Comment by drawfloat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drawfloat | Hacker News Reader

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The number one issue people say motivated them to vote for Trump/Boris/Wilders/et al is “cost of living”. Ie: wages have been falling behind for decades now.

The other issues may play in to it, but that only keeps the wheels on the cart for so long. 2024 we’re finally seeing the complete aversion to solving the cost of living crisis that has developed since the 90s become no longer avoidable.

I worry from a lot of responses from US democrats (and British Labour, and…) that we’re in for a rough ride because they fundamentally will never countenance that. It’s always an issue with the voter (education, Russia, misinformation, racism) instead.

As the piece said, pointing to GDP, economic data and saying things are actually good, while overlooking that this masks economic inequality is not engaging with that issue.

Edit: to clarify, this is not a dig at you. I have also continued to vote for centre left parties that ignored this inconvenient fact, doing little about house prices, wages, etc. But this can't continue if we don't want to see ever more authoritarian leaders.

This is actually also a lie (at least in America). Real income (after adjusting for inflation) has been rising at the median [1]. The bottom quintile got reamed by Covid but have been the biggest beneficiaries of inflation [2] (which tends to be bad only for people with savings) and the covid slump was more than compensated for by stimmy checks [3]. The Gini coefficient has been pretty stable since 1990.

There's only a cost of living crisis in cities with epic nimby-induced housing shortages, but most Americans don't live in those cities.

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

[2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXU900000LB0102M

[3]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUINCAFTTXLB0102M

You're sort of making the exact mistake I mentioned here. How far do those wages go vs the 70s? Add together housing costs, fuel costs, healthcare costs, transport costs, food costs, general price rises? Why can single income households no longer really support a family with a house if everything's got better and everyone is lying?

They go further. That's why I linked to median real income. It's exactly the stat that matters: looking at the actual person in the middle of the pack (not the mean, which is distorted by outliers) and controlling for inflation using the CPI, which uses a weighted average of hundreds of different cost categories to represent typical spending. I think housing makes up like 40% of it (don't quote me on that though) so it's definitely being taken into account. Food and healthcare are also big parts. Now you may not have a typical spending profile (a lot of people in NYC spend way more than 40% on rent) but the economy is broadly doing quite well.

Why can't you buy a house? You probably could, but probably not in the location you want. This was one of the most enlightening articles I've read on why: https://goodreason.substack.com/p/maybe-treating-housing-as-...

Housing in my hometown (ex-mining town, incredibly poor) has increased 1172% since the mid 1990s (£11k->£112k). Salaries have increased less than 100% in that time (£15,034 -> £29,593)

Sounds like the mining bust is a big factor, which isn't exactly representative of the whole economy. Also sounds like you're not in the US so none of my stats are relevant to you.

"Your grandpa/dad was able to support a family on a single income, have two cars, a house and a nice vacation every year and you struggle to pay for food and a place to live? That's a lie. Look at these stats, dummy."

TBH, even students have a car and go on vacations these days.

Funded by student loans that they will later struggle to repay.

While still having a car and going on vacations?

Citing Fed data to argue that people's understanding of their own economic situation is a "lie" is ... brave, and the sort of thing that led to the Democrat's current situation. The map is not the territory.

Inflation is very bad for the poor. Much worse than for the rich. People's wages lag behind price rises and may not rise at all if someone is unable to gain leverage over their employer. The rich tend to keep their savings in the sort of financial assets that benefit from the way modern governments print money, so they often benefit tremendously. Who did the best out of COVID policy: a guy who works in an Amazon warehouse and can be replaced at the drop of a hat if he asks for a raise, or someone who has a ton of money in Amazon shares?

The stimmy cheques are a big part of why there was inflation. They definitely didn't cancel it out.

This isn't about an individual. It's about America's economy, which is broadly doing very well. I never claimed it's universally doing well for every single person. That's statistically impossible.

