[astrange]

> Prices in America have skyrocketed in the past 4 years, and pay hasn’t even started to catch up.

No, it's about the same as 2019:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Inflation is over and done with. We even fixed income inequality; it's sharply reduced since 2019:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010

In fact, every single economic indicator is currently better than 2019.

One thing you can say that may be true is that voters are upset because they remember inflation from 2021-22 and are still reacting to it. Or that they don't like high interest rates. And housing prices are bad in blue states and that is the local governments' fault.

But one thing we see from US voters is that R voters claim the economy is bad under a D president and immediately switch to claiming it's good under an R president. So I think you should consider those people are lying.

[CptFribble]

> R voters claim the economy is bad under a D president and immediately switch to claiming it's good under an R president.

adding on to this, typically it takes 1-3 years for the effects of an administration to really bear fruit in the economy, either good or ill. So a common tactic from the R side the last several presidential cycles is to claim ownership of the economy handed to them by the outgoing D president, then when their policies cause some kind of problem, blame the incoming D president 4 years later.

See also: who the R's blame the deficit on vs. which party's presidents actually increased the deficit the most over the last 20-25 years.

[tourmalinetaco]

If it takes 2-3 years, then that means that the economic growth we experienced in ~2021 is Trump’s 2017/19 policies, and the economic downturn we’re receiving in 2024 is due to Biden’s 2021/23 policies.

Also, Dems do literally the exact same things.

[47282847]

I highly doubt any but the most crude policy changes would demonstrate within 5 years how they were to play out in the longer term. The idea of that seems almost as insane as US politics.

[Supermancho]

> No, it's about the same as 2019:

I dont think this graph demonstrates what you think it does. Household income is up, but individual income is down, by the same source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N This would imply that income is down (especially factoring ever present inflation), but households have grown.

> Inflation is over and done with. We even fixed income inequality; it's sharply reduced since 2019:

The Unexpected Compression study is about a specific subset of wages (low), not income. These are different things, even in broad definitions. Inflation is not solved. It continues to be leveraged and has a lasting effect.

> So I think you should consider those people are lying.

I believe that they are ignorant first.

[astrange]

> Household income is up, but individual income is down, by the same source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Indeed it's down a bit. The reason I didn't link it is that I think household income matters more than personal income, because it's more relevant to paying for the big expenses like the household itself, but it depends how people share expenses.

US household sizes historically never grow though: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cWvT

And here's personal real earnings of "workers", which is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

I think the flat "median personal income" has to do with the baby boomers hitting retirement age and leaving their jobs, but not really sure. It doesn't help that both median income charts end in 2023.

> These are different things, even in broad definitions.

In a high unemployment period they'd be different, but since we have historically low unemployment they're close.

I linked the paper because it goes into detail and I don't have anything else as good. For general income you can see graphs here: https://realtimeinequality.org/?id=income&incomeend=03012023...

It's okay. Very unstable around 2021, flat but better than 2019 since then. Could certainly be better.

I think it could be improved if we'd kept some of the welfare improvements from 2020 (namely child tax credit expansion), but highly engaged people got distracted advocating for student loan relief since then, and voters are never really into welfare programs even when they're the ones getting it.

> I believe that they are ignorant first.

Thus "consider" ;)

I do think people mainly answer that kind of survey based on what they hear in the news; they're not that selfish and want to seem a little savvy, so if you're asked "is the economy bad" you're going to answer with what you're hearing from everyone else even if you just went on a nice vacation.

[northhanover]

How could individual income shrink if household income increased and the households didn’t increase in size? Someone is lying.

[tourmalinetaco]

Households introduce a lot of variables, especially marriage. In some studies it has been shown you seek higher income opportunities than you might individually.[0] This would be my assumption, at least.

[0] - https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/married-wage-gap/

[astrange]

The medians are at different positions, I think.

[tourmalinetaco]

> No, it's about the same as 2019:

Thank you for for the source, this helps my point perfectly. If household income is only just reaching 2019 levels, but food has gone between 100-200% up in price[0], then that means the effective buying power has been cut in half if not more (depending on the good).

> Inflation is over and done with.

No, it’s not. It returned to a more normal level, but the effects don’t just magically disappear.

