@Ruth
I think @Sober Preacher's Kid was analyzing the sentiment the way it would get analyzed in an academic context, and you are analyzing it as it would appear at the level of everyday thought and discussion.
Academics know better than to think they'll get away with gross generalizations about millions of people, and they cite their sources. He talked in vague terms about "a large number" -- this isn't analysis. He has since clarified that he's talking about Trump voters. As if they were all exactly the same.
Well, there are two possibilities...
1. No electorally significant portion of the American public agrees with Trump on Ukraine.
2.
OR...
2. There is an electorally significant portion of the American public(of whatever absolute size) who agree with Trump on Ukraine.
I tend to assume the latter to be true, and it's kinda what I'm taking the rough meaning of @Sober Preacher's Kid's post to be. And while I maybe wouldn't have generalized about the entire 47% of Trump voters, OTOH if you vote for the party that has legalize arson as part of its platform but only because you like their policy on paving roads, I still don't think you get to complain TOO loudly if someone carelessly lumps you in with the firebug bloc of the coalition.
Did you even look at the numbers from Pew Research? You don't need to assume anything. There is polling data.
And your disdain for human beings who were lied to and who will feel the ill effects of their votes for Trump far more than you will is noted.
And we should have sympathy for Trump voters why, precisely?
They are adults and were given an option. They wanted to hear those lies. That's their responsibility. That's the way elections work.
I also never asked to you "explain" Americans or US politics.
Before you jump down my throat (again) you'll note that I have never attacked you, as an American, individually. But democracy deals in aggregates. It always has. If you think I'm making generalizations, you should see the generalizations that political party strategists make.
And we should have sympathy for Trump voters why, precisely?
They are adults and were given an option. They wanted to hear those lies. That's their responsibility. That's the way elections work.
Okay, don't. No skin off my nose. But again you are talking about millions of people as if they were all the same. So again, you're talking nonsense.
I also never asked to you "explain" Americans or US politics.
I didn't say you did.
Before you jump down my throat (again) you'll note that I have never attacked you, as an American, individually. But democracy deals in aggregates. It always has. If you think I'm making generalizations, you should see the generalizations that political party strategists make.
Political party strategists at least recognize that parties are made up of coalitions of people who don't all think exactly the same way.
If you think I'm making generalizations, you should see the generalizations that political party strategists make.
You probably remember when Stephane Dion's advisor was quoted as saying that the Liberals should run as "Barack Obama", and if all the pissed off old men in Alberta don't like it, they can go live in the states and vote for Sara Palin."
Number one, was the irony of the guy questioning the patriotism of Albertans, while citing an American politician as his role model. Also, the tiring progressive delusion that reactionary politics in Canada can be entirely blamed on the voters of Alberta.
But yeah, if the guy's analysis of the Canadian electorate had been correct, I woulda considered "the pissed off old men in Alberta" an inoffensive synechdoche, though possibly one best not leaked to the media.
And we should have sympathy for Trump voters why, precisely?
They are adults and were given an option. They wanted to hear those lies. That's their responsibility. That's the way elections work.
I mean, it's an article of faith on the left that right-wing populists win by pandering to racist, sexist, anti-lgbqt sentiment etc.
So, assuming that's true, I would think the Venn Diagram between "Trump voters who deserve sympathy because they were the helpless victims of a liar" and "Trump voters who supported Trump because they liked the racism etc" would have no overlap whatsoever.
Been traveling today so did not have a chance to chime in until now. Apparently, the meeting had been going on for 40 minutes before the infamous exchange happened. To me, it seemed a set up. They had talked about the generalities of the mineral agreement. Then Vance just had to open his mouth. But even before the exchange, a reporter from a conservative outlet had asked Zelensky why he did not wear a suit, and Trump also made some remark about Zelensky's attire.
To tell the truth, I think it is still too early to determine how the polls view the exchange, but I can tell you look for the differences on how independents view Trump. If their unfavourability ratings increase, it will be very hard for the president to keep congress come the bi election.
45% of Latinos voted for Trump, with the economy as their number one issue, though some also don't like illegal immigration.
Well, presumably, that 45% can probably be absolved from the charge of racism against Latinos. But do you think that makes their vote otherwise rational?
If their unfavourability ratings increase, it will be very hard for the president to keep congress come the bi election.
I assume "bi election" means midterms? Is that a common phrasing in the US?
Just for interest's sake, in the UK and Canada, at least, "by election" refers to an election held in just one constituency(what you call a district), when the seat becomes open, following the death, resignation etc of the sitting member.
(I think in the USA, that's called a "special election"?)
45% of Latinos voted for Trump, with the economy as their number one issue, though some also don't like illegal immigration.
Well, presumably, that 45% can probably be absolved from the charge of racism against Latinos. But do you think that makes their vote otherwise rational?
