Summary
President Joe Biden’s economic achievements—lowering inflation, reducing gas prices, creating jobs, and boosting manufacturing—are largely unrecognized by the public, despite his successes.
His tenure saw landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, and major infrastructure investments.
However, Biden’s approval ratings remain low, attributed to inflation backlash, weak communication, and a media landscape prone to misinformation.
Democrats face a “propaganda problem” rather than a policy failure, with many voters likely to credit incoming President Trump for Biden’s accomplishments due to partisan messaging and social media dynamics.
Because Americans are some of the stupidest people in the world.
What, the country with all the resources but still ranks 36th in literacy and 54% of their adults can’t even read above a 6th grade level?
And we thought the internet would solve or at least help this. Little did we know…
I feel like it’s simply widened the divide that was already present. There have always been people that care and people that don’t but now the people that care have the resources to do something about it and the people that don’t have easy access to that which reinforces their lack of caring.
Excellent summary of the internet’s potential for both help and harm. At this point, I’m not convinced the net result isn’t negative.
Hey man, we can post slurs online while taking a shit or look at porn any time. What else would we use the internet for?
Yep. I remember those days. I remember hearing Douglas Rushkoff [1] on a podcast or something about how he and others around his same age were seeing the dawn of the (privatized) Internet along with the flourishing of the rave scene, and so on and thought it had all this promise and it gave me such a huge amount of nostalgia.
Instead, we have things like Youtube influencers peddling some of the very worst things you’d want kids to watch and algorithms that push it to them.
[1] Jaron Lanier has written pretty well about some of the same aspects.
That’s why emojis are so popular.
As someone who turned off autocorrect fifteen years ago and cares about things like spelling, grammar, and compostion I can pretty confidently say that emojis have many valid uses. Text, especially quick text, is not very good at conveying subtle meaning in a clear way. Emojis though? They do amazingly, especially when it’s a face, because in normal conversations we have body language and even over the phone we can clearly convey a tone of voice. Body language is the emoji library of face-to-face communication.
TL;DR: emojis are popular because they’re highly effective.
¯\(ツ)/¯
But honestly, I admire the fact that you care about grammar, spelling, and such. This seems not very rare on Lemmy, but is otherwise a rare sight
i need this information to start being treated as the act of oppression it is rather than the “americans dumb lol” framing i see even in leftist spaces.
americans, and disproportionately minority americans, are being intentionally refused education in the same way they are refused medical care—in service of cost cutting and privatization interests rather than public wellbeing and economic wellness.
Lee Atwater full interview told the real reason for the dumbing down of America. Two younger family members went through four years of prestigious private universities, and neither had ever read classic literature, let alone discuss main themes and philosophical implications, which is sad, since Shakespeare still addresses basic and timeless western human conditions, and I daresay the reach may be broader than that.
i think there’s a bit more to the story than that but sure haha
edit: looked him up and he was an adviser to reagan? ew.
Idk if this is the same guy, but iirc someone did an interview tell-all where they basically came clean and admitted to all the fucked up shit they helped their administration do.
So yeah, undoubtedly ew, but I’m guessing that’s what they’re talking about.
54%?? Yikes.
By design. About a century ago, Rockefeller turned the public school system into a mindless factory worker production machine. Republicans have been reducing funding for decades since.
They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines. College tuition paywalls real education. As AI improves, the bar lowers further. Public schools will be continually defunded or converted to a voucher system in order to exclude even more citizens.
Republicans decided back in the late 70s and early 80s that the public was too educated (and too hard to control) so they decided to do something about it. 45y of slashed education funding and standards later here we are.
They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines.
Nothing new. Jim & Jesse even did a song about it years ago.
The company owned the houses And the company owned the grammar school You’ll never see an educated cotton mill man They figure you don’t need to learn Anything but how to earn
The money that you pay upon demand To the general store they own Or else they’ll take away your home And give it to some other homeless Cotton mill man
Can you elaborate on what Rockefeller did? Never heard that before
Rockefeller worked with the General Education Board to reshape education to be vocational. He also pushed for the duration of the school day to be extended to eight hours, for early exposure and adoption of the standard work day.
Very interesting. Surely we can trust our current crop of billionaires to do better for society!
Fun fact, the average American public school education doesn’t include critical thinking skills in the language curriculum. You either get your introduction to this in AP English (if you’re a high scoring highschooler) or during your first year of college/university.
It’s mind blowing how many people can’t pick apart a given piece of media and think about what message it conveys and why it conveys it.
So yeah, Americans are ripe for manipulation.
I think not stressing critical thinking skills is not a bug, but a feature, of schools that were designed to crank out factory workers.
It’s sheer lunacy in today’s world, but it also happens to be a feature for the qon/Republican agenda.
It’s sheer lunacy in today’s world, but it also happens to be a feature for the qon/Republican agenda.
Redundant statements are redundant.
That’s the result of the Republicans fucking over education in this country for the past 50 years.
I’m sorry to have to upvote that.
I’m American and have to agree with it; it might be because I’m stupid though.
‘am I actually stupid?’
and like 90% of our media is owned or controlled by republicans.
The media that they choose to consume is the problem. It plays down the accomplishments of “the enemy” and plays up the hardships and failures like “rampant illegals” and constantly rising food prices. I blame “stupid Americans” less than I blame manipulative billionaires that control media consumption.
I hate to hear this myself but there’s a global rebuke against incumbents of all shapes and sizes literally everywhere, in response to inflation.
So by definition, everyone is stupid in countries that have rebounded well because they’re doing the same.
That’s an understatement. Source: Live in America.
Stupid and proud of it.
The issue with politics is that you don’t just have to address a problem, you also need to publicize what you did.
Maybe the dems did effectively address some problems, but they did a poor PR jobs out of it.
Outrageous lies are what make the news.
