will increase by significantly more than $1/month.

Did they pick $1? Isn’t it a math formula based on various consumer goods, which may it may not be right.

>No one I've pointed this out to has been able to empathize with these people yet, most coming up with glib replies about how everything for those voters will be even worse now that the other candidate won.

Right, because how do you empathize with someone who gets $1, and their response is: Oh yeah? Well fine then I'm going to vote for the person who wants to take away literally EVERYTHING to show you!

It is the definition of cutting off your head to spite your body.

I completely understand and empathize with someone on SNAP not getting what they need to cover the insane pricing increases we saw greedy corporations force upon all of us and wanting that rectified. But if your solution to that is to either not vote at all, or intentionally vote for the guy who has literally told you his plan is to gut all social services... I'm not sure what to tell you beyond whatever empathy I DID have for you is gone and enjoy sleeping in the bed you just made for yourself. I, and most of the folks on HN are going to be perfectly fine. Those folks that were on SNAP? Good luck...

> glib replies about how everything for those voters will be even worse now that the other candidate won

Here is something I saw on Bluesky, where all the good people are:

"To all the misgueded twits who ignored every red flag, caved to your worst selves, and bought into all of the most obvious of Trump's insane lies: Everything that happens from here on out. The family members you lose, the suffering, the confiscation of your freedoms of at the whim of your dictator. It's all on you. You can no longer falsely blame dems, antifa, lgbtq, or immigrants for everything you set into motion with your prejudice and cowardice"

It goes on like that, and ends with

"Hope it was all worth it, you hateful fuckwits. Enjoy the ride"

That's just the most widely shared and liked on I happened to be shown by Bluesky, I've seen this repeated in individual comments in many variations. Basically, "at least we'll burn together and it'll be your fault."

> they'll never understand why their candidate lost. Instead they'll keep pointing to GDP, the low employment numbers made possible by people working multiple jobs to survive, and how great things are for the wealthy instead of trying to actually get in touch with the daily lives of those they rarely interact with.

as Cenk Uygur said here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j7m0tbZJgE

So she put out some good things in the beginning, and we were excited about it. She had some economic populist policies about housing and price gouging etc. [..] She then turns around and sends Mark Cuban all over CNBC to go, remember, I love business interests. [..] She's never going to do the price gouging plan. They swear up and down on CNBC and all over cable news. Well, then she lost her lead. Why do you think you're getting the lead, why do you think you lost the lead? No, they'll never figure it out.

Nearly 40M ? It was 41.8 million as of 2022.

No, tariffs are his way of saying "magic wand make economy good" to people who don't (but can and should) know better.

Targeted tariffs as part of a trade war is significantly different than the proposed universal tariffs to "eliminate taxes" that he's proposed.

AKA: we figured out how to pass a consumption tax which disproportionately hurts poor people without calling it that because we know it's universally unpopular. When billionaires effective tax rate drops to what will probably be 1%, the wheels are going to REALLY fall off.

Just EVs, and how many Chinese EVs were we importing before the tariff increase? All I can think of are some Polestar models and the entry level model 3.

You're saying 50% of the US are stupid and those same 50% or so are the Trump voters.

Somehow that does not compute.

During which presidency did prices go up more? During Trump's last "Tariff" presidency or during the supposed anti-Tariff Biden?

"Watch videos of" is why we're banning TikTok. Just kidding. Or maybe not. I can find stupid people in any camp (well, in some more than others) and make a video about how clueless they are. It's super patronizing to just say your opponents are stupid and IMO one of the reasons why the democrats lost these elections (no shortage of other reasons).

The delusions don't stop at any demographic or party unfortunately. We just live in a post truth, post civil discussion, polarized, society.

The per-ton CO2 emissions of those boats is still much, much lower than by truck or rail. Large ships are insanely efficient at moving cargo; that's why it's so economical to transport stuff across the planet.

>Hell he might just lead with politicizing the Fed. Guess we’ll see.

Why would he not? It's not like he respects institutions such as the Supreme Court. And what repercussions has he ever faced for the destruction of norms and guardrails? If anything, he gains even more support.

which should disproportionately affect the wealthy. Another way of saying that: we pay higher prices with inflation so the wealthy are more wealthy. That money goes somewhere.