I wouldn't presume. Racism is about how you see other people, not how you see yourself. You could also argue on a structural level that a lot of Latino Americans may imagine that they benefit by associating with the economy of white people more than they do with their own cultural heritage.
One could even question whether Latino can be properly considered a racial identity, though I'm not qualified to adjudicate that one beyond to observe that the question exists.
I get the impression that being Latino in America is a rather complicated thing.
45% of Latinos voted for Trump, with the economy as their number one issue, though some also don't like illegal immigration.
Well, presumably, that 45% can probably be absolved from the charge of racism against Latinos. But do you think that makes their vote otherwise rational?
I wouldn't presume. Racism is about how you see other people, not how you see yourself. You could also argue on a structural level that a lot of Latino Americans may imagine that they benefit by associating with the economy of white people more than they do with their own cultural heritage.
One could even question whether Latino can be properly considered a racial identity, though I'm not qualified to adjudicate that one beyond to observe that the question exists.
I get the impression that being Latino in America is a rather complicated thing.
Well, my impression was that @Ruth was posting the stats as a counter to my implying that a lotta Republicans are racist.
But my question still stands...
Among those Republican voters who aren't motivated by bigotry but rather concern for the economy, can we consider their voting choices rational?
Among those Republican voters who aren't motivated by bigotry but rather concern for the economy, can we consider their voting choices rational?
Some of them, yes. It makes sense to me that the people most hurt by inflation would want to vote out the incumbent party. In places where Democrats are in control, like a lot of big cities, like California, homelessness just keeps getting worse and worse. Rent is insanely high, and a crap-ton of people are rent-burdened. Democrats where I live haven't been able to do anything about these things, and nationally while a Democratic president was in charge, inflation went up 20% in four years. So sure, give the other guy a chance. The economy was better when he was in charge before.
Among those Republican voters who aren't motivated by bigotry but rather concern for the economy, can we consider their voting choices rational?
Some of them, yes. It makes sense to me that the people most hurt by inflation would want to vote out the incumbent party. In places where Democrats are in control, like a lot of big cities, like California, homelessness just keeps getting worse and worse. Rent is insanely high, and a crap-ton of people are rent-burdened. Democrats where I live haven't been able to do anything about these things, and nationally while a Democratic president was in charge, inflation went up 20% in four years. So sure, give the other guy a chance. The economy was better when he was in charge before.
Okay, thanks.
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
One could even question whether Latino can be properly considered a racial identity, though I'm not qualified to adjudicate that one beyond to observe that the question exists.
I get the impression that being Latino in America is a rather complicated thing.
Racial politics among people of Latin American origin is complicated - even before you get to the apparently "intra-communal" (they don't consider it's intra-communal) element, there's a floating number who consider themselves to be "white" racially. It's like grouping together all 'European' immigrants to America and then omitting the history of the interactions between those various immigrant groups.
This is part of the reason why those screeds in the 90s/00s about the coming permanent Democratic majority were more than a little misplaced.
And tired of non-Americans getting things really wrong or, in the case of @Sober Preacher's Kid, making huge generalizations about unspecified large numbers of us. What does it even mean to say a lot of Americans didn't want the Russian-Ukrainian war? Did anyone outside of Putin and his allies/appeasers want that war?
The OP is trying to do something you are always complaining about needs to happen. You are always complaining about Brits saying things about the US government, despite this being an international site with contributions from all over the world. The OP is giving US voices an opportunity.
The people who contribute are the people who contribute. There are things that US ship mates go on about that I get tired of.
And tired of non-Americans getting things really wrong or, in the case of @Sober Preacher's Kid, making huge generalizations about unspecified large numbers of us. What does it even mean to say a lot of Americans didn't want the Russian-Ukrainian war? Did anyone outside of Putin and his allies/appeasers want that war?
The OP is trying to do something you are always complaining about needs to happen. You are always complaining about Brits saying things about the US government, despite this being an international site with contributions from all over the world. The OP is giving US voices an opportunity.
No, that is not what the OP does. That may be what the OP intended, but the assumptions baked into the OP, together with the “I’m too lazy to read up on this myself, so I’ll just ask you Americans if the meeting bothered you” attitude is not giving us an opportunity.
And we do not complain about Brits saying things about the US government. We complain about Brits and other non-Americans saying uninformed and ignorant things about the US government, about American politics and about Americans—things that those same Brits and other non-Americans could easily educate themselves on. Every time this conversation comes up, it’s noted by Americans that there are some Brits and other non-Americans posting who have a very good understanding of how things work and what the situation is here, without expecting us to spoon-feed them over and over.
Perhaps if we filled the threads about British political with the kind of stuff that that often fills the threads about American politics, you’d see the problem.