Yeah, somehow trump doesn’t have a credibility problem despite being a pathological liar and I don’t think it was possible for the democrats to effectively counter that when he’s not being held accountable. We need live fact checking in debates and he needs to be publicly called out every time he lies, but then he just won’t agree to the debate and will go hold a town hall on Fox News.
He does have a credibility problem, AND is a liar. His base doesn’t care. People idolize celebrities, musicians, even models. I feel like this is the first time I’ve seen people swoon this hard over a politician, and it blows other fandoms away in fealty and dedication.
I agree that he has no credibility, but can it really be considered a problem for him if his base outright refuses to hold him accountable for lying through his teeth whenever he opens his mouth? They don’t care what he does, so his credibility is not a problem for them (it certainly is for me though).
It’s high time the Dems stooped to this level. That and promote ragebait podcasts pushing their agenda. It’s sad, but you can’t argue with the results.
So many of the problems Dems want to address are so easy to sell too. It’s like they don’t actually want to win or achieve anything, they’re content to be a permanent minority opposition party that continues fundraising and campaigning ad infinitum.
Sadly yes…
Dems quietly fix things, Repubs loudly claim credit, even when they actively obstructed the fixes. There are uncountable examples of Republican legislators patting themselves on the back for getting legislation passed that actively helps their constituents, when in fact they voted against it. It passed despite them, not because of them, but they still campaign on it and win because of it. Meanwhile Democrats are generally helpful and honest and get the shaft because they don’t call out that bullshit and claim their wins as they should.
It’s also true in many tertiary jobs too, communication of what you made matters at least as much as what you made.
For sure, this is a hard lesson learned for me - it doesn’t matter if you’re doing good work if no one knows about it, so if you want to be rewarded for your work you’ll have to spend less time actually doing it and more time doing marketing for what you’ve done.
They can’t really trumpet their victories because they are far short of what their base actually wanted. Dems leadership would be out there celebrating the crumbs they acquired from the oligarchy while the base wanted a full meal. The Democratic party positioned itself in a lose lose situation. Either they go all in one what the base wants and win elections, but the Bidens and Nancy Pelosi’s of the party won’t get fat paydays from the donors. So they went with winning some elections by just being marginally better than the dumb nazi party. Not a both sides argument just a fact. If the Democrat leadership actually put a full left-facing platform and candidate they would actually have to achieve some outcomes they fundamentally don’t agree with. Dem leadership doesn’t believe in less war, less imprisonment, less pollution, or more education, more health care, more compassion. They just don’t. So they’ve just stopped even lying about wanting those things that way they aren’t even expected to bring about change.
Messaging has always been a big problem for the Democratic Party. Unlike the GOP, they are a “big tent”, so many points of view abound. There’s just no comparison to the organized, disciplined, well-funded messaging of right-wing media…
If they had actually fixed any problems, they wouldn’t need to “publicize” it.
Yeah this “dems bad at messaging” line of excuses is really tired to me. If things are going good in your life you don’t need to be told by someone that it is, you just know it in your bones.
Conversely all the “messaging” in the world won’t convince us things are going fine when our daily life experience is the opposite.
Dems aren’t bad at messaging because they are bad at getting the word out, it’s that decades of messaging without follow-through with measurable, noticeable increase in quality of our daily lives means we don’t believe the message anymore
If you’re someone’s boss and all they ever do when they fuck up is blame others for their failures and when you bring em in your office they hand you a 10 page document explaining all the work they tried to do, pedantically explaining how you’re and idiot that “just doesn’t see all the work they’ve looked into.” ?? You’d fuckin fire em right?
Inflation is really one of these things where people find out much later that the problem is fixed. For instance, Biden inherited a high inflation regime which baked in about 10-15 percent price increases before he could do anything to stop it. By the time he brought inflation down, prices had increased by something like 20 percent. Inflation has now been brought down to 2-3 percent, but most people will simply observe that prices are 20 percent higher than when he started.
Another big issue is counterfactual reasoning. US inflation was lower than in other developed countries, but people only notice that it was higher than they were used to.
In a nutshell, policy is really complicated. You do not feel the consequences of good policy in your bones.
You do not feel the consequences of good policy in your bones.
I am certain this bit here is where we may just have to disagree my friend. It has been so long since we have had bones-deep good policy we have forgotten what that might feel like.
Regardless, this is a lesson the DNC must learn, not you or i. All the 10 page excuses are meaningless if you first aren’t elected to push em, and that’s where they are right now
Yes indeed call me a skeptic, but I do not trust my bones (or any other body part that’s not my brain). Bones and their feelings are the target of charlatans and populist (like Trump).
If things are going good in your life you don’t need to be told by someone that it is, you just know it in your bones.
That simply isn’t true. The right propagandizes doom and gloom to their base every chance they get. Many conservatives live very privileged lives and still convince themselves that the country and their way of life is on the edge of oblivion. The wider that propaganda spreads, the harder it is to get anyone to see any of the actual progress in the world.
That simply isn’t true.
It is. All the “doom and gloom” rings hollow on satisfied ears. There must be a real problems people see daily. False reasons for those very real problems are where right wing propaganda does its work
What other problems would you have liked them to solve?
Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies and used the FTC to implement things like click-to-cancel, and invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing. Oh and he also tried to pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism this century and everyone is upset he didn’t magically fix everything all at once.
Bidens problem has been one of messaging. He didn’t know how to connect with the voters to get them to understand all the things he was doing.
I hoped that 2016 was a fluke, that Americans weren’t that dumb and hateful but rather we got caught unprepared by a personality we didn’t expect to run for president.
I hoped that 2020 was the true thoughts of Americans, that the insurrection represented the dying grasp of an extreme minority.
I don’t think Trump stole the 2024 election. I think it proved that yes, this is America. Whether you think America has changed into this or was always this, it doesn’t take away the fact that a majority of Americans will believe anything so long as it makes them hate. Good news doesn’t drive votes. Fear and anger drives votes.
