this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 109 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The fuck metric are they using for the economy???? The billionaires wealth increase? The stock market? Because I can't afford my rent or to feed my fucking family. Fuck off with your bullshit.

I don't blame Biden for it, I blame the orange man. But the economy isn't an exclamation point that should be used for the average person. The economy fucking sucks. EVERYONE HAS JOBS!!! .... Yeah.... they have 3 of them... start looking at the purchasing power of that money, not just the dollar amount.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago (5 children)

This! This! This!

Anyone who can afford to invest seems to be doing fine and everyone else is screwed. Rent, bills and the cost of food are out of control.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (13 children)

The weird part is people think the president caused any of that or has the ability to fix it.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Wages are up, and inflation is down. The economy isn't roaring, but it's a hell of a lot more stable than what Biden was handed in 2020. The examples you are offering, while certainly valid for the folks in your community, are anecdotal. The facts are in the data. This country is too big to determine its overall economic health with a localized eye check. Lots of folks are struggling. Lots of folks are also thriving.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah white suburbanites are doing better, rise in fascism often does that for them.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

Where are you even getting that from? Economics isn't a matter of opinion. Wages are, in fact, up, and inflation has been easing. This isn't about fascism or race. This has been an across the board trend since 2021. Things are far from perfect, but they are improving.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

And civil rights.

Plus sustainable technology.

And critical infrastructure.

Also climate change.

Taxing the wealthy.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

Oh, geez, that one is huge. Great point.

160 billion in student debt cancelled.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (5 children)

List the best action he has taken for each of these.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Civil rights - LGBTQ+ legal funding, protecting youth from conversion therapy, healthcare access, reversing Trump's ban on trans military personnel, housing protections

Sustainable technology - "best" is hard among so many, probably the 65$ billion dollars inveatment for clean energy infrastructure in the US

Critical infrastructure - the largest investment in US infrastructure in US history, over a trillion dollars resulting in over 50000 new infrastructure projects.

Climate change - again, the "best" is tricky here...I guess either the hundreds of billions in green tech, clean energy, mass transit, rejoining climate accords, increasing regulations on polluters... You can choose any one of those.

Oh and taxing the wealthy. Biden succeeded in that too.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (14 children)

Healthcare - Biden limiting drug prices helps a ton of people. Also, trump pledged to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and replace it with nothing. So... not ruining everything is also good.

See that's the thing, Biden would be a better president than trump if he literally pledged to do nothing. Trump has pledged to make things worse, mostly for his own benefit.

That's your choice: a shit sandwich or... not eating a shit sandwich. Tough one, I know.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

taxing the wealthy

^ That's the one that triggered the media attack on him.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

There's nothing wrong with wanting supporting evidence for claims, but when someone says something that's very provable and common knowledge and you ask for proof - you become known as an idiot.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 11 months ago

As always, "economy" in a headline can be replaced with "rich people's yacht money."

[–] [email protected] 49 points 11 months ago (5 children)

and the slowest annual gain in prices since March 2021.

Its shit like this, dont tout this like a victory, i cant afford electricity right now

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago

By 'economy' they always mean how well the rich are doing. WE are struggling, and the constant gaslighting that everything is ok tells us our cries for help are going unheard.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"Listen, dipshit. I don't care if you can't afford groceries, I don't care if you our landlord priced you out of your own home, and I certainly don't give a fuck you can't find a new job that pays enough to live. The economy is doing great, all the graphs the capitalists chose says so. Your lived experience is a lie. Shut up, don't ask questions, and vote for me."

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (5 children)

What does "the economy" mean again? Is that just referencing the stock market which most Americans don't care about because they don't own stocks or have 401ks?

I mean, has anyone seen the prices of shit lately? It's pretty fuckin insane. I can't even imagine how most people make it work with kids and whatnot. Then again, all my working class friends that don't have 401ks don't actually vote anyway so maybe they just know their audience

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Note the complete absence of any mention of housing prices in this article (and every other pro-Biden article about how great the economy is and why we should be grateful).

