BarryZuckerkorn ,

The article tries to cite specific metrics to counter the headline metrics, but I'm not sure they paint a picture supporting the author's points.

Those days are long gone. Today’s typical American working household has several earners, sometimes in multiple jobs.

Following the first link shows an article that paints a picture of life being better for dual earner households:

This shift towards a dual-earner model presents challenges like fewer hours for home production, but also benefits like improved work-life balance satisfaction for husbands doing more housework. Personal savings rates have fallen from 15% to 5%, yet 71% of dual-earner families contributed to 401(k) accounts in 2015.

Following the second link shows that multiple jobholders as a percent of the economy has been trending downward for decades, hitting a record low during the height of the pandemic, and climbing back up to around the average for the previous decade.

The article continues:

If one earner loses a job while the others keep theirs, she may leave the workforce for a time; there is the option of making do with less, and for some there is early retirement. She will not, in that case, count as unemployed—however difficult her life. A low jobless rate can mask a great deal of stress in such households.

This is strange, because the hypothetical person in this category would be counted in metrics like U-6, which has also been at near record lows since the pandemic recovery.

The employment-to-population ratio is still a bit below where it was in 2020, and far below where it was in 2000

Well, the percentage of the population over 65 is much, much higher than it was in 2000. If you look at prime age labor force participation, the number is higher than it has been the previous 2 decades before that.

The author should've focused on other metrics (housing prices, food prices) rather than choosing metrics that don't actually support his hypothesis, or metrics that are themselves presented in this context. To that point, he could've expanded on how it is that individuals experienced what he describes as "sawtooth" economic fortunes, rather than just the brief mention he gives them: pandemic era relief actually went to real people, especially households with children.

I mean, I actually like the author. He's shaped a lot of ideas that formed my own political identity and view towards economic issues over the past 25 years. I just think this particular article is a miss.

mozz Admin , (edited )
mozz avatar

The author should've focused on other metrics (housing prices, food prices)

The author can't present the numbers for the more clear and straightforward metrics you're talking about, because as you noted, they show the exact opposite of what he's trying to imply is happening.

He's constructing the article in such a way as to carefully assemble little individual facts to carefully create a facsimile of something that isn't what's actually happening. For what reason, I honestly don't know. But it's too precisely tailored skirting around the reality for it to be a simple mistake.

megopie , (edited )

This is a serious issue with the Democratic Party right now, they’re relying on metrics and measurements that do not properly reflect the realities of the average voter. It goes beyond just misreading economic numbers, they are struggling to even understand what voters will respond positively to in general.

Many of the questions they ask in polls are somewhat obtuse and don’t touch on what voters think the issue is. They ask “how important is X to you” but be it, immigration, environment, healthcare, or guns. All that question does is tell the party how much to talk about certain issues, not how the voters want them to be addressed or treated.

Decision makers with in the party apparatus have a strategy of working with in narratives that are accepted by the voters they’re trying to court. Narratives crafted and popularized by traditional media/news/journalistic sources. Ideally these narratives would be crafted to best reflect reality, a difficult task that requires a lot of talent and large dedicated staffs. Right now though narratives are being crafted by under staffed, underfunded teams, at the behest of powerful moneyed interests who are keeping news sources afloat; revenues from digital distribution having failed to match that of old print and cable distribution. These same interests provide the bulk of funding for political campaigns.

So narratives are crafted that are divorced from reality the public is experiencing, in a shallow effort to control public opinion, making the public increasingly distrustful over time of these traditional news sources. The party relies on these narratives to communicate with voters. They also takes ques on what policy to support based on how the voters identify with the narratives and what the campaign donors want. But increasingly voters do not identify with the narratives at all, so the party is left speaking past voters trying to speak to narratives that voters ether haven’t seen or are baffled by.

BarryZuckerkorn ,

So narratives are crafted that are divorced from reality the public is experiencing

This is true, but it's true for many, many more places than just politics, or even messaging about politics coming from politicians. And it swings in both directions.

Social media (including the Activity Pub driven fediverse) takes off with some narratives that are just wildly inconsistent with each other and inconsistent with how a substantial number of people feel. But the nature of how we experience the world now is that our feelings are driven increasingly by little threads of online interaction that may or may not actually resemble the world we are experiencing offline.

Is Taylor Swift a good musician? Is the best cell phone an iPhone? Am I considered strong if I can bench press 220 lbs/100 kg? Do electric cars help the environment? Is it a red flag that my date refused to tip more than 20%?Your answer to these questions depend heavily on who you talk to, and the discussion around these topics can get pretty heated, even when they're ultimately low stakes issues.

