this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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I’m tired of being told how awesome the economy is. It’s great for the rich, but the cost of necessities like housing, food, and healthcare has outpaced the CPI, so we all feel worse. A cheaper big screen tv doesn’t help much if you can’t afford the basics.
Aggregate economic data only says so much. Lots of INDIVIDUAL people are suffering. While the CPI is one basket of products, everyone has their own, and this everyone has their own rate of inflation. So saying wages have kept up with inflation is a fallacy on 2 fronts. Some saw income outpace the CPI, others it did not and they’ve lost income. But even among the former group, everyone had a personal rate of inflation that may well be higher than the CPI.
Instead, the wealthy and politicians look at averages and medians and assume it’s just negative feelings. But we were alive in the 90s. We were alive in the early 2000s. We know about the 50s and 60s. We know the economy used to be better for working people. We want better.
Trump, of course, will not deliver that. But Harris didn’t inspire confidence she would, either.
My wife is a teacher, so we use her healthcare, but I still peek in at the healthcare at my job when enrollment comes along, just to be diligent.
It went up 20% this year, from $600 to $720. If you make $30K a year and got a 3% cost of living adjustment, you make less this year than last year from healthcare alone.
Food, gas, rent, cars, childcare, utilities, everything is up. I guess it's cool that US steel or something might be doing well, and the stock market is up, but that minimally affects the day to day of most people.
My raises, baring promotion, are 2% a year. I did the math. I’ve lost $10,000 a year to inflation at this point. In aggregate it’s around $22,000 at this point.
And yet every newscast has a stock ticker. Even NPR gives the stock index ratings several times a day.
Even Trump loved ranting about his stock market.
Stock markets are just one measure though. Just like you don't know the weather by just looking at a thermometer, you don't know the economy by just looking at the stock market.
We don't really have to worry about what Trump offered, he got less votes than last time on the same tired platform. The problem was Democrats through and through not being left at all. Losing millions of votes that way. Some people can play the lesser of two evils game, but as we just saw there are not enough people who can vote while holding their noses.
I held my nose, but the numbers clearly show it was a Democrat failure to communicate, empathize, and/or initiate with voters.
But they got Dick Cheney on board!