And hence we had the destruction of the entire tech industry because people never buy computers because tomorrow you can get a better one for cheaper.

BMW doesn’t get the tarriff anyway. Why would they be happy about it?

Explaining the minutia does not make for the best campaign trail rhetoric. But I can assure you, after speaking extensively in person with members of the Trump trade team, that their strategy is deep and sophisticated.

When he speaks of broad-based tariffs, he is using one of his framing techniques that he unironically explains in the Art of the Deal.

With all that said, the tariffs have me concerned, but allowing our industrial base to continue to evaporate has me more concerned.

California has the second highest total lane miles by state[0] and it has the highest number of registered vehicles of any state, by a big margin.[1]

Being a such a populous big state with only tiny, regional public transportation systems means everyone and their cousin drives everywhere, all the time. That's how.

[0]https://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/road-miles-by-state/

[1]https://www.bts.gov/browse-statistical-products-and-data/sta...

I've lived in California for 30+ years now and what I've observed is that we spend huge amounts of money on infrastructure and a lot of the spend seems to be absolute waste. For example, there is no realistic reason for high speed rail to cost what it does per mile; I am certain that a very close inspection of the process would uncover huge amounts of waste, padding, and theft. On top of that, people have been able to limit development using enivronmental rules and other legal methods to slow down things that are truly needed.

I'm sure somebody has written a book already about how ostensibly wealthy societies can fail at basic infrastructure that they previously mastered, driven by greed and complacency and other socioeconomic factors. I think this has happened over and over again (Rome, and many other societies).

The tolls are 1. Used to fix toll lanes, much more prevalent now than in the past 2. Payments to private companies who siphon the proceeds out of the area they services

Gas tax is much better in this regard, but all of these are pretty extortionary.

Underlying the sarcasm is the assertion that California is not fiscally responsible with its budget. Understand now?

It isn't military that's in question. It's their engagements.

The U.S defense budget would be a fraction of its budget if used for defense.

There is an upside in wining wars. But since the U.S has been losing them, it's funding jobs that provide no value. Would better be spent elsewhere.

The Japanese unique economic boom after WWII was mostly due to having little to know defense budget. Germany's was less impressive but also benefited from focusing on the economic performance.

Of course, the increase in manufacturing will be limited. Is there a policy that can increase it without limit?

I also think its disingenuous to call tariff induced price increases inflation. That's like calling a sales tax inflation. Maybe its technically correct, maybe not, but if your going to apply it here, make sure you are also applying it to carbon/gas taxes, environmental regulations (they also increase costs), and capital gains taxes (they lower asset supply).

I mean - you just said it didnt you? Energy touches basically every corner of the economy. Thats perfect. Yeah it does - and so it raises prices for everything.

Also why do you look at electricity? Its not just electricity, its everything. The war disrupted oil supply from Russia, which is something like 11% of global oil production. On top of it they disrupted supply chains globally.

Also, this is on top of the pandemic's economic hangover. This is pretty much up there from the first few searches on this topic, before you have to get into any detailed economic analysis.

"The Rent is too Damn High" is still a well-recognized meme. I doubt many people remember the gentleman's name or what he was running for. But the message worked! It's got to be simple and focused.

People are suffering and the Dems ran on 'things are going great'. To the people suffering that feelz/vibez like 'our version of great DNGAF about you'. It's easy to see how that could be a less than optimal message for a candidate for election.

That seems to imply that things can't get worse.. much much worse

afaik, Inflation in the us i quite low. Isn't it almost at the target? So why would she have a policy?

Entry level textbooks. It's one of those things they intentionally teach wrong to first year students in an attempt to "simplify"

That definition depends on where you look, and when the definition was written. Between the roman empire and the mid 1900s inflation always referred to an increase in the money supply.

This exchange is like a microcosm of the educated elite trying to talk to ordinary people.

2 and 3 are the same group. Accelerationists and white Christian nationalists are just rebranded white nationalists, so there is nothing surprising there. Hard to say what the distribution of purely economic voters is given how illogical that is. I'm hesitant to believe the excuses people have given how extreme of the rest of the campaign was and its parallels to a particular historical figure, going to the point of nearly plagiarizing quotes from the man.

You can repeat that quip three times in the mirror and it still won't change how plainly ugly his campaign and personal actions have been. Nor have you served me, nor liberals in general, any consequences that won't also impact Trump's base to an equal or greater extent.