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
Inflation had already dropped almost to where economists like it to be, and cities are not the crime-ridden hellholes many Republicans make them out to be. There are people who are literally afraid to travel to San Francisco because they think they will for sure be assaulted by a homeless person if they do.
That Trump lied is not just what I think -- it's an objective fact. Google "Trump lies" if you want to know more.
You are always complaining about Brits saying things about the US government, despite this being an international site with contributions from all over the world. The OP is giving US voices an opportunity.
As @Nick Tamen said, I'm tired of uninformed opinions and the unrelenting rudeness. We don't need anyone to give us "an opportunity" -- we can post whenever we want. The OP shat all over us, and you're all just fine with it because you don't think you need to treat American shipmates with basic human courtesy.
And tired of non-Americans getting things really wrong or, in the case of @Sober Preacher's Kid, making huge generalizations about unspecified large numbers of us. What does it even mean to say a lot of Americans didn't want the Russian-Ukrainian war? Did anyone outside of Putin and his allies/appeasers want that war?
The OP is trying to do something you are always complaining about needs to happen. You are always complaining about Brits saying things about the US government, despite this being an international site with contributions from all over the world. The OP is giving US voices an opportunity.
No, that is not what the OP does. That may be what the OP intended, but the assumptions baked into the OP, together with the “I’m too lazy to read up on this myself, so I’ll just ask you Americans if the meeting bothered you” attitude is not giving us an opportunity.
And we do not complain about Brits saying things about the US government. We complain about Brits and other non-Americans saying uninformed and ignorant things about the US government, about American politics and about Americans—things that those same Brits and other non-Americans could easily educate themselves on. Every time this conversation comes up, it’s noted by Americans that there are some Brits and other non-Americans posting who have a very good understanding of how things work and what the situation is here, without expecting us to spoon-feed them over and over.
Perhaps if we filled the threads about British political with the kind of stuff that that often fills the threads about American politics, you’d see the problem.
That would be annoying yes, but it would still be part of being an international site. Believe me outside of the ship we get a lot of stuff on social media and from US tourists who expect the UK to be exactly the same as the US. A lot of which comes across as patronising.
We all need to be free to post on threads from other countries. Yes it needs to be respectful and people do need an understanding of the systems in that country.
The US government is the most powerful in the world. What it does affects other countries drastically. We get more about you in our media than you do about us. With all this comes people talking about it.
Among those Republican voters who aren't motivated by bigotry but rather concern for the economy, can we consider their voting choices rational?
Some of them, yes. It makes sense to me that the people most hurt by inflation would want to vote out the incumbent party. In places where Democrats are in control, like a lot of big cities, like California, homelessness just keeps getting worse and worse. Rent is insanely high, and a crap-ton of people are rent-burdened. Democrats where I live haven't been able to do anything about these things, and nationally while a Democratic president was in charge, inflation went up 20% in four years. So sure, give the other guy a chance. The economy was better when he was in charge before.
Okay, thanks.
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
Among those Republican voters who aren't motivated by bigotry but rather concern for the economy, can we consider their voting choices rational?
Some of them, yes. It makes sense to me that the people most hurt by inflation would want to vote out the incumbent party. In places where Democrats are in control, like a lot of big cities, like California, homelessness just keeps getting worse and worse. Rent is insanely high, and a crap-ton of people are rent-burdened. Democrats where I live haven't been able to do anything about these things, and nationally while a Democratic president was in charge, inflation went up 20% in four years. So sure, give the other guy a chance. The economy was better when he was in charge before.
I know your penultimate sentence is ventriloquising for Republican voters, but I can't tell how much of the rest is you expressing what you think is actually the case and how much is you expressing what Republican voters believe to be the case.
And tired of non-Americans getting things really wrong or, in the case of @Sober Preacher's Kid, making huge generalizations about unspecified large numbers of us. What does it even mean to say a lot of Americans didn't want the Russian-Ukrainian war? Did anyone outside of Putin and his allies/appeasers want that war?
The OP is trying to do something you are always complaining about needs to happen. You are always complaining about Brits saying things about the US government, despite this being an international site with contributions from all over the world. The OP is giving US voices an opportunity.
No, that is not what the OP does. That may be what the OP intended, but the assumptions baked into the OP, together with the “I’m too lazy to read up on this myself, so I’ll just ask you Americans if the meeting bothered you” attitude is not giving us an opportunity.
And we do not complain about Brits saying things about the US government. We complain about Brits and other non-Americans saying uninformed and ignorant things about the US government, about American politics and about Americans—things that those same Brits and other non-Americans could easily educate themselves on. Every time this conversation comes up, it’s noted by Americans that there are some Brits and other non-Americans posting who have a very good understanding of how things work and what the situation is here, without expecting us to spoon-feed them over and over.