> We even fixed income inequality; it's sharply reduced since 2019

Fixed is pulling a lot of weight there. The lowest 10% of earners had wages that returned to pre-pandemic levels faster than those who make more, a lot of which were solely HS grads, and have increased proportionally higher. This does not in any way mean income equality is “fixed”, it’s still obviously there. Additionally, this coincides with your first link that wages for 90% of the population aren’t what they used to be, and those within the 10th percentile are hit the hardest by food prices anyway. Also “economic indicators” don’t matter until either food prices go down or wages meet inflation. As they say, everyone anxiously hopes for bread and circuses.

> One thing you can say that may be true is that voters are upset because they remember inflation from 2021-22 and are still reacting to it. Or that they don't like high interest rates. And housing prices are bad in blue states and that is the local governments' fault.

They’re going to react to it as long as it’s still affecting them, obviously. No one likes high interest rates. And that’s part of a handful of reasons there’s been more movement out of blue states.

> But one thing we see from US voters is that R voters claim the economy is bad under a D president and immediately switch to claiming it's good under an R president. So I think you should consider those people are lying.

This is just hypocritical. So the people you disagree with are liars because they disagree with you? While you’re claiming the economy is great under a Dem, and downplaying one of the most significant bouts of inflation in living memory?

[0] - https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...

[astrange]

> If household income is only just reaching 2019 levels, but food has gone between 100-200% up in price[0], then that means the effective buying power has been cut in half if not more (depending on the good).

No, the chart I linked is income after accounting for price increases. That's what "real income" means.

The other thing we can see in surveys is that people think their personal economic situation is good, but then think the economy is bad anyway. So they don't generally believe their income is down at this time, though they do remember it being down recently.

> No, it’s not. It returned to a more normal level, but the effects don’t just magically disappear.

Inflation is a rate. When the rate goes down, then it's over. ("disinflation")

When it goes negative ("deflation") it means a severe economic crisis like the one in 2008.

> They’re going to react to it as long as it’s still affecting them, obviously. No one likes high interest rates.

Luckily they've been going down all this year. I think savers like them though.

> And that’s part of a handful of reasons there’s been more movement out of blue states.

Wellllll… the US has a gigantic welfare program for homeownership called 30-year fixed mortgages. Many people bought homes in 2021 when rates were low, so it literally doesn't matter to them if it goes up after that. It does make it harder to move though, or to borrow money for other things.

The housing costs issue more affects young people who want to move out of their parents' places.

> This is just hypocritical. So the people you disagree with are liars because they disagree with you?

It's because they immediately switch. I also thought the economy was good in 2019, but it was definitely bad in 2020. (And worst of all in 2008.)

Also no, I didn't say they were liars, just that it's a possibility.

[tourmalinetaco]

I did indeed misread, however my graph still proves that buying power, a far more important metric than the useless real income, is down across the board. And these mysteries “studies” don’t particularly help anything. Objectively speaking money went further in 2019 than it has in 2024, and anyone with real world experience can tell you that.

[9x39]

>Inflation is over and done with. We even fixed income inequality; it's sharply reduced since 2019:

Have prices sharply reduced since 2019?

[astrange]

Inflation ending means stable prices. A general reduction in the price level (aka deflation) comes with horrific unemployment for some people and income loss for everyone else. If you think you want that, you don't.

[Izkata]

People are complaining prices are too high, not that it's going up too fast.

[astrange]

I'm sure they do but you can't lower the general price level without the economy imploding because everyone's in too much debt. Imagine if you just bought a house and then housing prices halved - your loan balance is now twice the value of your house.

You could just declare all nominal prices 100x lower and make everyone rewrite their loan contracts, it'd make the penny useful again too, but the best approach is to just wait until expectations reset or voters find a new thing to get mad about.

(Prices can go down in some sectors, like food/oil/technology; nobody really has a good explanation for when this is safe and when it isn't.)

Also, in this case the guy who got elected was running on explicitly inflationary policy - low interest rates, tax cuts and tariffs. Though I don't think voters knew that.

[bostik]

Try both.

Towards the end of the Plague Years, when food prices were going up 4%-5% quarter to quarter, people were most definitely complaining that the prices were rising way too fast.

Some of the prices have started to come down a bit in the past few months[ß] but for vast majority of food items, from staples to high-end ingredients, prices remain painfully high.

ß: in the UK, beef and pork are becoming marginally less expensive, possibly thanks to meat producers figuring out that a number of people are willing to try things like venison, spreading the demand across a wider range of products; this year's olive harvest has been so good the prices for olive oil are expected to come down in about another year; and butter has come down (slightly) from its peak.

[bobthepanda]

Housing prices are also bad in red states now.