Didn't Clinton basically balance the budget by the end of his second term?

First, the Republicans have been running on a platform of pretend fiscal responsibility, and so deserve more criticism for the hypocrisy per their own standards. The Democrats have just been upfront about spending money.

Second, there's a huge difference between spending new money on specific policies for deliberate outcomes, and blindly dumping it into the financial sector to bid up the everything bubble as fuel for the Potemkin stock market and a handout to asset owners.

What's a dog? Is a child's plastic toy in the shape of a dog a dog? Maybe. Is a cross-bread wolfhound a dog? Maybe. Language games! Meaning is "fuzzy around the edges".

If you insist a cat is a dog, we're not playing a fun game - but that's up to me and up to you - Maybe someone in an undiscovered tribe doesn't know these words and wouldn't balk. If you say "dog" when you mean to insult someone, I might know what you're saying. But there is no mechanism to verify internal meaning.

I _strongly_ suggest reading some Wittgenstien if you're interested in this topic! If I say I speak Swedish fluently but refuse to ever utter a word, do I speak Swedish? Only our actions can vaguely point at our meaning. Language is a game we play with each other which does not and cannot communicate ultimate meaning. All we can do is agree or disagree to play games - animals dancing around a fire.

Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

This is my main beef with "inflation" being used differently now from what it had been historically. Going back to the roman empire it was always about money supply increase, Keynes and crew decided that didn't sit well with them since money supply manipulation was their whole game.

> “Inflation” doesn’t mean anything by itself.

It absolutely does when the correct definition is still used. Inflation is an increase in money supply, that's really all there is to it.

Your point is why the use of "inflation" to mean price increases is so meaningless. Prices change for any number of reasons and you need context. When "inflation" still means in increase in the money supply there is no context required to know what it means, though obviously that's not all the information you need to understand the economy.

Sure, though it makes sense that most economists use the price inflation term. The change in how "inflation" was being used largely goes back to Keynes and Modern Monetary Theory. Most economists today fall into that bucket, of course they use the term in the same way.

That doesn't change the fact that the attempt to redefine it both co-opted the word and made it functionally useless. Prices change for all kinds of reasons. The amount of change alone is meaningless and using that meaning of the word allows economists today to play a lot of shell games with the numbers.

Well I did try to caveat it that its one of the few sources I could even find that reference the fact that the definition was changed.

My argument isn't with the fact that "inflation" is in fact being used to mean "price increase of goods." My issue is that economists co-opted the word at all and made it functionally useless, especially in isolation as it is often mentioned with no other context of why prices changed.

The use of "inflation" to mean money supply increase goes all the way back to the roman empire.

Have you ever read up on that list of predefined goods? It is pretty interesting to see how regularly the list is changed and how many different factors they add in to adjust prices.

Someone did a study looking at magazine prices for example. They picked magazines because they almost always had prices printed on the cover and cover images are cataloged. I don't remember the exact numbers, but they found that the actual prices went up by a much higher rate than how the CPI calculated it because they were discounting price increase with a claim that quality got better. Meaning you may have seen the price double over time but the CPI only said it went up by 30% because you got more value from the newer issues.

Sure, we could always make a different term for monetary inflation and avoid the ambiguity with the new definition but that doesn't fix the underlying point.

Monetary inflation is an important concept that is now almost entirely ignored. An increase in the cost of goods can be interesting, but its a second or third order effect of an extremely complicated system.

Price changes are meaningless without context and extremely difficult to understand with context. Money debasement, or inflation, is easy to understand and is a primary input to the system rather than a downstream effect.

Wait, is your argument that modern economists couldn't possible be wrong? Or in this case, that modern economists couldn't possibly have co-opted the term to better work with Keynesian economics and MMT?

If physicists decide to reuse the word "meter" for a unit of measuring volume does that mean anyone that uses it as a measure of distance is wrong? Wouldn't it make more sense to create a new term for the new need, a term that doesn't collide with centuries of use?

This Hacker News, people on here think they have a much better understanding than the experts about everything.

And that would even include something like "As a poor, single mother working 2 jobs in Pennsylvania, how is my life better under the current administration?"

I didn't realize I was talking to central banks here, that's good to know.