Perhaps if we filled the threads about British political with the kind of stuff that that often fills the threads about American politics, you’d see the problem.
That would be annoying yes, but it would still be part of being an international site. Believe me outside of the ship we get a lot of stuff on social media and from US tourists who expect the UK to be exactly the same as the US. A lot of which comes across as patronising.
Right, but that is there and this is here. I think the situation is more analogous to being from/living in somewhere which has been subject to the sharp end of US foreign policy and being told 'we have no interest in that'.
Almost all my American friends seem to be appalled by Trump.
However, I recognise that that reflects the sort of Americans who are my friends. They are not necessarily typical Americans.
As I general rule, I tend to distinguish between a government and its people. I suspect, for example, that there are many perfectly decent Iranians and Russians. (Other examples are available.) It's very rarely that any British government has reflected my own values, and never with regard to everything.
Almost all my American friends seem to be appalled by Trump.
However, I recognise that that reflects the sort of Americans who are my friends. They are not necessarily typical Americans.
As I general rule, I tend to distinguish between a government and its people. I suspect, for example, that there are many perfectly decent Iranians and Russians. (Other examples are available.) It's very rarely that any British government has reflected my own values, and never with regard to everything.
True, and worth bearing in mind when someone says that the election of Trump (or, in our case, the madness of Brexit) was The Will Of The People™...
In places where Democrats are in control, like a lot of big cities, like California, homelessness just keeps getting worse and worse. Rent is insanely high, and a crap-ton of people are rent-burdened. Democrats where I live haven't been able to do anything about these things, and nationally while a Democratic president was in charge, inflation went up 20% in four years.
I know your penultimate sentence is ventriloquising for Republican voters, but I can't tell how much of the rest is you expressing what you think is actually the case and how much is you expressing what Republican voters believe to be the case.
The things I didn't snip out of the quote above are true. About half the renters in the US are spending more than 30% of their income on rent. But that's a national figure. In some places it's worse.
New York: rent-to-income ratio in 2022 was 68.5%
Miami 41.6%
Fort Lauderdale 36.7%
Los Angeles 35.6%
(Numbers from a paywalled January 2023 NY Times article citing a report by Moody's)
The biggest cause is the housing shortage. Democrats have been totally in charge in California for something like 15 years, and only one of their efforts to stimulate housing growth has born fruit: you can now build what's called an Accessory Dwelling Unit on the property of your single-family home (colloquially, a granny apartment - a separate little housing unit with kitchen and bathroom that you can rent out), and over 100,000 have been built in the last 7 years. All their other statewide legislative efforts have been blocked by local governments, stymied by economic forces beyond their control and/or by other regulations within their control, or doomed from the start because they were badly written. https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/02/california-yimby-laws-assessment-report/
So yes, there are very real problems. And they are shouldered more by Black and brown people, who are massively over-represented in those rent-burdened numbers. Me, I can afford rent. But if I were willing to move out of California, I could buy a home for less than I'm spending on rent.
Assuming the US (and, the different parts thereof) is sufficiently similar to the UK, the (very real) problems with housing are symptoms of far deeper and more complex problems with society. In the UK, the biggest problems with housing are the lack of smaller dwellings, 1 or 2 bedroom flats (apartments), and the lack of social housing.
Ultimately the lack of social housing is a direct consequence of the policies of the Conservative government in the 1980s forcing through a right to buy at massive discounts to council tenants (though, if you were a private tenant for some reason the right to buy your home at a discount didn't apply) and not permitting councils to invest the proceeds into building replacement homes. There have been various local issues on top of that, including local politics and economic circumstances.
And, for smaller properties the issue is largely that private housing developers make more profit from larger homes, especially when they can get hold of some dirt cheap fields in the middle of nowhere and throw up a suburb of housing with no amenities. Compounded by councils not enforcing regulations to include so-called "affordable housing" in the mix, or including amenities within their developments. Also, planning permission or zoning can also be issues especially when there are proposals to build affordable housing near the homes of wealthy folks with a lot of political clout.
And, of course, private landlords and developers quite like a housing shortage. It means they can rack up rents because everyone needs a home and someone will pay what you're asking. And, developers can sell their homes for more (without paying more to build them). When the government sets targets for building new homes they're always going to struggle when developers (who the government depend on to actually build these homes) profits depend on there being a shortage of homes for sale.
Which is, of course, a very simplified version of why there are housing shortages and excessive rents almost everywhere.