I’ve tried so much to try and be a middle of the road voice of reason and moderation with my friends and family. I didn’t want to be a knee jerk conspiracy theorist, I was always patient with people, listened to them, told them the places they were right, and asked them questions hoping they would ask themselves. I’d say “be like Mr. Rogers. And if someone isn’t acting like Mr. Rogers, be like Mr. Rogers.”
It started to hit when a friend of mine who is very left wing told me that people with college degrees are brainwashed by the deep state. I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
I ordered another drink and changed the subject but it hurt. Now I know she is representative of a majority of Americans. I’m worried civil war is all but inevitable when facts just don’t matter as much as anger.
Edit: Lord grant me the strength to be like Mr. Rogers in this comment section.
Apparently, America’s economy seems to be driven only by fear or greed
I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
All due respect, you are literally brainwashed by the deep state. Universities are institutions of the wealthy; of the status quo. They exist to train the managerial class of capitalist society. The ideas that rule are the ideas of the rulers. You specifically took as your major the mainline ideology of that ruling class. The only way you could have done yourself a worse service in that regard is if you took economics.
With all due respect youre simping or even more brainwashed than the people you are trying to argue with. You’re either paid or played, and have enough time to respond to everyone here.
Why is it that the “deep state elite” universities always have such liberal voters? Why do liberals and deep state want to expand social welfare programs? Doesn’t seem very “wealthy brainwashing”.
Most rulers didn’t take polysci, they got law degrees. Or bankrupted casinos.
Why is it that the “deep state elite” universities always have such liberal voters?
Because liberalism is the governing ideology of capitalism and has been since the 1700’s. The problem you’re having is that your definitions of words is mush.
Why do liberals and deep state want to expand social welfare programs?
Can you please observe reality? When since LBJ has that been the case? When, since the Soviet Union was a rising threat, has the capitalist state done anything but austerity, union busting, and violently suppressing popular movements?
Doesn’t seem very “wealthy brainwashing”.
“I’m immune to propaganda”
Most rulers didn’t take polysci, they got law degrees.
Oh heavens, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about the law, which is completely free of the entrenched governing ideology.
Perhaps you’d like to go to bat for Sociology next? Just because I didn’t mention a major by name doesn’t mean it’s exempt from institutional indoctrination.
Idk if any of this will help, but you’re very actively involved in the discussions and I encourage that. So, as a friendly commenter who sides with your disgruntlement of the situation, I thought I would at least point out the things that I understand but don’t 100% agree with.
When it comes to degrees, I agree that it is a “machine” (education as a whole) that produces desired individuals to fulfill the roles it has established as “important/valuable”. Everyone can disagree on the opinion of what a “valuable” society is, but I digress. You have to understand that knowledge comes from experience and research though (just like you’ve probably done, just as an individual and not mandated by a course). The most succulent of critiques can come from someone deeply established in a field, kinda like how Bernie Sanders made comments about the DNC after the election and it forced the media and all of us to discuss it and the message.
The truly dangerous ones are those who can fully understand how flawed a system is, but realize they must play it to their advantage to get what they “want” out of life. I just can’t demonize the whole entire system when the people I’ve learned and read from were birthed from that experience. A lot of people realize after or during pursuing a degree, just how bad it is so it’s some kind of awareness for a certain %. Now if they’ve fully embraced the system, you just have to find the examples they choose to ignore in their flawed beliefs.
I also don’t know how effective the “per quote response” is. I’ve been guilty of it in the past, but honestly I think people just dont really read the “tit-for-tat” style comment replies (I find myself scrolling past if it’s too long). If they see one thing they disagree with then they downvote the entire comment. I try to hit the points I want but change the length and style of response in regards to how effective I can actually communicate to the person.
I’m just happy that a little bit of sanity has returned to Lemmy (obvious from the changes in what got downvoted/upvoted or discussed heavily). It felt like everyone just completely drank the kool-aid so we could “save Democracytm!!” Unfortunately, I think people sold all the common-sense realty in their head for the Blue Superhero fallacy that could save us all from all the boogeymen. It will take time for some to let their head critique things effectively, some will never come back to reality. It’s one of the reasons I just asked a simple question instead of critiquing their entire argument (I think his entire premise is flawed, and happily skewed so Biden is still a hero in their eyes). It’s mostly there so other readers can see it and makes them pause for a second instead of just “believing” it’s true. If the OP comes back with a sane comment I’ll engage in a discussion, but we see from the response to me they don’t want to discuss facts so I’m not engaging further.
If we’re going to have the superheroes, they’re going to be us, so I guess it depends how badly we want them.
I’m ootl, what monopolies got broken up? I tried looking it up but it’s not returning results.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)
The DOJ filed another suit against them for advertising practices also.
Oh so you lied.
He sued a monopoly
And (after reading) not even over being a monopoly
The user you replied to asked what monopoly got broken up. You deliberately talked past that question. You’re still lying.
deleted by creator
“Your specific points don’t matter to me because I can’t read”
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He could have ran on it more. Trump understands the art of putting his name on the checks.
Call Americans stupid, and we are, but I wish the party that was helping people was a bit more grandious and better about messaging then they are.
It’s also pretty hard to point to things and go “see? remember the thing we did 10 years ago? this is the effect it had!”
Many of Biden’s policies will come to fruition during the next term and Trump will falsely claim responsibility because he can point to it right away.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies
The election is over you can stop lying
implement things like click-to-cancel
Oh fuck yeah an unsubscribe link on spam emails! America is back, baby!
O BEAUTIFUL FOR SPACIOUS SKIES
invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing
I said you could stop lying. Fucking infuriating how cynical liberals are when constructing their fantasy world.
You’re taking credit for the bad bill that was supposed to be passed along with the good bill.