I believe your argument, though, is that those in power can redefine existing words to whatever best suits their current needs and we should all accept that and not consider why we had the original definition in the first place?

https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentar...

Heres a good source I just found as so many were looking for sources here.

I believe it was around the 1960s or 1970s when most economists started using "inflation" to mean price increases.

The history there is pretty fascinating, it was basically a reaction by modern monetary theorists who really had to redefine it for their economic system to make sense. A core goal in MMT is to have a fiat currency and controls in place to let you manipulate the money supply quickly in an attempt to move the economy in one direction or another. With the original definition, inflation is actually the tool used by MMT rather than an indicator of economic health.

In my mind part of the calculus in a high interest rate environments has to include the reduced movement in investments and into more stationary savings, maybe it's accounted for indirectly?

Claude for president 2028 :-)

Policy can encourage wage growth, subsidies can be given out, and politicians could increase both the minimum wage and public sector wages whenever they choose.

The easiest answer is focusing on policies that encourage low unemployment, which theoretically increases job mobility and wage growth.

Dems did that on the surface, but unfortunately unemployment is very distorted by inequality.

Sort of related to trade policy in that way I think. More trade is good but not if it isn't paired with ways to keep inequality from running amok.

Increase the minimum wage, strengthen the overtime rules, etc.

>you need a raise. Here's how I'm helping you get one.

Said no politician ever, even the most union-supporting :0

I don't really know the details of the US election. But two things that I know are that Kamala couldn't be pro-union, what sucks for her, and Trump spent a really huge amount of time talking about ways to increase people's salaries that can't possibly work, but were actual proposals he made.

Maybe tie the minimum wage to inflation?

Honestly at this point we start getting into a long discussion such as benefits of unionisation and why we should support it alongside collective bargaining and the fact that rising the minimum wage floor raises wages of other low paying jobs.

At some point though I’m throwing academic sources to the voter at which point I’ve probably lost the discourse because it’s hard to reason about.

The reality is I don’t do any of the above. I’m not even interested in debating the point anymore. People don’t want to hear long winded academic discourse on the best economic approaches to anything.

I’ve bluntly completely lost faith in American democracy. The candidate with the biggest budget has won consistently and the biggest budget comes mostly from corporate donations via PACs.

Lower taxes.

> Against a bounding rise in prices, [...], one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.

Leon Trotsky, 1938. [1]

Automatic rise in wages to counter inflation effects on ordinary people is literally a socialist plan. What they're asking for is socialism. Right-wing Americans (supposedly) hate socialism, at least when it benefits people other than themselves.

---

[1] - https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm...

... The data says wages outpaced inflation.

Social security / medicare are indexed to inflation.

The s&p500 outperformed inflation. (And treasury interest rates - 3 month and 10 Year - are ~<2x cpi and cpi targets for the first time in ~20 years)

How do you convey ideas to voters when the basis of the idea is feeling vs fact, outlier vs median?

https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/30/wage-growth-slowing-o...

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/awifactors.html

Because corporations like Walmart and various suppliers decided they could get away with increasing their prices and they blamed it on inflation. Thee isn’t federal law monitoring this.

Employers won’t give raises to match cost of living in those situations.

I'm not sure there's a better approach for an incumbent administration. The alternative would have been, "Inflation is bad, but we're going to fix it if you elect us," which to the average voter raises the question: "Why not just fix it now?"

Certainly Trump will reduce our grocery prices. He has a plan to introduce a lot of tariffs to accomplish this.

Also simplistic answers are easy to understand and sound thruthful. Whereas complex answers sound wishy washy to probably the average worker class member.

This is cool. Explains also Boris Johnston. Similar to the finding that people believe text more if it's in a larger font.

The solution is to stop the redistribution of wealth to the billionaire class. Something that is not going to happen under any American administration.

Well, it wasn't biden that posted record profits was it? It was the grocery stores.

> And the record profits Professor Weber mentions? Groundwork Collaborative recently found that corporate profits accounted for 53% of 2023 inflation. EPI likewise concluded that over 51% of the drastically higher inflationary pressures of 2020 and 2021 were also direct results of profits. The Kansas City Federal Reserve even pegged this around 40%, indicating that sellers’ inflation is now a pretty mainstream idea.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/02/07/why-y...

