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OT: American Politics

cmon3 said:
Inflation was extremely high for most of the Biden administration. That was in part due to the printing of money and cheap money that started during the Trump administration and by the closure of everything for COVID which, for better or worse, contributed by causing shortages. That continued into the Biden administration- same kind of policy. Biden then doubled down on it with his big spending/green/infrastructure legislation. It was all a bad idea IMO. But to pretend that inflation was primarily caused by price gouging, and that all is well now, ignores the fact that prices are 20% or more higher and people’s savings are worth 20% or more less because of Biden era policies continuing to print money like it wasn’t an issue is dishonest.

People were economically damaged by that regardless of if we’re in a recession or not - (we are not) and the “feeling” is that the economy is not good because they were better off before all that mess.

And the Fed is directly responsible for inflation which is caused by the increased money supply which people seem to think is limitless.

Neither party seems to care to fix this though because they want to stay in power and keep getting richer and richer off the rest of us. The fact that the democrats are now the party of the wealthy elite is problematic for them. They’re not going to fix it by calling everyone who doesn’t agree with them deplorable or garbage (or worse on this thread).

You don’t have too many conservatives posting here because it’s a left wing echo chamber and instead of discussing y’all start calling names and berating people. Personally I expect most of you are decent people that disagree with me on a lot of thing. I don’t presume I’m right about everything and I know y’all are not either. But I also don’t think the fact that we disagree makes you idiots or evil, but apparently it makes me those things in your minds.
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I did a deep dive into this recently. Economies are way more complex than most people believe. Yes covid caused supply chain issues which started the inflation wave (all around the world, by the way, not just in countries run by Joe Biden). Maybe Zeke & Mindz can add to this, but I just didn't see much evidence for what you're saying. Yes both Trump and Biden issued stimulus packages which had some effect on inflation. For sure. However, it's only part of the equation, and economists are divided on exactly how much. Supply chain issues much more so, and corporate greed was also a part of this equation (by no means all of it).

There is no such thing as simply printing money, these things are done much more carefully than you think. It's an oversimplification and it's only part of what happened here. I don't believe the Fed is directly responsible for inflation, again it happened all over the world and was brought back to normalcy in what seems to me to be an incredibly fast timespan. Obviously if you 'hate' the party in power you are going to be quick to get angry about it, especially in this social media environment where every gripe is amplified times a million.

Biden's people (correctly) assessed that these packages would stimulate the economy enough to overcome inflation and then brought it back to normal in record time. I believe that history will show that what they did was brilliant.

Now we will watch Trump first take credit for Biden's economy, then take steps to wreck it, then take steps to lie about the data that shows how much they wrecked it.
 
cmon3 said:
Inflation was extremely high for most of the Biden administration. That was in part due to the printing of money and cheap money that started during the Trump administration and by the closure of everything for COVID which, for better or worse, contributed by causing shortages. That continued into the Biden administration- same kind of policy. Biden then doubled down on it with his big spending/green/infrastructure legislation. It was all a bad idea IMO. But to pretend that inflation was primarily caused by price gouging, and that all is well now, ignores the fact that prices are 20% or more higher and people’s savings are worth 20% or more less because of Biden era policies continuing to print money like it wasn’t an issue is dishonest.

People were economically damaged by that regardless of if we’re in a recession or not - (we are not) and the “feeling” is that the economy is not good because they were better off before all that mess.

And the Fed is directly responsible for inflation which is caused by the increased money supply which people seem to think is limitless.

Neither party seems to care to fix this though because they want to stay in power and keep getting richer and richer off the rest of us. The fact that the democrats are now the party of the wealthy elite is problematic for them. They’re not going to fix it by calling everyone who doesn’t agree with them deplorable or garbage (or worse on this thread).

You don’t have too many conservatives posting here because it’s a left wing echo chamber and instead of discussing y’all start calling names and berating people. Personally I expect most of you are decent people that disagree with me on a lot of thing. I don’t presume I’m right about everything and I know y’all are not either. But I also don’t think the fact that we disagree makes you idiots or evil, but apparently it makes me those things in your minds.
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and just final comment - disagreement does not make you an idiot or evil.

but how you disagree, and what you rely upon in support of your argument matters and will likely impact how folks respond here.

and FlyGuy is clearly either a troll or a moron (or both) - he's clearly not here in good faith
 
axlsalinger said:
I did a deep dive into this recently. Economies are way more complex than most people believe. Yes covid caused supply chain issues which started the inflation wave (all around the world, by the way, not just in countries run by Joe Biden). Maybe Zeke & Mindz can add to this, but I just didn't see much evidence for what you're saying. Yes both Trump and Biden issued stimulus packages which had some effect on inflation. For sure. However, it's only part of the equation, and economists are divided on exactly how much. Supply chain issues much more so, and corporate greed was also a part of this equation (by no means all of it).

