HaroldWilson
1yr ago
like isn't being compared to like.
It is across time. If u-2 unemployment decreases, even if you think u-4 or u-6 should be the more relevant number, that still reflects an improvement in the economy.
And this goes without various period changes to categorization counting that comes and go with administrations, at which point categorical definition differences are conflated with smuggled insinuations of continuity, which is a not-uncommon way for political actors to imply systemic changes when the primary change in a system is the measurment.
Any specific evidence for this happening?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Ok but a situation resembling the one you show seems unlikely. The American economy is a sufficiently closed system (plenty of immigration, but how much of that is high skill, enough to make a difference?) that any change in composition is principally not a question of movement by new people into the statistics, one would imagine. Which is to say that compositional changes are helping mostly incumbents rather than new arrivals as in your example.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
What's the alternative to changing the basket of goods as consumer's change their behaviour. Or should we still have a Marconi Wireless and pipe tobacco in the basket?
The unemployment thing doesn't matter as long as you compare like with like. The various unemployment numbers tend to track each other very closely.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
It is almost literally impossible these days to find a vehicle with <100k miles for <$10k
I would hardly deny that buying cars is more expensive now that several years ago, but the increase has been nothing like on the scale you're implying. Again, numbers are your friend. Since Biden took office average used car prices have gone up somewhere around 25%. That's bad, not even close to the over 2x increase you are suggesting.
And if you to any online second hand car website you can find stacks upon stacks of car with under 100k miles for well under 10k.
Edit: wrong link, correct one here https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SETA02
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
could we interpret rising debt as sign of a pending recession/correction?
I wouldn't say so, but either way this is irrelevant, because it's a completely different question to whether the economy is 'good' or not. Unless you think people (i.e. Republicans) are rating the economy as poor because they've looked at the FRED charts and decided we're headed for another 2008.
Look at it this way. Even retrospectively, most people would describe the early 2000s as good economic times, no?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
What are family formation rates looking like? Education costs and student debt? Property/housing costs? Food quality/price shifts?
Why would we use other statistics which are not the thing we are trying to measure to get an approximation of something we can, in fact, measure? To paraphrase Sir Humphrey, why are your family formation statistics facts but my real wage facts merely statistics?
energy usage per capita
Source?
Would you be willing to stand behind the claim that official measures of inflation, cost-of-living etc accurately reflect what's happening in the economy as opposed to being massaged and shaped for political messaging purposes?
Yes. Or rather, I have not yet seen any evidence of the latter, so I have no reason to believe it.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
demagogic tactic
If this is demagogic then so is literally all of politics and I would hope gun control advocates don't put their gun down first, if you'll pardon the pun.
local asking price is 7000 dollars for cars with 140,000 miles on the clock
That seems very, very high, you can go online and find cars with fewer miles than that in reasonable working order for a quarter the price.
the same people
Which people do you suspect of manufacturing both of these things?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
relevant
It's not irrelevant, but if we want to assess how people are doing why would we ever use it instead of real wages?
whether American workers as a collective are actually retraining into better roles is entirely up for dispute
We can avoid this whole question though if we just look at real wages. Which are currently rising.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
How is it different in this respect than just ordinary real wages?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
they are gamed for political purposes
In what manner? Please read this and tell me which specific elements of their methodology you question. Be specific.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Why would we want to adjust for that with ECI? Is workers retraining into better roles not part of an improving economy?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
"I'm fine at the moment, but the whole thing seems pretty shaky".
This is a ridiculous extrapolation to make beyond data which cannot be stretched that far. And the question's word was not 'fine' it was 'good'!
They look at pricing of the goods that they have the most exposure
Well good thing we don't need to operate on these general anecdotes and vibes, we can in fact look at statistics.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
It's like asking somebody about the weather when they're standing in the eye of a hurricane, it feels fine now but I'm not exactly celebrating yet.
The thing is though, if you ask people most say that they themselves are in the eye of the hurricane. At which point we have to ask how significant the hurricane really is.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
You understand this is literally the argument you yourself are making when you suggest we operate off anecdotes and not statistics.
between 50-100%
This number is simply wrong.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDNS
makes for over 25% inflation total
This is more accurate. However, two things to note. Firstly, your quarrel here is not with Joe Biden but American planning law. Secondly, I wonder what happens when we compare nominal wages to average nominal shelter prices - as you can see, they track together since Q1 2021, except for the past few quarters, in which admittedly shelter has outpaced wages. However, it's only one, admittedly large part of the basket, and this is urban rents which one imagines have risen faster than average. So all in all, not convinced.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAS2RS#0
you can expect to pay 2x or more your current mortgage on a comparable home
This number is an exaggeration, but aside from that look at this graph. The increase is clearly well underway pre-Biden. This has nothing to do with Bidenomics. Once again, if you want to blame someone blame NIMBYs.
Edit; just realised I put the wrong graph in and I've lost the right one. But the rent one proves enough I think. Unless this is a statement about interest rate increases, in which case ok but 'I think the government is running too contractionary a monetary policy' is sort of directly at odds with 'I think inflation is too high and it's the government's fault'.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
lived experience
Well it's good that you said the term for me, because any 'lived experience' argument would get short shrift here if someone tried to use it on literally any other issue. But because this is an opportunity to shit on Democrats/the left nobody feels the need to have falsifiable beliefs anymore.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
This doesn't really address the original arguments in the post. If this is the explanation, then why are ratings of 'am I personally doing well economically' high? The puzzling thing is the discrepancy, this explanation does not address.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
complaints are never addressed.
And a good thing too that they never will be, deflation is bad.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Look at your own damn graph! The precipitous fall in debt shown on the second graph comes in... 2008. Does this not perhaps tell us that taking rising debt as a measure of a bad economy is not a good idea?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Pretty much any measure of inflation is coming down at the moment, and is approaching normal levels. And most importantly, wages are rising even faster.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
("affordable" used cars aren't a thing anymore),
Not sure what you mean by affordable, but they very much are. Just go on the internet and you can find used cars in working order which do good MPG for pretty damn cheap. Sure, most of them might be on the older side and a bit scratched, but that's hardly that important.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
You may well be poorer than you were three years ago. Most people are not - incidentally, much, certainly more than normal, of the wage growth of the recent period has gone to lower income workers, which perhaps indicates why this discourse of a bad economy is tolerated despite the evidence to the contrary. Not sure what else to tell you is that, surprisingly, number continue to the best means of measuring things.
There is no way anyone on this forum would tolerate for a second this kind of 'lived experience' rhetoric if it was about, say, racism.
I was never suggesting that real wages are the only measure of a healthy society and contended citizenry. Only that it's superior than ECI is making the general assessment of whether Americans are doing better or worse than they were X months/years ago.
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