Look at this picture:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/oxfam-us/www/static/media/files/Beh...

Then this one:

https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/0.1-v.png

The green line is the top 0.01%, the red line is the average american.

> Still refusing to listen to us plebeians. I can't afford groceries. I'm not looking for a scholar-bureaucrat reframe of my problem. I'm looking for a solution.

What solution do you expect from Trump?

> I'm looking for a solution.

But what does a solution look like to you?

Do you want prices to deflate? That's terrible for many reasons.

Do you want regular responsible economic management? That was Harris. Inflation is back to normal now.

Or do you want a president who wants a huge tariff on everything that will result in crazy much larger inflation than we've had in decades? That's Trump.

How is Harris not listening? How is Trump listening better?

What was the solution trump and repoublicans provided? Were just all going to get screwed even worse now

We need universal basic income.

This is not just an impression, it is macroeconomics 101. If government goes into (more) debt and spends that money it increases inflation. Of course, all of this is not very easy. If the government had not done anything during covid there might have been deflation and a massive economic crisis. Fine tuning all of this so that the results are benign would be a superhuman achievement, so it did not happen. So Biden is judged for something that is objectively a more difficult situation than arose in the entirety of the Trump presidency. People appear to think that all economic events during a presidency are the result of the president that is currently in function. That is of course ludicrous. Many events have completely unrelated causes and if they are due to the president it may also be the previous one.

The stimulus money was insane, shutting down the economy was insane, forcing people to take a vaccine by threatening their jobs was insane. The democrats lost so much good will with so much of the population during COVID.

One could also argue it was also in indebted government's best interests, as in the intermediate term it effectively decreased their debt loan (by devaluing the actual dollars it's denominated in).

Stupid? Nah. Ignorant? Yes, when it comes to technicalities of economics.

COVID didn't, people that distributed $5 trillion during COVID time did.

Trump promised to make the economy better. Is he able to do that remains to be seen, but his message was pretty clear, and he did have some success before COVID in that regard. Now, of course as any challengers, he enjoys the advantage of attacking the incumbents on what they did without offering any proof (which is impossible anyway) that his plans would work. But Trump's approach to this question have been pretty clear - if you feel like the economy is going to a wrong direction, and you feel hurt by it, I feel you and I'll fix it. Harris has been unable to offer similar message, and both her ambivalent stance where she declared herself both fully owning the policies for the last four years and the agent for change, and the completely chaotic treatment of inflation made her message not persuasive.

Did you link the wrong chart? The slope is clearly positive over the last four years. Ergo people are getting wealthier, on average, even accounting for inflation. If you want to make a point that "Trump won because of service economy price increases, whereas cheaper good and fuel didn't help Harris as much", that's a rather more complicated thing.

Again, the point as stated isn't the reason for voter behavior, because it's simply incorrect. Voters didn't vote because they're poorer, because they're not poorer. QED.

It's a median statistic. So no, that's wrong. It's literally about the 50th percentile. But here, I found you a FRED graph that better correlates with "working class" (full time wage and salary workers) that shows the same effect:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Again, I know it's very tempting for you to believe this. That's probably why voters do! But it's wrong. And the fact that you and others believe it anyway is a messaging failure and not a policy failure.

The article you link is from April 2021, before the inflation burst and the subsequent inflation. You're not seriously saying that people are voting against economic conditions that prevailed three months into the Biden presidency?

Again, this idea is just wrong! And I hear it from people on, as you point out, both the left and the right. And it's wrong, as a simple matter of data! Something terrible happened with messaging this cycle.

I really don't think the upthread comment was about "groceries" specifically, it was a claim that people are poorer. And they aren't.

Also, it's striking that one of the problems on which the Democratic Party focussed did win in the ballot : if I read it correctly, in most of the places where women's reproductive rights were on the ballots, the position of the Democratic Party prevailed.

Why they decided to be myopic, and assumed that they had to defend the rights of women _or_ the rights of workers, and could not do both, is a bit beyond me.

It feels like democrats were talking to women, LGTB people, and some elites.

They completely forgot about the other half of the electorate, and when reminded of their existence and issues, they considered the other stuff more important. This result shouldn't surprise anyone.

You do realize the high inflation is due to actions Trump made....