Inflation can come in many forms. The wave we just had came during a historically tight job market, so yes, the poor (those without any savings) didn't do bad. Remember the labor shortage? One of the main reasons inflation went down this year was the huge influx of migrants alleviating it. I'll concede that's not doing any short term favors for the poor right now (though it's important to remember that immigration pretty much always makes everyone better off, poor included, after a generation or so), but in 2022 the middle class was definitely suffering more than the actual poor. This was not necessarily the case outside the US where the job market was not as crazy.

The stimmy checks helped with the initial Covid job shock, which was the intention. Of course they contributed to inflation.

> This isn't about an individual. It's about America's economy, which is broadly doing very well

I think you may be missing the parent's point, because you're repeating the mistake.

An individual doesn't care that the economy is "doing very well" if they're personally struggling. It probably makes it worse, actually. And telling them that they're wrong or stupid certainly doesn't make it better either.

Bernie gets it: https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-support-democratic-v...

The point is this: when Trump says the economy is doing badly, he's objectively lying. I know people who are making more money than they've ever made who still think the economy is in bad shape and Trump will somehow make it better. The guy is a serial grifter who's primarily concerned with enriching his children and empowering his sycophants. You couldn't count the number of former business partners who've sworn off ever working with him again. His policy proposals (100% tariffs, mass deportation) are so wildly inflationary they put the (ironically named) Inflation Reduction Act to shame. If you're concerned about the economy, Trump should be your last choice.

I get that people don't like being told that they're stupid and wrong. I don't know if anybody has the communication skills to convince Trump voters how stupid they're being. At this point, I just hope that when shit hits the fan, Trump doesn't manage to deflect too much blame. We're all going to have to learn some hard, hard lessons, together.

> The point is this: when Trump says the economy is doing badly, he's objectively lying

Not to the person struggling.

I'm not saying that Trump will actually improve their circumstances.

I'm saying that, according to Bernie and others, Harris' campaign didn't do a good job speaking to them.

Instead they told them that the economy is "doing very well" which clearly didn't resonate.

I agree that Harris dropped the ball on some of her messaging, but it's weird to dwell on that when Trump's messaging is a bunch of psychotic hallucinations. Also I'm talking about the point I was originally making. I guess people don't want to talk about that tho and prefer to rationalize Harris' loss.

> I guess people don't want to talk about that tho and prefer to rationalize Harris' loss.

You're doing it again...repeating the same mistake of implying that everyone that supports Trump is an idiot, rather than trying to understand what motivates them.

The same mistake the Democratic party keeps repeating.

I agree that this is a mistake the Democrats are making. But focusing on that distracts from a more fundamental problem. Thomas Jefferson famously said that a well-informed electorate is a prerequisite for successful democracy. We've been neglecting that for a long time, and now we're paying the price. With a well-informed electorate, we wouldn't have to engage in these messaging games and identity politics.

I don't disagree with you (or Jefferson), but I'm not sure it's so different today than it ever was. I doubt that the population as a whole was ever super informed or fully resistent to lies, propaganda, and misinformation.

So maybe our democracy has never been or will be successful by that definition. But somehow (largely thanks to checks on power and infighting) it manages to kick along.

In my opinion, information is the only thing that can fight ignorance. Something that I find troubling with the modern Democratic platform is the desire to limit free information by labeling it "misinformation". Another move that I believe exacerbates the problem rather than addressing it.

We've never had a President that so many top generals, high-ranking Republican party officials, family members, and countless other close associates and former partners have all said is fundamentally unfit for office. This isn't just Democrats wringing their hands and crying foul. We're talking lifelong Republicans who honestly tried to work with him and could not believe the stupidity and malice. Remember all those Republican congressman who, in January 2021, said that Trump's little treason operation ought to disqualify him from office, then later fell in line when they realized having integrity is difficult? Doesn't that seem a little unprecedented to you?

> Doesn't that seem a little unprecedented to you?

Yeah it does, I don't disagree. But he won another election. By a lot.

I remember the same despair when he was elected the first time, with predictions of the end of the world as we know it, and yet here we are. I think the warnings this time like "democracy is in the ballot" will be shown to be wrong as well.

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