Except the point of separating them was to only pass the bad bill. (remember when Elizabeth “Redface” Warren RAN on pulling this shit on you?)
So now you take the full price tag of the bad bill and pretend it was for good things. Remember what we called it when we called the other bill (again, the fucking ghouls, with maximum cynicism) ‘the green new deal’? We called it the ‘toll road bill’.
You’re warping reality and history.
Oh and he also tried to
Love when liberals take credit for not doing good things, Remember when they “tried” to raise the minimum wage but were stonewalled by an instantly fire-able employee?
pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Again, as was said to you thousands of times but you were too obstinate to acknowledge: he didn’t need congress. He could have literally thrown away the paperwork if he wanted to. Somehow the previous president had the authority to halt the loans but when the senator from MBNA took office that power suddenly didn’t exist?
You know better and you’re pretending not to.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism
Because you want to live in a fantasy world that would shatter upon literally a single fact being thrown into it
You seem… stable…
This by the way is a perfect example of how the democratic party never learns from its mistakes. Because the adults are no longer in the room and the children believe all the lies they were told growing up
Same thing happened with the republicans, just 20 years ago
And people with exactly that mindset voted for Trump, despite his vowing to make everything worse with every single policy stance.
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Raise your taxes while cutting for the Rich (AGAIN)
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Tariffing many sectors and countries, making goods more expensive and destroying US manufacturing
You forgot deporting people
Actually no, Trump deported and convicted less than Obama and Biden. Trump’s removal of holding time limitations for women and children and his removal of ICE’s criminal only focus meant resources were used up and almost always wasted.
Trump is ineffective at everything he claims to be good for.
Are we talking about what he did last time or what he said he’s going to do this time?
His plans supposedly haven’t changed, just a repeat of last time but more and worse.
He even already tried to overturn the election once before when he sent 84 fake electors to 7 states in 2020.
He has repeatedly told us he is going to do everything he did before, again.
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Would you be willing to donate $10 to Amazon?
I mean, not really, but it’s only $10 so sure.
Thank you, your $10/week subscription has been confirmed. Please call 10AM-3PM Eastern to upgrade or cancel your payment. We apologize in advance for the unusually long wait times.
I am so God damn sick of reading articles from pundits who think they can just numbers-and-statistics away people’s financial experience. Listen to this shit:
America has recovered more quickly and more completely than almost any comparable country. As The Economist put it, “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” Real wages have risen fastest for those at the bottom of the income scale. Today, inflation is at 2.4%, compared with the 9.1% peak in June 2022. The fight against rising prices has essentially been won.
But few in the electorate seem aware…
Wow, the electorate sounds like a bunch of dipshits. But just for the hell of it, let’s check their source for the wages of the bottom income scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Now, inflation was 19.2% during that period, but “real wage,” means, “wage adjusted for inflation,” so I guess the author is right. The lowest income earners got a raise during the Biden years. Guess the poor are a bunch of dipshits.
But which of Biden’s policies led to these increases in wages? Well, the Economic Policy Institute says:
Between 2019 and 2023, state-level minimum wage increases along with a tight labor market have translated into faster real wage growth for low-wage workers, particularly faster growth in states (and D.C.) that increased their minimum wage during this period.
So, it sounds like the wages went up because of a competitive labor market (which the Fed intentionally killed to combat inflation) and minimum wage increases at the state level, and that states that increased their minimum wages saw more of that growth than others. So, you could make an argument that Biden deserves little credit for this increase, but let’s not even worry about that. Let’s see look at the minimum wage by state.
The EPI has a handy Minimum Wage Tracker that color-codes states by their state minimum wage against the federal minimum wage. A quick glance shows you the states with the highest minimum wage are mostly states that went to Harris. But what’s really interesting is that, of the 7 key battleground states that Harris lost, 4 of them (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) have the same minimum wage as the federal minimum of $7.25, a starvation wage that hasn’t been raised since 2009. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that in more than half the key states Harris needed win saw the smallest share of that 13.2%, but did see prices increase by 19.2%.
Now, I’m not an economist, and I don’t have hours to research this shit, so it’s entirely possible that I’m missing a lot of nuance regarding cost of living and non-minimum wage increases in these states. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve already spent more time and energy examining why people might not feel good about the economy than the sneering chud that wrote this article. And I’ll end this tirade with one last quote from the EPI report he cited:
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
Young people have no hope of buying a house in my area.
In my neighborhood all the drug store shelves are bare (Rite Aid) and there’s soon to be only one grocery store to choose from (Kroger).
When I’m getting groceries the checkers are talking about how the store is going to close if the merger happens and they’ll all lose their jobs.
No ‘media’ lied to me and convinced me that the economy is wack. I see it every day.
What I’m not hearing in the media is recognition of working folks’ struggles. Failure to address this kept Dems home.
I’m really sorry to hear that. Would it help if I showed you a graph that shows the stock market is actually doing great?
The DNC wants to know your location and give you a strategic voter outreach job.
paul krugman did exactly that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV6kHBwT7bg
Huh. I’m generally wary of any group that has an Eye of Providence in their logo or uses the term, “New World Order,” but that was cathartic to watch.
unfortunately something like this is not posted by any other channel popular enough to come up on shitty youtube search.
the guy in the video is jose vega, he ran for congress as lrp candidate in nyd 15 and got about 2.5% vote.
here is more detailed video on a more apt channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK0FivR_B1A
Oh, haha, that’s much more reassuring. I assumed it was someone affiliated in the channel, and I was like, “Uh-oh, how long before this guy launches into an antisemitic conspiracy theory about lizard people?”
Whatever happened to Jerome, anyway?
this made me realise how depressing it is when even lunatic channels have more relevant content for working class than our msm with 24/7 peddling of gaslighting bs.