More reasonable would be to explain the grocery prices will likely never come back down but we can increase workers' wages through certain policies. Biden's policy of opening the border to undocumented labor is not a policy that I believe will help increase the wages of those concerned about the cost of groceries.

how about an alternative:

Position 3: Introduce policies that stimulate domestic production and decrease foreign competition. This will lower prices without forcing domestic producers out of business.

The best solution imo would have been 1. to run a candidate not associated with Biden. 2. To say "inflation happened globally" and double and triple down on that. Half baked solutions like you're suggesting from someone associated with Biden + gaslighting the public that its not that bad were not the answers people wanted.

> The solution is to not have allowed it to happen in the first place.

How, exactly?

The biggest causes of inflation were stimulus, supply-shock, and housing prices.

Stimulus started under Trump and was the correct response to COVID. Without it we would have had even worse economic suffering that we did. Inflation was the lesser-of-two-evils.

The supply shock was global, and there probably wasn't much to do about it, besides maybe some more supply-side stimulus.

Housing is just a shit-show, but people have been grinding to get more built to address the problems for years.

But stimulus was the thing that could have been changed the most, yet it kept us from having a much, much worse recession.

There isn't a way to fix it and they actually aren't responsible. Taking fake responsibility would imply fault and suggest that voters ought to switch sides to the party which actually mismanaged the covid response which is absolutely nonsensical.

> Try the Trump/populist playbook on the topic: identify the problem,

And ideally put the blame on people who don't have any/much political or economic power within the country, like immigrants. Us vs them. "If we just get rid of 'them' everything will be fine"

Well, we don’t want prices to go down. That would be deflation, which is worse than inflation.

Harris played to and reinforced this economic illiteracy by proposing federal price controls for groceries.

Foreign born employment increased [1], while native born employment actually decreased [2]. My wife combined the graphics [3]. The axes are in thousands of persons, so we lost 4 million native jobs and gained 4.2 million foreign born jobs. Coincidentally, that is about how many votes the democrats lost by.

1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073395

2. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073413

3. https://i.imgur.com/KtBGrkg.png

> there's one big problem with our economy: Housing. There's not enough of it so prices for housing are very high relative to incomes.

Swing and miss. We will have the record high ratio of housing per capita within the next 2-3 years. We're WAY above 1980-s, and only slightly below the 2006 levels.

But you're actually getting closer to the truth: economic forces are pushing people to move into ever-densifying urban areas, that simply will NEVER have low housing prices. And it's a nearly zero-sum game, so every unhappy worker in a tiny flat paying 40% of their salary in rent, means that there's a new abandoned house somewhere in Iowa.

This in turn makes people in Iowa poorer, and they start hating the city population.

Building more houses in big cities will NOT solve this. We need a concerted push to revive smaller cities, by mandating remote work where possible. Another alternative is taxing the dense office space.

The people living 4.1% unemployment have (one or more) zero hour jobs where you don't know if you even have work each week, let alone the hours (but always less than 36) until the start of the week, with no benefits, living paycheck to paycheck, dealing with the hassle of having roommates at home so no place to truly unwind, and a huge cut to food they can afford which was really their last form of comfort. Car costs have gone up to the point they are just holding on to what they have hoping it keeps running.

This isn't a 1960s 4.1% unemployment good economy. And it's no way to live. You are forced into a state where are you constantly reacting out of stress, not really living. You can't blame those people for not understanding the nuance of your 'the economy is great, this is what good looks like'. It's not fair to call them bad/dumb people because of it. They are good people struggling out here in the trenches.

Labour force participation is what, 3 million below 2019? It's really bad.

The real problem is housing costs. They should've laser focused on that. A lot of that is due to short supply, so build more houses (Harris mentioned this in her plan, but I don't think it connected). Also look into wall st buying up rentals - there are cities where most of the apartment complexes are owned by 2 or 3 companies, if one of them raises your rent and you try to find housing elsewhere you find either that the same company has raised rents in their other buildings or the other companies are doing the same.

At a minimum they should have admitted that inflation is a big problem. Instead they chose to ignore it or lecture people why they are wrong that inflation is a problem. Same with the border.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - 1984

is not a winning message in the US. Dems should have seen people are suffering and instead of giving them economic data given them hope (the Republicans at least offered some 'other' to blame/direct anger at). Most Americans use food as their comfort/escape. They can no longer even afford that. Personally, I think the Democrats need to run on ending zero hour jobs and $1 cheeseburgers.