The Internet has a way of catastrophizing little things, ignoring big things, and mixing it all together that it's almost inevitable that how we feel becomes disconnected with actual metrics, even the metrics within our own life. Negative feelings like anger, fear, resentment, and hopelessness can fester even with people who are thriving.

In other words, while I agree that the correlation between economic metrics and personal feelings has loosened a lot, I'm not entirely convinced that the feelings are correct while the metrics are wrong.

megopie ,

There are many different metrics that can be used, in politics and campaigns we’ve focused on one set for a while now because it generally gave us an accurate idea of how people were going to feel. If it no longer accurately predicts that, then we need a new set for political discussions.

This is not a case of online spaces filtering experience, nation wide polls and indicators suggest that people are generally unhappy with the economy. To turn around and tell people their wrong for not liking the state of the economy because one set of metrics looks good is tone def at best and political suicide at worst.

BarryZuckerkorn ,

nation wide polls and indicators suggest that people are generally unhappy with the economy

The Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey that is basically the standard on this sentiment analysis seems to be heavily correlated with gasoline prices, far more than gasoline prices actually affect the economy.

And consumer sentiment about the economy has been moving upward over the past few months, while gasoline prices have been low. Did anything change between November and now, to bring it to the highest level of the last 3 years? I'd argue the only real change we've seen in the economy over the past few months is low gasoline prices. All the other long term structural things are still present.

megopie ,

The consumer confidence index has been on a down ward trend over all since an initial jump with vaccine rollouts. If you pick small parts of the graph and focus on fluctuations that support your argument you can make it look good but if you map it all the way back to the end of lock down, the trend is clear.

There are also other metrics beyond the consumer confidence index, such as Gallup’s economic confidence index which shows the same over all downward trend.

This is just the reality the number show, people are not happy with the sate of the economy and they don’t expect it to get better. Telling people they should be happier because unemployment is low is an awful political strategy.

BarryZuckerkorn ,

The consumer confidence index has been on a down ward trend over all since an initial jump with vaccine rollouts.

Yes, and partisan affiliation is a big chunk of that shift during late 2020 and early 2021. Republicans went from generally positive to strongly negative when Biden was elected, while Democrats didn't flip as strongly from strongly negative to still pretty negative. You can tie it to vaccines, but, uh, I'm gonna go ahead and point out a more significant shift that happened at the same time.

I don't think the lived economic experiences of Republicans and Democrats of the same income levels are all that different, but the cross tabs in these surveys show very different perceptions.

So I stand by my general view that a lot of the mismatch stems from people's feelings being poorly correlated with even their own experience.

Telling people they should be happier because unemployment is low is an awful political strategy.

I'm not trying to formulate any kind of political strategy. I'm just observing people and trying to explain what I see with a predictive/explanatory model, not formulating some kind of message. And my model is simple: Republicans will never be happy about the economy under a Democratic president, and most of the rest of the sentiment is just driven by gasoline prices, and to a lesser extent, food prices.

some_guy ,

This was about the best article I've read about the matter. Cogent and articulate, if not insightful. Worth the read.

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

Did we read the same article?

I posted here with a more in depth look at what it's saying, but TL;DR as far as I can tell its main theses are "please don't listen to expert analysis of the economy" and "here are some ways economic metrics COULD be misleading, I will take no questions about whether they actually ARE misleading in this case, next topic pls."

Vodulas ,

The author is an economics professor. This IS an expert analysis of the economy. It gave very clear and cogent reasons old metrics are not reliable any longer. Not sure what more you want

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

The author is an economics professor.

A lot of economics professors are wrong about a lot of things, famously so.

(Edit: Actually, a better way to say it. If I can find an economics professor or expert who outranks this guy, is more of an expert, who has the opposite opinion, does that cancel out what this guy says? Because that person's an expert? That's the problem with the appeal to authority.)

It gave very clear and cogent reasons old metrics are not reliable any longer.

No it didn't. It gave very clear, cogent, and accurate reasons why these particular metrics (old or not) are sometimes not reliable. It made no effort to justify why they wouldn't be reliable right now or why the reality differs from the indication of the metrics. Just "these metrics are imperfect, therefore the opposite of what they say must be true, QED." Like I say I went into some detail in my other message, if you want to see.

