President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.

Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception. The divergence could be a decisive factor in whether the Democrat secures a second term next year. Republicans are seizing on the dissatisfaction to skewer Biden, while the White House is finding less success as it tries to highlight economic progress.

“Things are getting better and people think things are going to get worse — and that’s the most dangerous piece of this," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has worked with Biden. Lake said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.

“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it,” she said.

  • @TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
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    987 months ago

    Whenever anyone says “the economy”, you can and should mentally substitute it with “rich people’s yacht money”.

    Rich people’s yacht money doing well doesn’t do shit for 90% of the population. It doesn’t pay the rent, put food on the table or clothes on their back. They can’t afford to see a doctor or ride the damn bus.

    And you want them to be happy because some stockbroker is getting a second holiday in the Maldives this year?

    Stupid arrogant fucks.

    • @Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That’s why they say “unemployment being too low is bad for the economy”. Low unemployment means higher negotiating power for workers, which means higher wages and better working conditions. The only way that statement makes any sense is if they’re exclusively talking about yacht money.

      • @radiosimian@lemmy.world
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        67 months ago

        Don’t even start on the wage-inflation-spiral idea. It’s the workers’ fault for wanting higher wages as it allows service-oriented business to charge higher prices, driving inflation.

        While the theory probably has roots in real-world pricing algorithms (eg how much can we charge people in X region for Netflix) that rise in cost contributes to inflation figures. The fact that wages have been stagnant for decades undermines the whole argument.

        “Well the poors can afford it and the shareholders will love it!” FFS

      • @Phlogiston@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Low unemployment means higher negotiating power for workers

        Too bad all those “right to work” people have been actively fighting against negotiation powers for workers. But lets blame the ‘yacht owners’ and piss and moan about how they take advantage of the lopsided negotiation powers we voted in for them.

        I know! We should put exclusively yacht owners in power! They’ll totally fix it. /s

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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      227 months ago

      When people say they’re not happy about the economy, this is the shit they’re talking about, not statistics.

      Ordinary people get fucked in this economy, and there isn’t any party that can do anything about it.

    • @Fades@lemmy.world
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      47 months ago

      Not at all. You’re missing the forest for the trees lmao

      The problem is that no matter how much inflation goes down, if the price gouging capitalists that own the grocery stores, the gas stations, and so on don’t stop.

      It’s not about rich people’s yacht it’s about the American people being taken advantage of simply because they can. The economy is doing a lot better, record low unemployment for example is a huge metric here but what difference does that make when the grocery stores are selling less for more money?

      You’re crying about rich people’s yachts when you should be crying about record price gouging without any cause. Those yachts don’t have impact on the average American’s QoL but price gouging absolutely does.

      • @TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        When investors do better, nobody else does better. The whole system is based on harvesting wealth from society as a whole, and concentrating it in the top 1%. Ever hear of the Gini coefficient?

        Yes, price-gouging companies jacking up their prices and paying fuckall in wages are the direct instrument of suffering. But they do so in order to provide yacht money for the investor class, and in so doing they impoverish literally everyone else.

    • @iopq@lemmy.world
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      -137 months ago

      Median income is up since before the pandemic, even when adjusting for inflation. The average person is better off.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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        257 months ago

        “My rent is going up and food and gas are more expensive. My tooth hurts but I can’t afford to get it fixed, and now my check engine light is on.”

        “ACTUALLY median income is up!”

        Do you see how that’s not helping?

        • @VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.social
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          47 months ago

          Gas is actually the one thing I’ve noticed that has been a lot better lately. But everything else is still expensive from the crazy greedflation every company was trying to pull when we were tolerating post-pandemic cost rises.

          • Semi-Hemi-Demigod
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            47 months ago

            Gas prices are one of the few economic indicators most people are aware of, sometimes painfully. If Biden wants to turn sentiments around, lowering those more would probably be the most effective means.

            • mrnotoriousman
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              47 months ago

              Yes, Biden should pull the magic gas lever for Americans! What is he waiting for??

        • @winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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          37 months ago

          Health care is actually hugely underestimated, here. Health costs have been going up decade over decade and people’s health problems have been stacking up. While in the '70s and '80s people could get treatment, someone born in those years started out with the ability to get medical care but has increasingly lost access as they’ve gone through their lives.

          Those people are getting older, now, and it’s getting to the point where they can’t just ignore the stuff they can’t afford. Conditions that would have been easy to treat (but often rare/expensive) are becoming chronic, fatal, or debilitating.

          Life expectancy is starting to drop and while that drop is largely due to COVID (which, by itself, is an insane thing) it’s also a warning sign about what’s to come.

        • @iopq@lemmy.world
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          -97 months ago

          Prices go up every year, it’s by how much matters. For example, rent has been going up slower than inflation for a year now. For every person whose rent went up, there must be a lot of people who don’t go online to verify their rent did not go up

        • @agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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          127 months ago

          Revealing article. When food prices jump 25% and rent 30%, then wages need to jump similarly to make up the difference or else people can’t afford to eat or live. But wage growth still hasn’t outpaced inflation and won’t until the end of next year. (I don’t know about anyone here but my salary certainly hasn’t caught up to inflation yet. Not even close.)

          It is no wonder regular people are going hungry and think the economy is failing them. Because it has. Until more people can afford the absolute basics their perception isn’t going to change.

      • @greenskye@lemm.ee
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        107 months ago

        Definitely not true for me personally or anyone I know well enough to know their financial info. Most people I know are barely able to stay in place, with their ‘raises’ almost immediately consumed by inflation and higher rent everywhere.

        • @iopq@lemmy.world
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          -17 months ago

          Median by definition is not skewed by outliers. If there are 160 million workers, the 80 millionth worker is the median