Zero hour jobs are ones where people have to have 1 or more jobs that don't give you a schedule until the start of the week, don't guaranty you any hours (other than that you will get less than 36), don't give benefits. It allows companies to cut to the bone (which overworks people) knowing that if the company needs more hours they will just push up the hours later in the week (which wreaks havoc on peoples lives because these people often need to work/juggle hours at two jobs). Companies should have to staff like they used to with actual jobs and not treat/schedule people like EC2 instance. At the least the government shouldn't count zero hour jobs as 'employment' in the traditional sense. They are not. They are human EC2 instances and that is a very stressful(harmful) way to live.

Just picture Bernie Sanders hammering home that the wealthy are screwing everybody. That's the kind of messaging they need but they would rather loose than move left.

This is an astute comment; we are in the social media era of elections, probably have been since 2016.

Policy Vibes > Policy Content

You are almost there imho.

That is where Journalism should come into play. But popular media have a business model of spreading fakes, being outright partisan and are mostly driven by clicks rage and engagement. That is what a Chaos Actor like Trump provides. To see what is happening it is more insightful to look what forces are behind Trump.

In the US media landscape, it is not possible to have a genuine debate. Every hour there is new nonsense that will kill of any "boring" news.

Not as a matter of nature. But as a betrayal of democracy by the Fourth Estate, opening the door for anti-democrats.

It is a deliberate choice, helped by self-delusion and exceptionalism. It is painful to watch a society marching to where we know where the end is.

Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers and yet plenty still voted for him. By word and deed it's very clear how little Trump thinks of women, and yet white women as a bloc elected Trump. Hillary Clinton used the phrase 'basket of deplorables' ONCE, 8 years ago, but that was an unforgivable mistake. By contrast nothing Trump does sticks to him.

The perception that Democrats are smug and condescending have certainly hurt them. But that perception is mostly the result of relentless Republican messaging. Tim Walz is a down-to-earth governor of Minnesota who treats everybody with respect. He's a lot less condescending than JD Vance. But the perception of Democrats hating regular people persists.

The “deplorables” thing is kind of amazing. The message was “you guys are wrong, only like a third of Republicans are all the things you say—committed racists et c.—and the rest are normal, reasonable people we should try to reach and serve” but was delivered the kind of way a couple policy wonks and campaign strategists sitting and looking at hard polling and behavioral data might talk, such that it was disastrous. “Some of you write them all off, but [looks at meta-study] only about a third of them are committed to principles and ideals that might, fairly, be called ‘evil’ or ‘disgusting’ or what have you”.

A lesson in how shitty delivery can deliver exactly the opposite of the literal message you’re conveying.

I'm not running for office so I can say this.

Their fellows are idiots and fools.

I know it's not a winning strategy to point this out. But it doesn't stop it being true.

The election was close. I don't believe this at all. It's simply being tone deaf. Not to mention the strong democrat support in the mid terms (when inflation was arguably worse).

> can't force people to understand economics

People were actively deceived along the way. Do you remember that intially Yellen (and Powell together) called the inflation "not broad enough to be considered inflation", then called it "transitory" and justified printing so much money all the way into 7% inflation. At 3% PCE, Powell said everybody to relax, that nobody should doubt they will use every tool they have to fight inflation. Bostic at 2% PCE said he is not worried, he welcomes higher inflation, approaching 4% inflation would be cause of concern and would require action. Action that never came. They just lied and misinformed the people for years. People listened to this, it was all over the media. It's wrong to suggest people didn't listen.

Do you remember after 5 years of review they came up with symmetric inflation target of 2% and they instantly abandoned it because that would require lower inflation for decades to come. And nobody in media questioned it, they said people "misunderstood the target".

They don't want to educate people about the economy, they want people as stupid as possible.

>The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution.

Objectively untrue; Harris lost.

>You can't force people to understand economics

You're correct. So you have to reformat the message. The Dems failed to do this. I can tell you have never been a teacher: teachers are forever having to change their messaging because different people understand in different ways.

The democrats told people who are suffering 'the economy is great, this is what great looks like to us'. How is that a winning message with people suffering?

> That's what's so sad. The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. The Republican campaign was a disaster in execution, but they won anyway.