And, the metrics the author tried to promote instead (on the rare occasions he was trying to promote anything in particular) were incredibly more flawed than the ones he was pointing out the limitations of. Again, I went into some detail in my other message.

If you're planning to simply appeal to authority, like "well this guy's a professor so you're not allowed to think his argument is shit even if you can explain in detail why," then we can end our conversation simply agreeing to disagree about how it works.

Vodulas ,

Friend, you made the appeal to authority when you said

TL;DR as far as I can tell its main theses are “please don’t listen to expert analysis of the economy”

I was just pointing out that this person is of equal authority.

I don't really care to argue with you as there is no real point. You're either in way too deep to be convinced or you are astroturfing for the DNC or some other political org. I think it is just the former, but the more times I see your comments saying a lot of the same things and vehemently defending Biden, I am beginning to wonder.

Oh, and I read your other comment, but I always doubt someone's intent when they are asking folks to go outside beehaw for a comment. Often times that is to lure folks somewhere with fewer rules. Again, I don't think that is what you are trying to do, but also again I have seen you do it a couple times which gives me a kernal of doubt.

Anyhow, have a good evening.

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

I posted an incredibly detailed layout of what I think of this guy's analysis and why I think it's crap, and invited you to talk about it with me if you'd like.

You could have saved yourself some typing just by saying "no, I don't want to do that." You don't need to justify. Cheers as well.

HobbitFoot ,

The metrics are better, but the situation is worse. We're also at an inflection point where things are starting to improve, but it still feels shitty overall.

Banzai51 ,
@Banzai51@midwest.social avatar

Because Biden has been stabilizing things, but no one has attacked the problem of income inequity which has been rolling for decades. We've just gotten to the point that the inequity is truly affecting a ton of people.

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

Income inequality is actually improving in fairly unprecedented ways right now. That's one of the metrics that the OP article for some reason feels it's really important that we don't look at.

The actual inflation-adjusted real wage growth at the bottom has been very strong, about 7 percent between January 2020 and November of this year. Compare that to the last 50 years, you’ll be hard-pressed to find that type of leveling up.

HobbitFoot ,

Yeah. The numbers are moving historically faster, but that is because, in part, history has been so shitty.

I bet that these numbers would do better under Biden than Trump. It just happens to be that a decent size of the population doesn't have the patience.

Banzai51 ,
@Banzai51@midwest.social avatar

We're seeing that because of the pandemic and post pandemic pressures, but income inequity has been growing for decades. A couple of years in the positive direction isn't fixing it. And we're already seeing businesses clawing that back with layoffs.

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

Pandemic pressure would naturally produce a historic rise in wages for low-income workers? Can you explain a little more?

A couple of years in the positive direction isn't fixing it.

So we're moving the goalposts from "things are getting worse" to "okay things are getting better in recently-unprecedented ways, but that's not important right now"?

I mean, I do agree with you that a couple of years of good progress isn't going to mean issues with the American economy are "fixed," but I didn't think that's what we were talking about.

Banzai51 ,
@Banzai51@midwest.social avatar

I'm saying the last couple of years is an illusion. As soon as things get back to normal economically, the inequity will continue its march.

And yes, mid to post pandemic saw rising wages. 1 million+ died, 3.5-4 million retired. When the restrictions loosened up, what was the big problem? "No one wants to work!!!" Because a lot of people took those relief checks and retrained themselves. When the low wage jobs could go back to normal, most of those former low wage workers had already found other, higher paying jobs. Eventually even the most stubborn restaurants or retail jobs raised wages to compete. Remember everyone complaining that low skilled McDonald's workers making $15/hr? Or did you conveniently forget the last 4 years to argue with an idiot on the internet?

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

I'm saying the last couple of years is an illusion. As soon as things get back to normal economically, the inequity will continue its march.

And yes, mid to post pandemic saw rising wages. 1 million+ died, 3.5-4 million retired. When the restrictions loosened up, what was the big problem? "No one wants to work!!!" Because a lot of people took those relief checks and retrained themselves.

So... things will get back to inequality again, as soon as all those people un-retrain themselves, un-retire, and come back to life?

I'm mean, I'm partly kidding; I actually do think people straight-up dying or becoming disabled had a big unrecognized impact in wage growth, yes. But also, supply chain inflation and companies that went bust during the pandemic and didn't come back, put some weight on the scale on the other side.

Biden's policies created 700,000 new manufacturing jobs so far. We raised corporate taxes significantly and then put hundreds of billions of dollars back into domestic industry in a way that was specifically designed to create jobs. It would be weird if the impact of that was 0.

