US Politics, May 2024: They Shoot Puppies, Don't They?

https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1793270876550398329

I wonder how this happened?

meanwhile, yesterday's headline in the FT was, not a joke: "Biggest US retailers cut prices as inflation hits shoppers"

New Harris-Guardian poll:

- 56% say US is in recession (reality: 7 straight quarters of positive GDP growth)
- 49% say stocks are down YTD (reality: S&P500 up 12%)
- 49% say unemployment at a 50-year high (reality: U3 has been under 4% longer than any period since the 1960s) pic.twitter.com/Hsnpq5IBy8

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) May 22, 2024

Good mornning!

vibes are off

indictment of the fourth estate but what will anyone do about it, nothing

every article gets the community note: Actually this is good news for Biden.

lol more middle to upper class ILXors poking fun at people who are struggling and aren’t seeing the benefits they are

full employment? sure, 30 hr/week near poverty wage jobs with no benefits, hardly anyone owns stock who isn’t already wealthy, etc. yall continue to trip over yourselves to dismiss the lived realities of a lot of people

People feeling like the economy is doing poorly because of their personal financial situation is different than believing the economy is in a recession when it it isn't

not defending the record just having a go at the media which has totally failed to inform its audiences - agree wholeheartedly that those measures do not capture life as it’s lived

There has never been a time, certainly not in the fabled post-WWII boom era, when everyone was personally seeing the benefits of the economy.

it's almost like capitalism is inherently unfair or something

lol more middle to upper class ILXors poking fun at people who are struggling and aren’t seeing the benefits they are

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

I could only dream of being middle class atm where I am but I still understand like numbers and stuff unlike those in that poll

the media definitely needs to do better, it's wild they haven't learned a single thing since 2016, that said half the country watches news sources that are designed from the ground up to lie to them

they did learn from 2016, they learned they can shape the narrative how they choose to get the result they want

expecting people to care about and change their minds about the state of the world thanks to aggregate statistical data--or, worse, numerological nonsense like stock indexes--is bizarre

besides, views of the economy track with partisanship so you're starting with a hard floor of at least 40%

+ Table

not defending the record just having a go at the media which has totally failed to inform its audiences - agree wholeheartedly that those measures do not capture life as it’s lived

agree with this.

absolutely not "poking fun at people who are struggling". i realize this is an issue for you table, but you're missing the point here imo.

the point is: people think things about whether we're in a recession, and whether the stock market is down that simply are not true.

the point is not: people are wrong about their own lives.

you can argue those things are the stock market and GDP are not important to most people's lives, and I'm not going to disagree with you, but a lot of people do think GDP and the stock market is important, and are going to vote for trump on the basis it they're falling, but they're ... not.

(fwiw though, 60% of americans own stocks btw, so I think a false belief that the stock market is down is actually worth worrying about.)

yeah i'm saying those people answered questions about measurable metrics just completely wrong when the answers are readily available.

40% of Americans don't know that Ireland or Belgium are in the EU. It doesn't mean those countries aren't in the EU.

america won vietnam

I had a threesome with Jake Gyllenhaal and Barbara Bush.

my condolences, Alfred

america won vietnam

This ultimately ended up being sort of true?

america won vietnam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X6QqZF3J14

I hear the bombing had surprisingly little long-term impact

the point is: people think things about whether we're in a recession, and whether the stock market is down that simply are not true.

the point is not: people are wrong about their own lives.

While this is true, the question people answer isn't necessarily the one that is asked

I “own stocks” stocks only in the sense that they are in mutual funds which are tied up in 401k for my retirement. I’m not living off of dividends.

I own storks

If they asked a question about worsening income inequality, I would have to say yes, yes it is

but they don't ask that question

Definitely the economy doesn't seem great to many people based on their personal experiences. But the larger thing going on with that poll imo is just the ongoing hyper-partisanalization of reality. If 50 percent of people believe unemployment is at a 50-year high, that's mostly because 40 percent of them are just mindlessly filling in whatever answer is worst for Biden. That kind of thing makes these polls sort of useless.

what if it makes them predictive

i just can't believe how much food costs. that's my biggest thing since the pandemic. its huge. some things are double! that's a lot. i do most of the shopping so i notice. i just don't get take-out or eat out nearly as much. unless my dad says he's paying. then i order everything on the menu.

but *2 for $8* was just never a thing before! for, like, crackers. it never sounds like a great deal.

but my tiny insignificant micro-business is doing okay. *knock on wood not touched by a chicken infested with bird flu*

anyway, people are buying stuff. so, that's good for me. and records are basically luxury items. as long as i never stop working and never take any time off ever and never stop ever i'll be okay.

what if it makes them predictive

Well it does to the degree that we know 40-45 percent of people are definitely voting for Trump no matter what. I just think it makes it hard to parse people's actual experiences because a significant portion of our population is deliberately detached from all reality and data, not just on the economy.

But sure, I mean, I think Trump is in strong position to win and a lack of economic security is one reason for it.

I have vivid memories of the 9/11 aftermath and 2008 crash and recession. No one was buying anything, going out, taking vacations. For a while! This has not been the case since 2021 and it's just not the rich buying luxury items. Some of it is a result of pent-up pandemic demand, but even so! Inflation isn't stopping them.

it's been shown again and again that the average Trump voters are often doing quite well for themselves - they own businesses, they own property - but if they can bitch about the price of gas being higher under Biden, that's all they need for polling like this

But they'd be doing better if Biden wasn't holding the economy back

I was was just looking at videos of European tourist destinations packed with Americans and they didn't exactly look like ulta-wealthy people to me

a bunch of trump voters mad that it's not as easy to by a new care every 3-4 years

buy*

i sell cares

lol ugh

I wonder how many people think stocks are down because they got into crypto at the wrong time and fucked up

BUY THE DIP

Definitely the economy doesn't seem great to many people based on their personal experiences. But the larger thing going on with that poll imo is just the ongoing hyper-partisanalization of reality. If 50 percent of people believe unemployment is at a 50-year high, that's mostly because 40 percent of them are just mindlessly filling in whatever answer is worst for Biden. That kind of thing makes these polls sort of useless.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, May 23, 2024 11:22 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I think this is the long and short of it. I mean yes they are "uneducated" on what's really going on but that's because they spend hours a day watching a network that's been telling them that the Mar-a-Lago raid was actually an assassination attempt.

But the larger thing going on with that poll imo is just the ongoing hyper-partisanalization of reality.

this is part of it, but the media's failures of omission and commission when reporting objective realities enable accelerate that process. for better or worse swing voters are disengaged people who mostly trust the media when they encounter it, and care about things like "the economy" (jn the sense these facts describe it). the media enabling a belief that for example, price cuts are evidence of inflation, is how those swing voters stop being swing voters.