This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Completely uninformed speculation, but could it just be a holdover from when inflation was extremely high? Cost of living went up faster than many could adjust to; they never got used to it. And it's still going up! The fact that people don't notice the deceleration could be attributed to confirmation bias. Whenever they notice that something has gone up in price, it's "See, the prices really are going up still! And they would have me believe I'm imagining things." They're probably better at noticing price increases now too, anecdotally quite a few people in my circles track them more deliberately than before.
It's similar to how critics of the establishment sometimes allege that announcements that "Inflation has gone down" are misleading. I personally am not misled, but a small part of me might be unconsciously translating "Inflation has gone down" to "Inflation is under control", which it doesn't feel like it is, because prices still seem unreasonably high.
As for why we would be especially prone now to such a post-inflation vibecession, maybe it has something to do with the fact that millennials, who have outsize influence on the vibe economy (on social media), saw the highest inflation rates of their lifetimes through most of 2021, all of 2022, and the first half of 2023, and at least through the remainder of 2023 inflation stayed well above what they'd typically experienced in the preceding 15 years.
I think one thing about inflation that I don't see people factoring in is that the wage growth that is usually a part of it usually lags behind. But another part is that it usually doesn't just happen for free. It doesn't happen that your boss one day up and decides to give you a 10% raise unprompted—especially if you are highly replaceable. So the everyman experiences inflation in a much more tactile way. It isn't the case that the growth of their savings slows as the appreciation of their assets quickens and it all kind of vaguely evens out with plenty of liquid lubricant to ease the whole thing, like it does for someone like me.
To the guy working retail, inflation is that months-long period of time where everything gets prohibitively expensive and they either have to fight their boss for a sizeable raise they probably won't get and then go looking for a better job where at best they have to spend months of extra effort (of which they likely do not have in large supply) relearning a new job and settling into new routines only to at best vaguely catch up to where they were before.
This, to put it simply, sucks—and it's likely the case based on the bad vibes that this adjustment period isn't over. It also may very well follow a resentment period. I don't know where stuff like this would show up in highly coarse macroeconomic numbers, and my guess is that it probably doesn't.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, the context window for inflation is pretty long.
The yogurt I like went from $1.29 pre-Covid to $1.49 to $1.69 to $1.89 and then finally $2.29. At some point I might accept that $2.29 is the new price. But it's going to be a few years.
At this rate we'll all be millionaires soon!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link