The problem is that the populists, whether that's Trump in the US or Johnson and Farage in the UK or AfD in Germany etc, ignore the complexities of the housing issues and make false claims that the problems have a simple cause and a simple solution - usually that "there are too many immigrants occupying homes" (which is a flat out lie that appeals to their racist and xenophobic ideologies) and that therefore the solution is to "send the immigrants home"; which even if attempted wouldn't address the fundamental problems and there would still be too few homes, with rents that are too high ... and, there'd be an economic crash to contend with as well. No one, and certainly not the populists, is suggesting giving money direct to local government so that they can by-pass private developers and build homes themselves (in the model of the old British council estate) or to give local government powers to brush aside complaints about new developments just on the basis of how it might impact house prices in nearby areas.
Among those Republican voters who aren't motivated by bigotry but rather concern for the economy, can we consider their voting choices rational?
You have to understand that "the economy" is - for many - a euphemism for "my personal income."
There are a lot of places in America that have been in a steady economic decline for...welp, my entire life (started in the 1980s.) And they're increasingly feeling desperate about what feels like an ongoing regional decline. So, "the economy" doesn't mean jack shit to them when their personal or regional fortunes are sinking. Or how they simply are not where they were 40 years ago.
So, rationally, to them, "the economy" is an irrational agent that is punishing them. And that in itself explains a lot of what strikes you as "irrational" behavior.
And racism is, I think, a sense that "well, if the pie is shrinking, then we need to shove more people away from the table, because that means I'll get a bigger piece!" This is, in a very cynical economic sense, rational self interest. I detest it, but I do grasp the logic. I think it has a lot of predictive value if you want to understand these voters.
One could even question whether Latino can be properly considered a racial identity, though I'm not qualified to adjudicate that one beyond to observe that the question exists.
I get the impression that being Latino in America is a rather complicated thing.
Racial politics among people of Latin American origin is complicated - even before you get to the apparently "intra-communal" (they don't consider it's intra-communal) element, there's a floating number who consider themselves to be "white" racially. It's like grouping together all 'European' immigrants to America and then omitting the history of the interactions between those various immigrant groups.
This is part of the reason why those screeds in the 90s/00s about the coming permanent Democratic majority were more than a little misplaced.
Thank you for explaining that so much better than I could. Not being Latino, I feel a little touchy describing it so bluntly, but yes. I think that's pretty much how it is.
And racism is, I think, a sense that "well, if the pie is shrinking, then we need to shove more people away from the table, because that means I'll get a bigger piece!" This is, in a very cynical economic sense, rational self interest. I detest it, but I do grasp the logic. I think it has a lot of predictive value if you want to understand these voters.
Except that racism was hugely popular in the 50s and 60s when the economy was going great guns and real wages were rising rapidly. No, it's not rational, it's just misplaced grievance fanned by bad actors.
And racism is, I think, a sense that "well, if the pie is shrinking, then we need to shove more people away from the table, because that means I'll get a bigger piece!" This is, in a very cynical economic sense, rational self interest. I detest it, but I do grasp the logic. I think it has a lot of predictive value if you want to understand these voters.
Except that racism was hugely popular in the 50s and 60s when the economy was going great guns and real wages were rising rapidly. No, it's not rational, it's just misplaced grievance fanned by bad actors.
The economy can be "going great" and some people will still feel that their share isn't enough. Or they'll feel that their gain must necessarily have come at the cost of someone else.
Racism is different now. There didn't use to be a lot of active anti-immifrant sentiment because the exclusion laws had taken care of that - not very many immigrants. There's an interesting piece on Denmark's Social Democrats that quotes their PM saying essentially that you have to have tight immigration laws if you want to be successful with all your othereise progressive policies because people don't buy into progressivism when there are loads of new people pouring in. Points out that economic inequality tends to track historically with immigration - low immigration, more economic equality. Not helpful for would-be immigrants, but good for the people already in the country who are most affected by immigration rates: those on the bottom half of the economy.
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
Inflation had already dropped almost to where economists like it to be, and cities are not the crime-ridden hellholes many Republicans make them out to be. There are people who are literally afraid to travel to San Francisco because they think they will for sure be assaulted by a homeless person if they do.
That Trump lied is not just what I think -- it's an objective fact. Google "Trump lies" if you want to know more.
Okay, so...
Joe Blow's number 1 issue in 2024 was inflation.
Trump falsely told people that inflation was out of control.
The Democrats(I'm assuming) accurately told people that inflation was actually stabilizing at the point where economists like it to be.
Instead of doing a quick google to see who was telling the truth, Joe Blow decided that it must be Trump, and voted accordingly.
I would suggest that the possible logic behind Joe Blow's decision runs the gamut from "Trump must know what he's talking about 'cuz he's a smart businessman" to "Harris must be lying because she's a goddam [insert racial slur here]".
None of which really dissuades me from agreeing with the implied answer to @Sober Preacher's Kid's rhetorical question...
And we should have sympathy for Trump voters why, precisely?