Jon Stewart just discussed some of this on The Weekly Show podcast with Heather Cox Richardson as guest. Discussing whether the metrics that define economic success are outdated and also how poorly any of Biden’s “successes” were shared by his White House and the media. It was all framed much better than this article.
I once heard some comedian or podcaster say something to the effect of, “The media keeps telling people that the economy is doing well because of the stock market, but for most of us you could replace the words, “stock market,” with, “rich people’s feelings graph,” and it would mean about the same thing.” I think that a lot. Also, I didn’t know John Stewart had a podcast for the Daily Show, thanks for the heads up on that!
The stock market is 80% owned by 10% of people… Better stock market= more profits for rich… Those profits come from our labor… The better “the economy” is doing, the worse the workers are doing. The markets went through the roof for Trump because the rich know he’s going to let them rape and pillage without constraints of any kind.
Yeah, and here’s the trick no one talks about; since the 80s, businesses (with the help of the government) started killing off pensions in favor of 401Ks. That effectively meant the middle and lower class, who are by far minority holders in the stock market, still need it to perform well, otherwise their retirement savings will be wiped out. So they’ve basically created a system where an entire generation is incentivized to allow the 1% to be as opportunistic and greedy as they like, because the crumbs they’re going to retire on are directly tied to the success of the wealthiest Americans.
Well said
401k is superior in almost every way though. The big downside is there isn’t a mandatory contribution. Pensions forced an employee to work in the same company for 20-30 years and hope they never got acquired or went bankrupt. Then they could retire and still hope the company never went bankrupt, because the pension funds were universally underfunded. Lots of people faced their pension being reduced by a significant amount after they’ve been retired for a decade or so.
A 401k gives the worker the power to move without jeopardizing their retirement. It allows the default death benefit to be 100% transferable to another. It’s not a surprise when a 401k runs out of money. All you have to do is fill out a form when you start a job to put a reasonable percentage into it.
Huh, I didn’t think about how the 401K is transferable, but it makes sense that it’s a plus; it’s how everyone wishes health insurance worked. But does it matter if you move companies if your next employer offers a similar pension? Wouldn’t that mean you just had two smaller monthly payments vs. one larger one? And weren’t pensions protected from bankruptcy by Employee Retirement Income Security Act? I thought it was because of that Act that companies justified phasing out their pensions for 401Ks.
Sorry for all the questions. Pensions are sort of an artifact of a lost time for folks my age, but most folks that I know that are my parents’ age seem to prefer the stability of their pensions to 401Ks.
Pensions are protected from bankruptcy, but they aren’t guaranteed the same payment. There are maximum payments and it’s complicated to give an accurate number, because it depends on the type of pension plan, the age of retirement, years of service, and generally doesn’t honor bonuses like early buyouts.
Pensions have a number of multipliers that make job hopping less ideal. The formula is roughly percentVested x accrualRate x yearsOfService x maxSalary. Vesting hits 100% at 5-7 years, accrual is roughly 1.5% depending on employer. By leaving early you take big hits on the vesting and max salary multipliers that cause it to be a lot less money. One job for 30 year with 100k mak salary would be a 45k pension. 3 jobs, 10 years each with 50k, 75k, and 100k max salaries is only a 33,750 pension.
As soon as something is adopted as a metric it’s divorced from the reality of the market. It’s the nature of the modern soothsaying we call economics.
I don’t want to listen to what a union buster has to say about people’s economic situation
I was just watching an interview last night. Maybe it was 60 Minutes, but they were talking to a woman about this. They told basically all this same info - inflation going down, gas going down, jobs increased, wages increased. The woman said, “I didn’t see any of that. My wage didn’t go up.” No idea what she does, if her job is eligible for a wage increase, but basically she was saying none of that impacted her personally or positively, so she voted for Trump.
Exactly. Democrats think that if they just tell people positive metrics enough times, these feelings will go away. They won’t. You have to look at them and say, “You’re right, things still suck for you. Things got better for a lot of people, but people like you didn’t see much of that because of [X] and [Y]. Here’s how we’re going to fix it.” Otherwise, they’re going to listen to anyone who tells them their problem is real, even a racist xenophobe that blames migrants for everything.
I think to some extent, Kamala said exactly how she planned on making things better. Trump didn’t say anything, and as usual had no plans. He still got elected. I saw an article last week about Trump saying not saying what his plans were helped him. What sense does that make, when a guy like Trump, who’s never had a plan or a rational suggestion to anything (“let’s nuke the hurricanes!”), can not say a damn thing about what his policies would be and still get elected? That tells me the Dems were drastically out of touch.
Dem technocrats are drastically out of touch and don’t realize how much aggrivement towards the status quo and desire for change there really is. Trump doesn’t do policy and it doesn’t matter because the people don’t care about policy either. We live in turbulent times, and there’s a groundswell of support for a nebulous ‘change’. Trump positioned himself as anti-establishment, persecuted, and radical in a way that was appealing enough to retain his voter base. Meanwhile, Harris’ institutionalism, focus on incrementalist policy, and boring rhetoric failed to galvanize support.
Spot on. When times are bad (whether actually true, or simply perceived that way) it should come as no surprise that the people voted for a change. Trump is the embodiment of “anti-establishment”. Progressives must take back the party from Neoliberals.
To some extent, yes, but it wasn’t the forefront of her campaign. She talked about greedflation and had a plan for price-capping groceries, but they should have been attacking this point from 2022, not the tail end of the campaign. She was far more focused on middle-class issues and an, “opportunity economy,” than the dire financial conditions of the working class.
As you rightfully note the relationship between federal economic policy and economic outcomes is complex and it’s not easy to tease apart cause and effect. Having said that Democrats have through history presided over MUCH better economic outcomes than Republicans, and Biden is no exception. Yet, voters consistently believe that (generic) Republicans are better for the economy than generic Democrats.
