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Political apparatchiks have an insular and provincial view of the American electorate based mostly on hearsay and things they learned from their political science courses. They aren’t necessarily reading the room as it actually is, but seeing it through lenses that are decades out of date and thus either don’t work anymore (seriously, who’s watching political ads on TV, let alone basing their votes on them? Hence Trump was able to get around the media gatekeepers because he understood that people are much more engaged with social media and online platforms and online news). RFK understands that most of the concerns of the working classes below the PMC are much more rubber meets the road kinds of problems than the high minded “let’s build the future” vibes that the major parties are putting out. The political class is baffled by the fact that most people think the economy is bad and that inflation is a major problem. They keep jabbing at random graphs and saying “look the numbers are going in the right direction!” And the people look up from their kitchen tables where they’re trying to squeeze their budget even tighter because rent, groceries, and gasoline went up again unimpressed with those graphs. Trump and RFK get that. They also get that people want things like safer streets, schools focused on the basics, etc.
The political class isn't baffled. Maybe journalists are baffled because they're high on their own supply, but this isn't a case where the numbers say one thing but the feeling on the ground is different. The numbers are in fact mediocre. Unemployment is increasing. Job growth numbers were recently revised downward big-time -- and this was pretty much expected. Inflation was obviously terrible over the past few years and is still above that 2% benchmark. Yes, various flacks have been pushing the idea that the economy is doing just fine, but they're mostly not honestly wrong; they're lying. For the Democrats, this is their best strategy because they're stuck with responsibility for the economy.
Even this analysis has a problem in the fact that the numbers aren’t telling the full story here. The cost of necessary household goods, groceries and gasoline have gone up much more than that 2.9% and because you feel the effects of this very strongly because it’s directly impacting QOL even more than the 2.9% number would suggest. Eggs were $2.02 in 2019 and $2.86 in 2022. The graph doesn’t go to 2024, but going from $2 to nearly $3 is a big hit to the budget. (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/egg-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/). If you’re seeing those kinds of new prices, especially if rent and other bills are increasing faster than your paycheck, it’s not good.
And I just don’t see the party in power especially taking it seriously. Trump and RFK get it because they’re talking to ordinary people who struggle to afford things. I know lots of people who are constantly taking formerly normal things off the table. No more name brand stuff, staycation instead of vacation. No more meals out. Make clothes and shoes last longer. And as this continues, the appeal of candidates and media outlets that at least get it will be more popular. And unless the ruling elites start to get it, vibes don’t work as a bandaid. Kamala has a weakness hear because she doesn’t seem to actually get how the cost of living has changed since the Trump days.
Food at home stands at 21.1% higher than the start of the Biden administration, compared to 19.1% higher for the overall average; they've been converging lately, with food having been much higher. Gasoline is indeed much higher, 35.4% higher over Biden's term.
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I'm usually on team "the economy isn't really hat bad actually" but I'm baffled how people can misread the sentiment like this. It's obvious that what people who think inflation was too high want is for prices to go back down. the inflation number is a second order leading indicator. The previous years were 3.4%, 6.5% and 7.0% so around 17% over 3 years. And spread unevenly among the indexes so there were items in the basket that stayed relatively flat and other items that saw much higher price hikes, human cognition is such that those price hikes are the main thing people notice and do feel like the kind of thing that ought to be able to be put back in the bottle.
The leading indicators of how the economy is going to feel in the future have done decently over the last 6 months is just not really a compelling argument.
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So, as usual I'm somewhat limited in what I can back up with my own to eyes from where I sit, but what do you make of gimmicks like this?
CPI has fudge factors. Larry Summers reconstructed the CPI used in the late 70s and found inflation was twice as much as reported.
Now maybe those fudge factors are right or maybe they are wrong. But it isn’t like CPI is the gospel truth. And the government has an incentive to understate inflation.
Just to address the fudge factor, I think economists overstate the utility enhancements of new products. For example, the phone I am using is much more technically competent compared to what I used ten years ago. But I’m not sure it brings me any more utility. Arguably it brings me less utility!
But those are hard claims to value.
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Well, I'll just say that if people see their bills go 3x you're going to have a hard time convincing them inflation is fine even if by some statistical vodoo you can get the numbers to show 3%.
Since I'm not American my only two options are to go with the official numbers or give some credence to other people's subjective reports. At the end of the day this is a purely intellectual exercise for me.
I think you're making a mistake by saying this is political. Haven't surveys been showing pretty handy majorities concerned about inflation?
What it amounts to is that we had some very shitty economic years, with year-over-year inflation hitting almost 9% in 2022. And an incomplete recovery. The economy isn't terrible now, it's merely mediocre, but people don't react only to the past year, particularly with inflation. And for unemployment, the trend is getting worse, which people also react to.
So the economy is not good now. Unemployment is getting worse; it's similar to the Trump years but trending the wrong direction. Inflation is higher than the Trump years, and price levels are enormously higher because of earlier high inflation. Real GDP growth seem OK, but real median wage growth (which is a lot closer to the individual) is lower than the Trump years. Sentiment is explainable by the numbers; you can slice and dice the numbers to make that look not true, but you have to know that's what you're doing.
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https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ECONOMY/SENTIMENT-POLITICS/gkvlgqjzxpb/
Consumer sentiment being politically motivated is, itself, at this point a well measured statistic. ((Sorry for the awful graph but I think you can figure it out))
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I literally put the price tags on the shelf every week, and I strongly dislike being gaslit with the same tactics that were used for "it's just a stutter, you're a crazy conspiracy theorist"
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Nobody's comparing to all years since 1990. They're comparing either to the Trump years, or at least to the post-GFC years. Unemployment was declining from the end of the GFC to Covid. Now it's rising. Inflation remains higher than any pre-Covid time later than 2011. Real wages are roughly flat.
Picking longer timeframes to make things look better doesn't fool anyone who doesn't want to be fooled.
We're talking about an election campaign here; the comparison is obvious.
The averages obscure the fact that the trend was downward then and upward now.
2.92% is considerably worse than 2.07%, particularly considering what immediately preceded that 2.92%.
I've presented my case.
The difference between 2 and 3 is 50%. So inflation, if you believe the CPI, was during the best time for Harris 50% worse compared to the average period Nybbler pointed out.
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Wait for the downward revision…
The point was there were a lot of people predicting the downward revisions because there was a lot of other data suggesting the official numbers were garbage.
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Many here were dumbfounded. I argued the job numbers were obviously phony looking at 1) the divergence between establishment survey and household and 2) the unlikely amount of one sided downward revisions.
The response was “sometimes shit moves funny.”
You'll notice the market didn't react, so at least the people with money weren't surprised. And the job numbers (which are based on a model) weren't matching the unemployment numbers (based on a survey). Anyone fooled was either not paying enough attention or was fooling themselves.
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