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Please explain to me how Biden can control housing prices.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Ban corporations from owning housing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

So you want the President to do Congress' job?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The president can't do that

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Now that we have an emperor I think the sky's the limit lol

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Didn't we change the rules for realtors to reduce their commissions?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Drop in the bucket, the issue is with zoning and how banks are apportioning debt and packaging home loans.

If we want home ownership to be available to the common person, and are unwilling to set a realistic national wage, we should just allow the Fed to issue home loans again and get rid of the middlemen all together.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

In the United States, the minimum wage is set by U.S. labor law and a range of state and local laws.[4] The first federal minimum wage was instituted in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but later found to be unconstitutional.[5] In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act established it at 25¢ an hour ($5.41 in 2023).[6] Its purchasing power peaked in 1968, at $1.60 ($14.00 in 2023)[6][7][8] In 2009, it was increased to $7.25 per hour, and has not been increased since.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States

if people are unable to afford things the economy is not good and neither Trump nor Biden in their four years did anything to help the citizens notably minimum wage

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago

The line is definitely going up!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I definitely am paying exceptional prices for toilet paper and groceries

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The same economy that's reliant on sucking the working class dry of every last cent?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

I don't give a shit about the economy. I've been broke through boom and bust. I care about the safety, freedom, and happiness of those I love. The centrists of the democratic party like this bag o bones are doing nothing about that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Real wages (wages as expressed in 1982-1984 dollars, so controlled for inflation) are higher now than before the start of the pandemic. They aren't quite as high as they briefly got in early 2021 when the government was propping up the economy with large amounts of money both to employers and directly to people, when people were initially holding on to money rather than spending causing prices to drop (things were closed, people couldn't or didn't want to travel and go out) and before the supply chain crisis among other things started causing inflation across the globe. The wage growth since the pandemic has been highest for low income and hourly workers, so higher income salary workers may not have seen as much. Some industries may not have done as well as others, for instance the high interest rates to help control inflation hit tech jobs particularly hard. And as always, these are averages across the largest economy in the world with over 300 million people, I'm not trying to assert conclusions about any one person's financial situation.

January 2020 and January 2021 real wages https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/realer_02102021.htm

June 2023 and June 2024 real wages https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.t01.htm

Wage growth vs inflation since March 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/

Also for more full context keep in mind that real wages dropped some for decades before finally starting to recover in the 2000s. We're only just starting to get back to real wages as they were in the 1970s.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

He has done nothing to directly impact the economy. We are in a money-printing generated gilded age where life is tolerable for most and better than ever for a few. As soon as something breaks, everyone below the top 10% will be thrown on the street into abject poverty and we are all just waiting around for that to happen.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Here's the thing that kills me. This is what the presidency is kinda supposed to be like. He's gotten a good amount of good (and bad) things done. We've gotten so used to lazy, ineffectual, malicious, and downright bad governance that a kind of normal presidency seems like "WOAH HOLY FUCK WOW" to some folks. Biden's a solid statesman when it comes to the actual work of politics, but I wouldn't say that he's totally unique or a once-in-a-lifetime statesman. He's not irreplaceable, we just haven't been looking for someone to replace him because they did a good job hiding the fact that he needed replacing.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We are not in a recession and economic growth is positive?

When did the federal minimum wage go up?

Did workers get more rights?

When did food prices go down?

Did housing costs get cheaper?

Has a sustainable and more affordable energy source been found to lower power bills?

Are the costs of healthcare something he solved?

How did he fix transportation costs?

wow did not know we were living in the Golden Age of Biden

good thing propaganda articles like this are around keep us in the know

Hail Biden and Vote BLUE!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Here's the problem, is it him or his staff?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (3 children)

They're kind of a package deal, so does it matter?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

The article cherry-picks data to reach it's conclusions. Unemployment is not the best it's every been. It has been rising rapidly, it's up half a percent in the last year, and this print was the first pause we've had since March. Unemployment is rising due to Fed fighting inflation with higher interest rates. The higher interest rates are the reason inflation is coming down and Biden has done nothing to address that. The only thing he did was dump our oil reserves on the market when gas prices were rising early in the inflation cycle. That was 2 years ago.

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