Let me ask this -- if your assertion is that wages rising is just a natural response after Covid killed all these people and made the market tighter (if I've understood you right) -- why hasn't it happened that way in any other first world country within the same time frame? Pretty much all of them except the US have seen wages falling (or, have seen inflation rising fast enough to overpower the slight rise in wage growth).

t3rmit3 ,

Income != wages. Income inequality is still increasing.

The ultra-rich don't get most of their obscene wealth growth from wages, they get it from investments and assets, and the fall in average household savings shows that the increased wages at the bottom isn't translating to more financial security, it's getting eaten up by increasing prices in many different sectors.

mozz Admin ,
mozz avatar

Income != wages

What do you mean by this?

Income inequality is still increasing.

Source? Mine is here and here although I'm happy to delve into more detailed statistical tables if you want to do that.

The ultra-rich don't get most of their obscene wealth growth from wages, they get it from investments and assets

Agreed. I was careful to phrase it as "wage earners" when I was talking about wage earners at the 90th percentile losing ground; I'm sure at the 99.9th percentile it's still going up yes, which is a problem.

the fall in average household savings shows that the increased wages at the bottom isn't translating to more financial security

Can you explain a little more what you mean by this?

it's getting eaten up by increasing prices in many different sectors.

What's your source? I sent a couple already which specifically show wages growing outpacing inflation, at the bottom end of the scale. So we have historic levels of inflation because of a couple of different reasons, and the wage growth at the bottom is still beating inflation by about 7%, which means in absolute terms it's quite a bit larger than that.

t3rmit3 , (edited )

What do you mean by this?

I mean what I said.

Wage: A regular payment, usually on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis, made by an employer to an employee, especially for manual or unskilled work.

Income: The amount of money or its equivalent received during a period of time in exchange for labor or services (note: this is wages), from the sale of goods or property, or as profit from financial investments (these last 2 are not wages).

Wages are a subset of income, and for the rich, not the primary source of income. Saying that the wage disparity has decreased by a single-digit percentage compared against inflation, is not the same as saying that income disparity has decreased, because other income sources than wages (primarily investment income) are where the top-earners have seen most of their wealth growth.

Source?

Both of those articles are about wages, not income. Also, your Politico source is from May 2023, and notes:

Now, however, those gains are in jeopardy, as the government moves to end bipartisan pandemic-era spending that injected trillions of dollars into the economy, spurred consumer spending and put workers in ultra-high demand.

That did in fact play out over the past year. Also, huge rounds of layoffs across the country at the tail end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 have been forcing people to cut into savings during their ensuing job hunts.

Here's one from Reuters about wealth inequality still increasing, as of Feb 2024, though this one is especially breaking down the inequality by race:

While all groups saw gains in net worth through the worst of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, when federal fiscal programs offered expansive unemployment and other benefits, subsequent declines amid rising inflation and sagging financial markets hit Black families the hardest and pushed their net worth back below the 2019 level.

Here is MSN on wealth disparity increasing, from 11 hours ago:

This remarkable surge, amounting to a staggering $2 trillion increase in just three months, underscores the growing concentration of wealth among the wealthiest individuals in the country. The driving force behind this surge? A year-end rally in the stock market, which propelled the value of investment portfolios held by the top echelon of society.

The surge in wealth for the top 1% has been primarily fueled by gains in corporate equities and mutual fund shares, which saw their combined value soar to $19.7 trillion in the fourth quarter, marking a significant uptick from the previous quarter.

This surge in wealth for the top 1% is not an isolated event but rather part of a broader trend that began in 2020 amidst the market upswing triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the wealth of this elite segment of society has ballooned by nearly $15 trillion, representing an astonishing 49% increase.

So while wages saw a 7%-over-inflation growth for the bottom-earners, investment incomes for top-earners propelled their wealth 49% higher.

I was careful to phrase it as “wage earners”

You specifically said "income inequality", not "wage inequality", as the first 2 words of your comment I replied to.

I sent a couple already which specifically show wages growing outpacing inflation

Yes, because inflation is an overall metric that defines the general growth of prices. It's not uniform. It's a mean. So if the price of goods in one sector goes down or stays static, it can mask the increased prices of other sectors. That people have more buying power because wage increases (which, keep in mind, is also an average, and doesn't actually apply to everyone equally) have outpaced overall inflation, is not an assertion that can be made only with those statistics.

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