There is no such thing as simply printing money, these things are done much more carefully than you think. It's an oversimplification and it's only part of what happened here. I don't believe the Fed is directly responsible for inflation, again it happened all over the world and was brought back to normalcy in what seems to me to be an incredibly fast timespan. Obviously if you 'hate' the party in power you are going to be quick to get angry about it, especially in this social media environment where every gripe is amplified times a million.

Biden's people (correctly) assessed that these packages would stimulate the economy enough to overcome inflation and then brought it back to normal in record time. I believe that history will show that what they did was brilliant.

Now we will watch Trump first take credit for Biden's economy, then take steps to wreck it, then take steps to lie about the data that shows how much they wrecked it.
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inflation went down after the IRA was passed, too
 
thehabhater said:
And yes, most of us don't think highly of Donald Trump.
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Most importantly, it's not because he's in the Republican Party (I have tonnes of respect for McCain and Romney, for example). We don't think highly of him because he is a boorish conman and criminal and the most textbook case of malignant narcissism the world will ever know, who caused many thousands of unnecessary covid deaths and is a leading figure in the dumbing down of political discourse and anti-intelligence, rage and grievance filled movements that we are seeing in the United States, Canada and around the world.
 
axlsalinger said:
Most importantly, it's not because he's in the Republican Party (I have tonnes of respect for McCain and Romney, for example). We don't think highly of him because he is a boorish conman and criminal and the most textbook case of malignant narcissism the world will ever know, who caused many thousands of unnecessary covid deaths and is a leading figure in the dumbing down of political discourse and anti-intelligence, rage and grievance filled movements that we are seeing in the United States, Canada and around the world.
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You’re being generous 😝
 
At it's core any discussion about inflation is really about the cost of living. There's some shit that's just incontrovertible

1731621847131.png


Corporate profits went through the roof in the inflationary covid recovery period (the graph is pretty similar wherever you want to look, that's US data above though). As noted by Lecoq, this isn't program spending, it doesn't happen all at once like that. It's laid out over a number of years, in some cases over multiple decades.


Housing went up:

1731622188111.png

and so did rent

1731622251207.png
The biggest structural thing to change in the US housing market is how heavily Wall Street entered the single family housing market in 2021. Almost 20% of single family homes were purchased by investors in 2021, and that number keeps going up. Institutional investors alone are expected to control 40% of the single family rental stock by 2030. This isn't them dropping big capex on constructing purpose built rentals, adding additional homes to overall supply. This is them taking single family homes off of market and making them rentals, which has something of a cannibalizing effect on the market. It raises the market price of homes for purchase, making it less affordable for Americans to own a home and forcing more people to the rental market....which of course drives up rental rates because it's now more renters chasing a more or less fixed supply of housing.

Throw in standard corporate ratfuckery in regards to pricing, especially with how corporate owners aren't nearly as price sensitive as small scale rental owners are (as in, if grandma and grandpa have a rental property that sits empty for a few months they need the money so become far more flexible in rental rates....corporations don't give a shit, the price is the price. When you own 10000 houses, giving in to downward market forces can cost you millions in "lost rent" per year) and we arrive where both of our countries are right now.

There are other factors of course, but when you add a buyer of single family homes with a functionally unlimited balance sheet who views the houses purely as a cash machine, you're going to arrive here. The financialization of the entire economy from birth to death.


So yeah, there are some other factors involved. Covid related supply disruptions with government money (largely internationally) back filling demand to keep it from cratering. Some food and energy inflation is due to Vlad's adventure, etc, etc. But if corporate pricing and corporate influence on the housing market were tempered, inflation as it's felt on the ground level would have been far less severe.
 
FlyGuy said:
You have no idea how people live or feel in America. Clearly, by the head-up-ass predictions on what would happen in the election.

DUR DUR HOW ARENT AMERICANS LIVING BETTER LOOK AT THE NUMBERS DUR DUR DUMB AMERICANS HUR HUR DUR DURRRRR
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Forgive us for giving Americans the benefit of the doubt when it came to having functioning brains. Our bad.
 
The inflation story goes back to the pandemic. Recall the service sector, like restaurants, hair salons, etc. was basically shut down. So income was in large part redirected to tangible goods which caused an inflationary spiral for those products. Remember the price of 2X4s? Oy. The only way that doesn’t become inflationary is by letting millions of households and businesses go bankrupt - and there’s your depression scenario.

Of course, once the shut downs ended, a lot of money sloshed back to services and that was a mess too.

Moreover, none of that dynamic addresses the total meltdown in logistics that caused huge spikes in the price if shipping containers and physical bottlenecks (ports of Shanghai and LA) and the chaos it caused in labour markets with a wave of retirements and skittish service workers.

It was a mess and the most governments could hope to achieve was to stabilize households and businesses and hope the demand-side policies of central banks could fix what was fundamentally a supply-side shock. It was not straightforward at all.

(BTW, judicious investment in smart, climate resilient infrastructure is an example of a supply side policy. But it takes years to take effect.)
 
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