• Soup@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Or GDP, which also just says how much money a company is making but has the added bonus of making people proud of their country to where they don’t think any harder about it.

    • SCB@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      There are 2 jobs for every person, providing wage pressure on employers, and offering more choice in work people can do.

      Some people are struggling, yes, and we should do things about that.

      But it’s way better to be struggling when you have options than when you do not. I was poor in 2008, and it’s no fucking comparison at all.

      The economy’s health directly impacts people of every income level

      • Facebones@reddthat.com
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        11 months ago

        You only have the illusion of choice, as evidenced by the “booming economy” which just actually means being extra effective at funneling all economic output straight to the top.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          This doesn’t match the reality of the number of job moves and open positions.

            • SCB@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Except having more open positions than people directly translates into higher wages, so even this broad nothing of a statement is still incorrect.

              • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Unless the “open positions” are only open on paper, and the company has no real desire to fill them…

      • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        There are 2 jobs for every person,

        Yes, unfortunately it is often the case that the same person is working those two jobs out of necessity.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    Oh it’s booming. It’s just not booming for you.

    As George Carlin said: “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it!”

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I’m very disappointed that nobody in the media bothers with follow up questions.

    “The economy is booming!”

    “For who?” For Joe ‘I own a yacht’ Manchin? Yeah, I’m sure it is.

    https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-manchin-healthcare-expansion-yacht-b1931509.html

    This goes back decades now with politicians on both the right and left claiming to support “middle class tax cuts” and nobody asks “how do you define ‘middle class’?”

    https://www.newsweek.com/tax-cuts-republicans-middle-class-trump-701094

    "House Republicans issued a fact sheet about their new tax cut plan that referred to Americans earning $450,000 a year as “low- and middle-income”—even though that income level would put those taxpayers in the top 0.5 percent of all individual Americans.

    The median household income in the United States is $59,039, after all."

      • cheesepotatoes@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Being out of touch implies they don’t understand the situation. They fully understand, they don’t care.

        • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I don’t know man. My millionaire uncle was bitching today about labor costs after the minimum wage went up in his state. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it.” He says, literally hours after I spent 60k (his money) on stuff for one of his classic cars he’s restoring.

          It literally isn’t even something he realizes. He doesn’t buy his own groceries. Everything he wants he gets with ease. He doesn’t have to think about the cost. In his mind, groceries cost roughly what they did in the 80s when he was getting them for himself.

          He’s a narcissist, so if I were to say to him, “Bro, they’d be starving right now without it.” I could end up on a shit list.

          It has been one of my big privileges having him in my life and I love him and appreciate him, but he truly is out of touch. Completely. I would have been homeless 15 times at least without his help. I have to pay him back, but it truly is a privilege being a fuckup like me and having someone look out for me like he has.

          I feel guilty even using him as an example, but I’m not wrong.

          • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Don’t feel guilty for self-survival. This is the situation capitalism has put many of us in, harming ourselves to help other people. It’s not an easy choice.

            Good news. When the world economy collapses it becomes much easier to see the class divisions.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Okay, first:

    People got ‘thrown off’ Medicaid because it was temporarily expanded under the pandemic, and lots of the people that qualified under the expansion no longer qualify now that it’s expired. Yeah, I’m in favor of Medicaid for all–or Medicare, I can’t keep them straight–but this is disingenuous.

    Second, 45M people in 1.8T student loan debt is a problem, sure, but who keeps blocking forgiving that debt? If you think that not voting for the guy that did everything in his power to cancel that debt is going to fix that problem, well, you probably shouldn’t have gone to higher ed. in the first place, because it didn’t help your critical thinking skills.

    Is the economy we have now–under a Democratic president, with a Democratic Senate and a very slim Republican majority in the House–better or worse than it would be under a Republican (Trump) president, Republican Senate, and Republican House? Do you really think that all of the things listed in this short, misleading blurb would be fixed if Biden loses the election? Do you think that your protest vote for a Green or Dem Soc candidate is going to improve anything, given that we don’t have ranked-choice voting in national elections?

    • spader312@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I really hate hearing people who say they’re not going to vote for Biden because for whatever reason without realizing that not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump or any other Republican who will work against everything that will actually help people. Which is better?

      Not only are you letting the other side win but the only way to get representation is to vote, if you don’t vote why would any candidate want to do anything for you? You’re no value for them.

    • thatoneguy@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      About your last paragraph, who said this was a partisan issue? Someone who agrees with your last paragraph could also agree with the sentiment that those who tell us the “economy is booming” are often ignoring issues that affect everyday Americans.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        It’s a partisan issue specifically because of who is spreading which messages.

        Democrats are saying that the economy is generally moving in the correct directions, e.g., we lost a couple million people in the pandemic which lead to a labor shortage, opportunistic businesses jacked up prices leading to double digit inflation, but overall the unemployment caused by the pandemic is reduced, inflation is on the way down, and we’re doing better than we would have been doing otherwise.

        Republicans are saying that the economy is trash, that everyone is hurting, everything is expensive and no one can afford shit. …While conveniently ignoring that they’re the ones that have been pushing all the policies that have led to this, while Dems have been doing everything they could to prevent a recession or depression.

        If you blindly accept that the economy is bad without looking at why, then you’re biting the baited hook of the Republican propaganda machine.

        • mommykink@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Democrat here. I’ll gladly say that the economy is trash and everyone (I know) is hurting.

        • willis936@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Democrat here. People pushing the positive economy messaging are just trying to get away with robbery. Don’t accept being a patsy because you’re scared of politics. I’ll still vote blue and still tell people when they’re full of shit.

