Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

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> they were compensated for it.

That's a very questionable assumption.

Many people have criticized the CPI and inflation rate as an inaccurate measure of the cost of living. Housing prices are crazy in many areas. I think you're exaggerating about the affect of egg prices specifically on voter behavior. And with any average or median, there are often vastly different outcomes for different people who are not exactly average.

> when people got raises they went "wow I'm so good at my job and hard working and smart"

This feels like a straw man.

> when eggs/gas prices went up they went "the president is a bad man and bad at high job".

This also feels like a straw man, and the phrasing is quite condescending.

> people still ended up angrier than they did post GFC

Did they? After all, the 2008 Presidential election during the financial crisis was kind of a blowout in favor of the opposition party against the incumbent party. Whereas 2020 and 2024 were closer elections.

“ Many people have criticized the CPI and inflation rate as an inaccurate measure of the cost of living. Housing prices are crazy in many areas”

Do you have any ‘real’ inflation measures that show that the middle and lower middle class didn’t improve more in that period than any time since pre-Reagan? I’ve looked and can’t find any but am definitely not an economist.

It’s well studied that grocery and gas prices have an outsized impact on consumer sentiment going back a very long time, what’s new is there seems to be a disconnect between economic outcomes, consumer sentiment and consumer behaviors.

I think it’s going to be a huge point of study to figure out why people thought they were doing worse than they were but continued to spend like things were rosy.

> Do you have any ‘real’ inflation measures that show that the middle and lower middle class didn’t improve more in that period than any time since pre-Reagan?

I wasn't disputing that specifically.

> I think it’s going to be a huge point of study to figure out why people thought they were doing worse than they were

Here's a recent article by a former US Comptroller who argues that people weren't wrong:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-...

> continued to spend like things were rosy.

I think that's a strange way of putting it.

In general, I wouldn't take election outcomes to be a reflection of some cultural zeitgeist. Elections happen in the US on a single day, and if the election were held again today, the outcome might be different. In any case, the elections are usually quite close, depending on small percentages in battleground states. Little movements can make a big difference. My own state of Wisconsin has had a margin of victory of under 1% for the past 3 Presidential elections.

I wasn’t talking about elections. Lowered consumer sentiment used to be predictive of lowered consumer spending (especially on no -essential expenditures). It’s decoupled now. And consumer spending was absolutely bonkers for years after the sentiment suggested it shouldn’t be.

Consumer sentiment used to be if not directly correlated to broader economic figures, directionally the same. That stopped being true.

And this has been beyond just single methodology reports. Commercial data and polls broadly said the same thing as the non-profit data and polls which broadly matched governmental numbers.

Some fundamental change has happened and if it doesn’t revert I think it’s going to be a big point of academic research for decades to come.

Where were the mass demonstrations in 2008-2010? Sure OWS happened, and I was able to see it up close.. but this was nothing compared to summer 2020.

Why did no one storm the capitol in 2008/2012?

Why didn't crime shoot up and stay up for 2-3 years then?

Etc.

I'm at a loss here, because these all seem like red herrings. What do the George Floyd protests and the Capitol storming have to do with inflation, employment, and the cost of living?

It speaks to the mass anger, on both sides of the political spectrum, in the same 6-12 month period. None of which we saw the likes of in US during the deeper, longer, more impactful near-depression of 2008.

Ok, but your original comments said this:

> And yet all everyone wants to talk about is egg prices going up so we need to vote the bums out and take a turn towards the party of the CEO class.

Whereas now you're talking about things that have nothing to do with egg prices or indeed any prices. So I'm not sure how it's relevant to the original discussion or to the linked article.

People get angry politically about things that have little to do with economics. You could name abortion too. But... how is that even relevant here?

If your question is, why were people more angry about the economy in 2024 than in 2008, I'm not sure that they were. If your question is, why were people more angry in general in 2024 than in 2008, the answer would depend on issues having nothing to do with the economy.

pretty sure they’re referring to the post-housing bubble crash and the brief and ineffective 99% protests

Thank you, yes. Some people posting maybe aren't old enough to remember it, but the GFC was a longer, deeper and more protracted episode with many many years for people to claw back to where they were in 2005-2006.

COVID was deep but brief, for most people in most places things were pretty good within 6-12 months. The 2021-2022 inflation, travel, spending, etc bubble tells us that things clearly weren't THAT bad. We did not have anything remotely close to that recovery from 2009-2013+...

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