Democrats are broadly better, but they’ve created a lot of the conditions that are killing the working class now. Bill Clinton was the one who passed NAFTA, which was the biggest blow to manufacturing jobs in American history. Obama had a similar trade deal, the TPP, which most likely would have been equally devastating had Trump not killed it (which probably had more to do with his obsession with tearing down the achievements of the first black President than helping workers, but I doubt that mattered to the TPP’s opponents).
Even when Democrats aren’t directly the result of harm, their solutions are no longer the grand, ambitious plans from their New Deal glory days. Take Obama’s promises to create a foreclosure prevention fund, which got whittled down to HAMP, a mostly impotent refinance scheme that seems to have been designed more for banks than borrowers (despite large Democratic majorities). I’m sure it was better than whatever the Republicans would have come up with, but I doubt that mattered to people who were two months behind on an underwater mortgage.
Biden and Harris started with a strong vision, but they couldn’t get it through Congress and instead pivoted to telling people that actually, they were doing great, and the economy was good again. That will always be a losing message with people who aren’t doing well. The Democrats need to double down on a progressive message that does not compromise, with bold plans like a $20 minimum wage indexed to inflation, Medicare for All, and UBI. If they keep tinkering around the margins and giving people statistics when they say they’re doing poorly financially they will never be relevant again.
I agree with you that the Biden/Harris approach to economics is dead. There are virtually no voters left in the middle, so shifting to the right doesn’t help the Democrats like it used to. I also think the policies you propose will help a significant share of voters.
The bigger issue is communication. If these policies aid a significant part of voters, how can we convince them of this in the face of the right wing propaganda machine? That battle is as important as the policy platform, and it’s a very tricky challenge to overcome.
Another worry I have is that the Trump government will be more evil and less like a shitshow than his previous stint. Unfortunately, I think many voters will get behind evil stuff like rounding up migrants if it’s done in an organised manner.
I think you’re right about Trump. I think he was a shit-show last time because he didn’t expect to (or, in my opinion, want to) win, and now he has an apparatus that is set up to enable him. I’m very afraid of what a competent fascist movement looks like.
Communication is certainly a problem for Democrats; Trump was able to talk for 3 hours on Rogan, while Harris went on Call Her Daddy for less than s full episode and told a well rehearsed anecdote I’d heard twice before. They’re too obsessed with legacy media and polish to sound authentic. But the platform has to come first. If they fix every problem with this campaign’s communication in 2028 but run another middle-class opportunity platform with Mark Cuban, they will lose.
The bigger issue is communication. If these policies aid a significant part of voters, how can we convince them of this in the face of the right wing propaganda machine? That battle is as important as the policy platform, and it’s a very tricky challenge to overcome.
I think a big part of this comes down to the messenger here. The Democrats need a charismatic individual who is credible to voters. Unfortunately, they’ve only got Bernie to fit the bill for someone who had half a chance at being electable, and the DNC did everything they could to sideline him whenever they had the chance. Instead, they trot out establishment, corporatist party members and policy wonks to get the messaging out, or do absolutely baffling stuff, like sending Ritchie Torres to campaign for them in Michigan. It’s bad enough to send out bland candidates who may have a less than stellar recording for really fighting for the working class and holding the line to get them what they need, but for a key swing state with a huge Muslim population that has signalled many times they may not vote for Harris because she hasn’t indicated any shift in her policy on Gaza, you send the most rabidly Zionist, anti-Palestinian Rep you could pull from the Democratic bench? That’s an absolute own goal. It’s like sending a rep named Che Castro that tweets constantly on ending the embargo on Cuba to stump for you in Miami, then wondering why Cuban voters went to the other guy.
Unfortunately, I think it will really take a while for the Democrats to dig themselves out of this hole and have someone with a record long enough for people to find them credible when they say they’re going to fight for the working class as the rule, rather than the pleasantly surprising exception.
Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we’re talking about real wages?
Your point is taken that Biden is not primarily responsible for the wage increases during his time in office, but he doesn’t have the power as president to unilaterally increase the federal minimum wage. He did sign an executive order increasing the minimum wage for federal employees and contractors which, while not having a significant impact on the wage growth nationally, is a step in the right direction.
I realize your point is more that the author of this piece is a prick and he didn’t spend enough time trying to understand the bad economic vibes coming from the working class, but it seems like the Biden administration did a relatively good job guiding the economy through post COVID turmoil, which he (… And Harris by proxy) did not get any credit for. Would you agree with that?
I’m a huge fan of “sneering chud” by the way. Will be forcing that into a conversation soon.
Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we’re talking about real wages?
Mostly so I could point out in the second to last paragraph that if you weren’t on the receiving end of that 13% wage increase (as I strongly suspect is the case for many people in GA, PA, WI and NC), then you took a 20% price increase to the face.
I think the Biden administration did its best to push through the progressive platform that he ran on, and I think that they probably don’t get enough credit for that. I think Biden should have been more aggressive with Congress, especially in calling for the abolition of the filibuster early on, but I appreciate how much he did (or tried to do) through executive action. He was especially good on student loans, I honestly expected him to give up on that, but he didn’t.
However, I think both Harris and Biden lost sight of the left-wing populist message that won them the White House in 2020. Harris especially pivoted towards a centrist, “economic opportunity,” platform instead of a, “here’s how government will help you,” message. I think small business tax credits and first-time homebuyer’s assistance are pretty out of touch when you’re trying to win over people who can’t afford groceries. She had some policies that were more targeted at the working class, but they were not the centerpiece of the campaign like these middle-class focused proposals.
That being said, yeah, most of my rage here is being directed at the author of this piece. Glad you liked, “sneering chud,” I’m a little proud of that one.
Newspaper and politicians are never going to challenge capitalism.
Biden tells the sad paid for truth, Trump sells paid for lies.
Both won’t change that most American wages aren’t going up, prices are. Certainly won’t with tariff going to 60%.