    • newDayRocks@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      45 million with 1.8 trillion debt isn’t even a “problem”. The meme is just throwing out big number vocabulary trying to be scary.

      That number averages out to 40k a person. 40k after 4 years of college with long term low interest to pay it is not done huge problem. The problem are for people who got scammed by for profit colleges and those with ridiculous levels of debt, and this administration is addressing those.

      • SirQuackTheDuck@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        In NL the govt switched from a scholarship-like student loan program to a regular loan program (which has been reverted since the start of this college year), and students racked up 60k debts over 4-5 years of study.

        And that’s in a country where the government also sets the student fees (2k a year now, somewhat following indexed inflation), which means about 8-10k is for study. The rest is additional cost and due to stories of low interest (0% for years, but now it’s 2.4%) causing 18-22 year olds to be maxing out this loan to enjoy the student life and paying it off using the bank interest.

        Then the 2021-23 inflation skyrocketed and that loan started going up faster than it could be paid off, as paying off is on an income-based monthly amount. Meanwhile, this loan does get subtract 1.5x from your potential mortgage sum.

        Edit: all prices in EUR of course

  • Reddfugee42@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    That has absolutely nothing to do with the economy booming -that has to do with you electing legislators to enact appropriate legislation. That’s not a failure of the economy, that’s a failure of the voters.

      • rosymind@leminal.space
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        11 months ago

        Yes, but to be fair a lot of us were swindled into it. District moving, lies, misinformation, voter suppression, and many are working so much there’s hardly time to verify what’s-what. Then when voting day comes along the ballots are worded so obscurely that the average person has no idea what the fuck they’re actually voting for/against. I get lost in the wording at times as well!

        I vote, and I vote for the best interests of the majority because I’m wired that way. Many others are… confused

        • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          The stuff in the post isn’t really caused by any issue that you might vote for at the polls, but by politicians who may be gerrymandered into place. The child poverty increase is likely a speedy result of Rs killing the child tax credit, and covid assistance programs running out. The people getting booted from Medicaid is the result of income restrictions that were loosened during covid getting tightened again. Biden has tried student debt relief, but the supreme Court decided to overreach and kill his initial program.

          I’m not saying that these things aren’t a problem, but that I think it’s likely that the people posting this kind of stuff are trying to frame it specifically as failures of the Biden admin, with the goal of getting people to not vote, waste their vote on a spoiler candidate, or vote for Trump.

          • rosymind@leminal.space
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            11 months ago

            Sure, yeah. My comment was just in relation to the previous comment stating that we voted for what we have- I wasn’t saying Biden is a bad choice. I voted for him and will vote for him again. It’s more the other side of things. The republican side that blocks a lot of people-friendly legislation and are blatently scamming simple folk into voting against their best interests

            All that said, if there was a viable alternative to what we have now I would take it. But a vote against Biden (at this point) is just shooting oneself (and frankly most everyone else) in the foot

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It’s not by chance that in big countries official economic numbers are listed for the country as whole (independently of the number of people) or at best using the arithmetic average for per-capita numbers rather than the mode.

    Countrywide numbers sound great until you merelly divide it by the number of people (i.e. the average, which still has problems) were for example the US falls from #1 in wealth to #15 in wealth per person.

    Further, it’s way too common for governing politicians in countries with strong population growth to only talk about total economic numbers, because total country GDP will grow simply from adding more working adults (due to immigration or higher birth rates) even if it’s actually falling per-capita (if, for example, the working adults added have lower productivity) hence the economic position of most people is getting worse.

    As for arithmetic averages, they suffer from not really representing the experience of most people when there is high inequality. For example, if there are 10 people, 1 with 10 chickens and 9 with zero chickens, that average tells us each has 1 chicken whilst in reality most people’s chicken-ownership experience is of having non chickens. The mode would tell it’s zero chickens because that what most individuals have.

    And don’t get me started on the actual ways to rig official economic figures (such as understating Official Inflation, which because of how it’s produced results in a higher Official GDP number)

    For at least 2 decades now, Official Economic Figures have been complete total bollocks, and you should be especially suspicious of the figures quoted by government politicians as (as I explained above) they’re generally cherry-picking and presenting figures which bare little resemblance to what’s happenning for most people.

  • beebarfbadger@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It’s not like that money is disappearing. Why are the 99% of the population it gets taken away from so selfish? Can’t they just be happy for the few rich entities who profit from taking away their livelihoods, stripping them of their last shirt and draining them dry until they are bankrupt? Doesn’t the promise of maybe later being trickled down upon make them happy? It’s bound to happen one of these decades…

  • bouh@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    You don’t understand: it’s the creative destruction. Yes, people are destroyed, but that’s a sccrifice the rich are willing to make.

  • Alsephina@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    It is, though. Wealth and power are concentrating at the top of megacorporations and billionaires and bringing in record profits, just as they’re supposed to under capitalism.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    They are right, it is booming, just not for us.

    Thats a fact most people should learn, most systems, but esepcially the economy, aint working for you and me.

  • astreus@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    🎶 BBC talkin’ 'bout the GDP That means fuck all to me 🎶 - Bob Vylan

  • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    No, tell them how it is. The economy IS booming. That fact just doesn’t have anything to do with the average Joe. Teach them ‘the economy’ isn’t on their side.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The Avarage Joe is suffering but the Genocide Joe is bankrolling.

      Military industrial profits are going through the roof right now

      • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Linkerbaan

        The Avarage Joe is suffering but the Genocide Joe is bankrolling.

        Military industrial profits are going through the roof right now

        Did the propagandaists finally get the go ahead to start pedaling Genocide Joe now lmfao?

        It’s so pathetic.