So, put differently, you're saying that Democrats did not have Product-Market fit, while the Republicans did. Yes?

> The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution.

She had 0 counties where she outperformed 2020 biden.

>> Their messaging was totally different from 2020, everything was clear and understandable.

But when you have the VP is running for the office that her boss has just occupied for the last four years, the whole point of the VP running is to continue what they started - not suddenly say you would do a bunch of stuff differently when YOU were riding shotgun on the poor economy, inflation, immigration and crime.

Harris was asked repeatedly what she would do differently and said "nothing". She was a horrific candidate. She couldn't speak to voters without a teleprompter, she was a cringe worthy public speaker, she was never on message and always reverted back to, "Well Donald Trump did this and that." which never connected with voters.

She also had a front row seat to Biden's mental decline and repeatedly went in front of the media and defended him to the very end when he was removed and she replaced him. Harris was the same person who got zero financial support from democrats during the 2020 campaign, had to drop out and didn't even make the primaries because of the lack of support from voters.

If you were paying attention, this was completely predictable.

By contrast, Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door. He connected with voters, reached across the aisle and formed a coalition with RFK, Gabbards and Musk. He went on podcasts to reach younger voters. Anybody else see Vance on the Theo Von podcast? He campaigned relentlessly in the key battleground states, he did tons of impromptu interviews.

There's a reason he's projected to get 300+ electoral votes AND win the popular vote and nothing in your comment would seem to understand why.

Take a look at the markets today. Take a look at the price of Bitcoin right now.

The country wanted significant change and they voted that way.

> The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution.

polls had 'country on the wrong path' at ~75%

Kamala Harris wouldn't break from biden on anything, even when she was begged by the media to do it several times over several days.

That's just one example of dumb shit the dnc/kamala did.

Dems are not in the venues where people are talking about these issues. I see tons of right wing youtubers, tiktokers, podcasts, and there is just far less dems in these environments or willing to go to these places. You need more Bernie types (not necessarily his politics exactly) but the willingness to go these places repeatedly and talk about ideas.

Its hard to say what happened internally, but Biden could have stepped down in time for them to have a proper primary.

> it's unclear to me that there's really anything they could have done

Don't choose such a unpopular candidate as Kamala. Have a primary instead of appointing someone.

Glad someone understands inflation. This is true and all we can hope is that someone close to him understands this.

Trump didn't print $4T, the bi-partisan effort in Congress for COVID relief did.

I think the problem in voters eyes is that Biden did not stop after this. He pushed through multiple trillion dollar bills on top of it.

I'm not saying I agree with that stance, but calling the $4T Trump's doing is a really misleading. It was not part of his economic agenda at all.

Because they look at metrics like GDP and the stock market and unemployment, and fail to realize that it's not evenly distributed. Increasing GDP and stock market indicate somebody is making a lot of money, but the average voter isn't seeing any of that in their own lives.

They'll still blame "the Deep State" and just mean anyone they don't like.

They couldn't blame Trump for printing the money because nearly all of them voted for the stimulus.

Blaming Trump for printing money when you voted on it, too, is a bad strategy.

they did fix inflation. they told people it was fixed, which it is. What they failed to message well was why it happened in the first place and that it was a global phenomenon

But if Trump didn't print it then somehow Biden would've worked with 1.5T?

I still think you got it the exact wrong way around.

People want honesty. Trump saying people have economical problems is honest (at least relatively). Keeping the discourse around inflation because Biden did a great (?) job there isn't. (That applies even if the Rs were the ones focusing on inflation, unfortunately people don't discern that well.)

I really think that if the Ds said "we beat inflation, but that doesn't immediately help you. we will do X to beat low salaries next" it would be well received. But that requires honesty.

At the same way, Musk fans like that he delivered X (there's a lot of impressive things you can put here). Talking about the future is always bullshit anyway, so he being wrong there is less important than he having delivered stuff before. The things those people are ignoring are the fact that he only put money on it, or that the more he gets involved, the less his companies are able to deliver. Not that he is wrong about the future.

Yep. Good luck with that (Not directed at you).

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/watch-live-trump-s...

Any such calculated attempt at appearing tough would break down when a bullet barely missed your head. His reaction of staying on stage and encouraging the crowd would be quite hard to fake.