Biden didn’t really do much for the average American. He could demanded higher wages, pushed for healthcare coverage, and investigated price hiking. And arrested Trump. He did some, but for a man who is currently a sitting duck who is above the law, he’s choosing the safest/“easiest for the rich” option as a presidential RBG.
Trump won’t do much, but will loudly shit out that he did, and his followers will eat it up and ask for more.
I will give Biden credit for trying. I expect him to pull an Obama and pivot to centrist policy the second he got into office, but he really tried to pass all the progressive things he ran it. He was just incredibly ineffective at it and basically wound up with a pretty standard (though very large) infrastructure bill that he wanted everyone to pretend was a huge progressive victory.
Honestly Democrat are absolutely horrible at talking to people.
I’ll be the first to admit, Biden did actually do a lot for workers but just like the leader of the painters union said, y’all fucking suck at telling people that.
I mean look at the rail workers strike, Biden stopped the rail workers strike and didn’t address one of the biggest things they were looking for, just to be treated like humans and have sick leave.
There was lots of talk about “doing this for the best of the nation”, which okay I could get behind, sure they got a wage increase but I did as shit could understand why rank and file would feel betrayed when they were asking additional to be treated as humans that get sick.
What I didn’t hear him or anyone say to them directly, that he was still going to work with the unions afterwards to get sick leave in. Why would you not say that at the same time as you announce your blocking the strike? Cost you nothing to say you have their back.
So then months later, with Biden administration support finally got the workers PTO but no one really knew about it because the moment was gone and honestly union leadership also did a shit job of getting that word out too.
It’s not the only thing but it certainly is a big factor in things.
Biden and the Dems saved the teamsters’ pensions against the GOP’s best efforts and it didn’t even earn them an endorsement from the teamsters’ union.
This was highly publicized, especially if you yourself were in the union
Internal polling of Teamsters members showed:
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In an electronic poll conducted after the Republican National Convention, 59.6% of rank-and-file Teamsters favored endorsing Trump, while 34% supported Harris.
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A more recent poll indicated a similar trend, with Teamsters backing Trump 58% to 31%
Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
Bingo.
Or scrolling their feeds. Or swiping. Depending on the age. Every single Democrat leader needs to see that statistic, so they can stop whining about how policy was their problem.
Democrats are messaging like it’s 1950. And hot take, but the only thing that elected Biden was COVID-19, only because it wedged itself into people’s lives like absolutely nothing else can.
Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
But I was told that Dems lose because they don’t have the backs of labor and the working class, and that if they just fixed that, they’d win elections???
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I agree with you for the most part. That being said I have tried to explain this point to multiple people and they don’t care that the Biden admin got the rail workers what they asked for. They insist that stopping the strike means Biden was anti union full stop even after the IBEW put out releases thanking the Biden admin. they also said it was just propaganda. It’s just as much about people not wanting to listen.
Workers were asking for 15 days of sick leave, Congress and Biden gave them 1 with the act that ended the strike. Later, the railroads continued negotiating with some of the unions and gave them four days of sick leave. People from the Biden administration were present for those conversations and take credit for that.
So, no, the Biden administration did not give the unions what they asked for, and yes they likely did do material harm to them by stopping that strike.
If they did nothing then why did the IBEW thank them for the effort? Yea they didn’t get everything they asked for, that’s how negotions work. The people that were effected thanked the Biden admin, why don’t you believe them? Also according to Reuters, most get 5 paid sick days + 2 convertibles.
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/
Because placating the egos of the people in power make sense, same reason Zelensky congratulated Trump on winning
I got my numbers on sick days from here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute?wprov=sfla1
Yeah. It’s called negotiating. You start at a number higher than what you’d be happy with, expecting to meet somewhere in the middle.
When a third party swoops into a negotiation and steals your leverage it has a significant impact on what that middle ends up being
They didn’t get what they wanted though. The points system still is in place that limits the ability to use leaves. The “sick leave” still required notice, so all it did was allow doctor visits to not take PTO, provided the worker could afford the points.
I can’t find a solid confirmation but it looks like as part of the law killing the strike and enacting the recommendations of the emergency board, the attendance rules creating points was vacated without further agreements from the unions. So from what I can tell, your statement is incorrect. I looked up the emergency board’s recommendations but I didn’t do a deep dive into the law to confirm. Link to the recommendations below.
https://nmb.gov/NMB_Application/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PEB-250-Report-and-Recommendations.pdf
Yeah, hence why I say that union leadership has to do some work here too.
I’ve worked with the machinists union during a statewide right to work ballot initiative to overturn the legislatures recently passed right to work bill.
So much conversation about how “we have to strike out down!” But at the same breath talk about voting Republican. Well that’s what they did, killed right to work, elected more Republicans to the state legislature.
Cue shocked Pikachu face when the people they voted in immediately submitted a bill to enact right to work.
I mean what the fuck is union leadership doing at that point when you can’t get your own members to not fuck themselves over?
One angle that might explain the lack of media coverage on a win for the working class against the interest of capital owners is that the media itself, at least the mainstream slice of it, is owned by the capitalist class.
MSM will cover things if they think it’ll bring in more ratings. You see it with how many news outlets are treating the upcoming Trump administration. For Cons, they’re banking on a viewer base that’ll be more interested in Trump coverage. For Dems, they’re banking on a viewer base that’ll be more hateful and agree of Trump coverage.
So when you have wins for the working class that Biden’s administration directly helped with, and when you have a media industry that just won’t cover it out of their own self-interest, you have to wonder if the administration will spend Americans’ on advertising or just keep it and move on.
One might say that the best time to do that advertising is during an election campaign though. And that begs the question as to why Biden nor Harris brought this up in their campaigns.
Might it be that those groups are also subject to the capitalist class?
Oh yeah, that was s give amount of PTO. 😶
Voters are pretty stupid. Seriously, the misinformation and willful ignorance on display is breathtaking.
…no.
The DNC brain trust thought they could get away with ignoring an absolutely fucking HUGE part of their base. And they were fucking WRECKED for it.
Trump got just about the same number of votes as he did in the last election. Harris got 11M less votes than Biden got. ELEVEN. MILLION. PEOPLE. STAYED THE FUCK HOME. BECAUSE THEY SAW THE ESTABLISHMENT CIRCLEJERK. AND HARRIS FUCKING LEANED INTO IT. AND IGNORED THE VERY FUCKING REAL LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS GETTING HOLLOWED OUT, AND THE LOWER CLASS CONTINUING TO GET CRUSHED TO DEATH.
And now we get to listen to pundits and DNC leadership and Biden admin people and Harris campaign people circlejerk themselves about how it wasn’t their fault, it was those goddamn progressives and the stupid Arab Americans who cared about Gaza too much.
Genuinely: fuck all the way off with that narrative. the Democratic Party snatched this defeat from the jaws of victory. There was a path to victory. They simply didn’t fucking take it.
The DNC is working for their rich donors and doing a pretty decent job for them. They shouldn’t act so surprised that people who aren’t benefiting from the economy don’t come out to support them.
Exactly, who thought it was a good idea to campaign with the fucking Cheneys???
The same people who thought it was a good idea to run Biden again
The same party that thought Biden, whose career goals were the mass proliferation of student loans AND the legislation around making them forgiveable/dischargeable almost impossible, was a great symbol of student loan forgiveness.
Yes they tried but i mean how long can you campaign on tried? Doesn’t matter because this election they didn’t and it showed.
I think the bigger picture to look at, rather than who doesn’t vote Dem, is to look at who didn’t vote period and ask why. Why are almost 200 million people choosing not to vote. Why did 280 million people either not vote/not vote Dem?
The GOP/Republican party have abandoned any attempts to govern decades ago and now simply want to rule. Until things like citizens United are repealed there’s no real way to fight through this because the waters are so muddy.
Nailed it
they raised over a billion dollars to make it happen… that’s just bad management
That too - how in the fuck is the campaign 20M in debt?
thank fuck there’s at least one other angry & correct person online
you don’t get to capitulate to donald trump’s racist violent classist framing on everything for years and be held blameless after the fact.
I dunno been a republican and democrat voter throughout my life. The dnc did the right thing time by pointing democracy itself was on the line
Apparently we have enough people in this country who simply cannot appreciate the rights we have.
A bunch of really dumb Americanare about to realize what truly was on the line this time around.
You’re kinda missing the point of what I’m trying to say.
The total number of Trump voters barely moved. As a fraction of the total populace, it actually probably slightly decreased.
The total number of Democratic voters decreased by like 12%.
The DNC alienated their own base. People stayed home, and it made a difference.
Democraticy is on the line, so vote for the ruling party only. Or else you will get worse.
You see how maaaaaybe that was not a super stable platform? You might get an clue that people are angry and feel abandoned by the nation so that when running a campaign you should not TELL EVERYONE HOW GREAT IT IS!.
I dunno been a republican and democrat voter throughout my life. The dnc did the right thing time by pointing democracy itself was on the line
By forcing a candidate down our throats that no one voted for
Consider this.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
Americans. Are. Stupid.
Our situation isn’t going to get better any time soon. For those of us who aren’t boomers, we’re basically locked into a lifetime of economic hardship.
Americans are misinformed because the media has been destroyed by financial incentives and the capital class.
Average american seems to be easily manipulated, especially if its about politics. No fact checking, just going with “gut” feeling.
Democrats need to be louder in blaming the people at fault. Harris should have been screaming about the economy Obama left Trump vs the economy Trump left Biden. She should have been screaming that from day 1!
They wouldn’t trust the messenger. We need to come to terms with the fact that a not so small group of people need fear to be motivated to believe anything.
We need a rage baiting group of influencers pushing the Left’s agenda. It’s sad, but it’s needed.
Fear was what they used. They used fear of Trump. Fear of democracy ending, etc.
What she needed was outrage at those responsible. Corporations.
What she needed was outrage at those responsible. Corporations.
The DNC isn’t allowed to bite the hand that feeds them their funding
So then more fascism it is. And Dem’s would rather stand by than stop it because even stopping it isn’t very profitable for their owners.
Oh ya, the old addage that if conservatives can’t win elections they will abandon democracy not conservatism has an inverse.
If capital won’t support the means for a liberal to win elections they will abandon victory before capital.
Dems are not standing by, they just ran a whole goddamn election. That they were/are bad at that is not in question. You can be mad at them all you want for losing but don’t act like they didn’t try to warn us and do something about it
She should have been blaming those responsible, corporations. And outlining how she was going to go after them.
But that would have likely cost her campaign funds…
They should have been screaming about it four years ago. Biden chose to take the high road and not talk about the previous administration.
And Obama tried to take the high road too. And for 8 years republicans grew a huge population of people that learned to blame democrats for everything. Now it’s just second nature to most people to hate democrats.
We’ve had like 25y of limp dick Dem moral high road at this point and it should be clear that this approach doesn’t sell to anyone except the educated minority. Guess what? The educated are a minority and you need a majority to win elections.
It’s also trepidation at setting the precedent of holding representatives accountable.
Let voters get what they deserve.
Republican voters are the biggest simps for big business that I’ve ever seen. It’s like if slaves in America cheered on the confederacy during the Civil War.
It’s not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren’t obsessively following the news and economic reports.
It’s how they feel about money.
That was the biggest single issue.
People looked at grocery store prices and said, this is nuts, I was paying half this just four years ago.
It doesn’t matter to them that global inflation skyrocketed along with inflation in the US, or that we’re doing better than the rest of the world right now. They want to see prices go down, even though that would be deflation, which is incredibly bad for an economy.
We need more political literacy in this country.
Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn