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
Inflation had already dropped almost to where economists like it to be, and cities are not the crime-ridden hellholes many Republicans make them out to be. There are people who are literally afraid to travel to San Francisco because they think they will for sure be assaulted by a homeless person if they do.
That Trump lied is not just what I think -- it's an objective fact. Google "Trump lies" if you want to know more.
Okay, so...
Joe Blow's number 1 issue in 2024 was inflation.
Trump falsely told people that inflation was out of control.
The Democrats(I'm assuming) accurately told people that inflation was actually stabilizing at the point where economists like it to be.
Instead of doing a quick google to see who was telling the truth, Joe Blow decided that it must be Trump, and voted accordingly.
I would suggest that the possible logic behind Joe Blow's decision runs the gamut from "Trump must know what he's talking about 'cuz he's a smart businessman" to "Harris must be lying because she's a goddam [insert racial slur here]".
I think the logic is more likely based on very few people understanding how inflation works. When you've had a massive spike in the cost of living and someone tells you that inflation is back where we want it, you wonder why prices are *still* sky high, and it sounds like someone is pissing on you and telling you it's raining. Then you're primed to believe someone who tells you you're right and that they can bring prices down.
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
Inflation had already dropped almost to where economists like it to be, and cities are not the crime-ridden hellholes many Republicans make them out to be. There are people who are literally afraid to travel to San Francisco because they think they will for sure be assaulted by a homeless person if they do.
That Trump lied is not just what I think -- it's an objective fact. Google "Trump lies" if you want to know more.
Okay, so...
Joe Blow's number 1 issue in 2024 was inflation.
Trump falsely told people that inflation was out of control.
The Democrats(I'm assuming) accurately told people that inflation was actually stabilizing at the point where economists like it to be.
Instead of doing a quick google to see who was telling the truth, Joe Blow decided that it must be Trump, and voted accordingly.
I would suggest that the possible logic behind Joe Blow's decision runs the gamut from "Trump must know what he's talking about 'cuz he's a smart businessman" to "Harris must be lying because she's a goddam [insert racial slur here]".
I think the logic is more likely based on very few people understanding how inflation works. When you've had a massive spike in the cost of living and someone tells you that inflation is back where we want it, you wonder why prices are *still* sky high, and it sounds like someone is pissing on you and telling you it's raining. Then you're primed to believe someone who tells you you're right and that they can bring prices down.
So, sorta like the guy who hears climate-scientists saying that global warming is a real thing, but instead believes the oil industry spokesman who points out that the local temperature last winter was colder than the winter before.
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
Inflation had already dropped almost to where economists like it to be, and cities are not the crime-ridden hellholes many Republicans make them out to be. There are people who are literally afraid to travel to San Francisco because they think they will for sure be assaulted by a homeless person if they do.
That Trump lied is not just what I think -- it's an objective fact. Google "Trump lies" if you want to know more.
Okay, so...
Joe Blow's number 1 issue in 2024 was inflation.
Trump falsely told people that inflation was out of control.
The Democrats(I'm assuming) accurately told people that inflation was actually stabilizing at the point where economists like it to be.
Instead of doing a quick google to see who was telling the truth, Joe Blow decided that it must be Trump, and voted accordingly.
I would suggest that the possible logic behind Joe Blow's decision runs the gamut from "Trump must know what he's talking about 'cuz he's a smart businessman" to "Harris must be lying because she's a goddam [insert racial slur here]".
None of which really dissuades me from agreeing with the implied answer to @Sober Preacher's Kid's rhetorical question...
And we should have sympathy for Trump voters why, precisely?
I have no sympathy with Joe Blow, but a Jane Blow I know said something during the Obama administration that is still stuck in my head because I think it says a lot about how many Americans experience "the economy."
Recovery? What recovery? I never noticed we were in a recession!
For a lot of America, the economy just pain sucks and it has sucked for the past 40 years. And nothing happening in the White House can change that. "The economy" as most people experience it isn't changing the steady decline of post industrial America.
I suspect there are places like that all over the world, thanks to globalization. I suspect there are places in England that pushed fro Brexit, and if you look at the people who did, there's a similar ignorant logic to it.
Do I sympathize? No. But I also try to be accurate if I'm describing their situation.
@Sighthound - what is a 'typical American'? Is there a typical Briton, French person, Irish person, German, Finn, South African ... ?
It's sweeping statements like this that have resulted in the Hell thread.
I was merely pointing out that my American friends are not necessarily representative of Americans in general.
I apologise if you feel I was being presumptuous; I was trying to be the opposite by acknowledging that my American friends are not a scientific sample, and might conceivably be unrepresentative of American opinion.
Perhaps I ought not to have said 'typical' but rather 'representative'. It's a fine point, but maybe an important one.
@stetson, people don't Google things they think they already know. As @Arethosemyfeet says, lots of people don't understand how inflation works, and they think prices should come down after an inflationary period, not realizing that if they did, the economy would be in a recession. So the Democrats said things are getting better, and that didn't fit with people's experience - as @Bullfrog points out, for some people things have never been good. If over 50% of your income is already going to rent for a small, crappy apartment and then grocery prices go up by over 23% in four years, anyone telling you things are getting better sounds completely out of touch. Trump's lie that he can bring down prices makes more sense if you already think prices should come down.
And it's not like listening to a climate scientist or an oil exec - it's hearing two different rich, elite people say different things and choosing which feels like they're on your side. Kamala Harris is back at home in Brentwood, a very wealthy neighborhood in LA, contemplating a run for the governorship next year. I'm sure it absolutely sucked to lose the last election, but she is not worried about making rent on the 1st of every month.
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
Inflation had already dropped almost to where economists like it to be, and cities are not the crime-ridden hellholes many Republicans make them out to be. There are people who are literally afraid to travel to San Francisco because they think they will for sure be assaulted by a homeless person if they do.
That Trump lied is not just what I think -- it's an objective fact. Google "Trump lies" if you want to know more.
Okay, so...
Joe Blow's number 1 issue in 2024 was inflation.
Trump falsely told people that inflation was out of control.
The Democrats(I'm assuming) accurately told people that inflation was actually stabilizing at the point where economists like it to be.
Instead of doing a quick google to see who was telling the truth, Joe Blow decided that it must be Trump, and voted accordingly.
I would suggest that the possible logic behind Joe Blow's decision runs the gamut from "Trump must know what he's talking about 'cuz he's a smart businessman" to "Harris must be lying because she's a goddam [insert racial slur here]".
I think the logic is more likely based on very few people understanding how inflation works. When you've had a massive spike in the cost of living and someone tells you that inflation is back where we want it, you wonder why prices are *still* sky high, and it sounds like someone is pissing on you and telling you it's raining.
The problem is that over most of history inflation was fairly low. To that extent the kinds of inflation people experience are in historical terms relatively high.
In the period of the post-war settlement inflation would normally have been matched by rises in wages. But since the Thatcher/Reagan era wages and profits have decoupled, various tactics have been used to suppress wage rises, and there's been a move away from the kinds of tax policy that might address wealth inequality coupled with an unwillingness by centre-left parties to change course.
So yes, inflation has come down, but people at the bottom end of the wage distribution are still experiencing the increased precarity caused by rising prices, and each month more people who were slowly losing ground tip over the edge.
The extra liquidity injected into the system during Covid has largely concentrated at the top end of the wealth distribution, leading to asset price inflation, and the traditional markers (like share prices) of the economy looking really good, but these are increasingly decoupled from the circumstances of rising number of people.
So yes, inflation has come down, but people at the bottom end of the wage distribution are still experiencing the increased precarity caused by rising prices, and each month more people who were slowly losing ground tip over the edge.
The extra liquidity injected into the system during Covid has largely concentrated at the top end of the wealth distribution, leading to asset price inflation, and the traditional markers (like share prices) of the economy looking really good, but these are increasingly decoupled from the circumstances of rising number of people.
[pardon the bungled attribution]
I really appreciate having a technical explanation for something I've observed commonsensically. That's certainly what the Biden years felt like, "the economy" improved but standard of living for most folks stagnated, and that's what caused an awful lot of reasonable frustration. Sadly, a lot of people took out their frustration rather unreasonably.
It goes back beyond covid, to the quantitative easing post GFC.
It does; the rise in inequality goes back to the 70s, and the GFC was when the tactic of using cheap credit to paper over the loss of wages ran out of steam.
The moment of reckoning was postponed somewhat with a combination of very low interest rates and austerity - which was used as an explanation for belt tightening and could always be blamed on the previous 'excesses'.
The circumstances of Covid threw things into sharp relief though, due to the combination of relatively high inflation straight afterwards, making it easier to attribute blame.
In places where Democrats are in control, like a lot of big cities, like California, homelessness just keeps getting worse and worse. Rent is insanely high, and a crap-ton of people are rent-burdened. Democrats where I live haven't been able to do anything about these things, and nationally while a Democratic president was in charge, inflation went up 20% in four years.
I know your penultimate sentence is ventriloquising for Republican voters, but I can't tell how much of the rest is you expressing what you think is actually the case and how much is you expressing what Republican voters believe to be the case.
The things I didn't snip out of the quote above are true. About half the renters in the US are spending more than 30% of their income on rent. But that's a national figure. In some places it's worse.
New York: rent-to-income ratio in 2022 was 68.5%
Miami 41.6%
Fort Lauderdale 36.7%
Los Angeles 35.6%
(Numbers from a paywalled January 2023 NY Times article citing a report by Moody's)
The biggest cause is the housing shortage. Democrats have been totally in charge in California for something like 15 years, and only one of their efforts to stimulate housing growth has born fruit: you can now build what's called an Accessory Dwelling Unit on the property of your single-family home (colloquially, a granny apartment - a separate little housing unit with kitchen and bathroom that you can rent out), and over 100,000 have been built in the last 7 years. All their other statewide legislative efforts have been blocked by local governments, stymied by economic forces beyond their control and/or by other regulations within their control, or doomed from the start because they were badly written. https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/02/california-yimby-laws-assessment-report/
So yes, there are very real problems. And they are shouldered more by Black and brown people, who are massively over-represented in those rent-burdened numbers. Me, I can afford rent. But if I were willing to move out of California, I could buy a home for less than I'm spending on rent.
My son works for Portland Metro which is a partnership between Portland, its outlying suburbs and Multnomah County in Oregon. It's primary responsibility is the public services of the area. Recently, he was tasked with writing a bond to reduce homelessness in the Metro area.
He found one reason why there was a huge increase in homelessness was the increased number of properties that were being used for short term rentals. Owners were making more money in short term rentals than regular leases.
The ADU program Ruth mentions has helped reduce the demand for short term rental properties in Portland, but it has not eliminated it in outlying areas. People do not want to stay in the city. Seems like they want to stay more in exurban (at the edge of suburban and rural)
@Ruth; a question to you: given the recent fires and now, floods, how do you think the housing market will be affected in LA?
BTW, I have been to San Francisco a number of times over the past five years, and Portland many a time. I had never been assaulted by any homeless person in either city. But I was once accosted by a beggar in Vancouver BC. The problem has been around since before Jesus.
@Ruth; a question to you: given the recent fires and now, floods, how do you think the housing market will be affected in LA?
The rental vacancy rate in LA before the fires was under 4%. Over 11,000 residential structures were destroyed, most of them single-family homes. The ripple effect of displacement will be felt as far as Las Vegas. Landlords immediately started price-gouging.
There's an interesting piece on Denmark's Social Democrats that quotes their PM saying essentially that you have to have tight immigration laws if you want to be successful with all your othereise progressive policies because people don't buy into progressivism when there are loads of new people pouring in. Points out that economic inequality tends to track historically with immigration - low immigration, more economic equality. Not helpful for would-be immigrants, but good for the people already in the country who are most affected by immigration rates: those on the bottom half of the economy.
At the same time, America's social welfare state is threadbare and you get the same nasty attitudes about immigrants. I have heard reports from northern Europe about the nativism and "me first" social welfarism, but I'm not sure that having a social welfare state necessarily changes the scarcity mentality. It's just scarcity mentality.
You can see the same butt-ugly attitudes in 19th century America, predating the social welfare state.
Comments
YMMV
Opinions vary wildly.
[responding to the OP]
And we should have sympathy for Trump voters why, precisely?
They are adults and were given an option. They wanted to hear those lies. That's their responsibility. That's the way elections work.
I also never asked to you "explain" Americans or US politics.
Before you jump down my throat (again) you'll note that I have never attacked you, as an American, individually. But democracy deals in aggregates. It always has. If you think I'm making generalizations, you should see the generalizations that political party strategists make.
I didn't say you did.
Political party strategists at least recognize that parties are made up of coalitions of people who don't all think exactly the same way.
You probably remember when Stephane Dion's advisor was quoted as saying that the Liberals should run as "Barack Obama", and if all the pissed off old men in Alberta don't like it, they can go live in the states and vote for Sara Palin."
Number one, was the irony of the guy questioning the patriotism of Albertans, while citing an American politician as his role model. Also, the tiring progressive delusion that reactionary politics in Canada can be entirely blamed on the voters of Alberta.
But yeah, if the guy's analysis of the Canadian electorate had been correct, I woulda considered "the pissed off old men in Alberta" an inoffensive synechdoche, though possibly one best not leaked to the media.
I mean, it's an article of faith on the left that right-wing populists win by pandering to racist, sexist, anti-lgbqt sentiment etc.
So, assuming that's true, I would think the Venn Diagram between "Trump voters who deserve sympathy because they were the helpless victims of a liar" and "Trump voters who supported Trump because they liked the racism etc" would have no overlap whatsoever.
To tell the truth, I think it is still too early to determine how the polls view the exchange, but I can tell you look for the differences on how independents view Trump. If their unfavourability ratings increase, it will be very hard for the president to keep congress come the bi election.
Well, presumably, that 45% can probably be absolved from the charge of racism against Latinos. But do you think that makes their vote otherwise rational?
I assume "bi election" means midterms? Is that a common phrasing in the US?
Just for interest's sake, in the UK and Canada, at least, "by election" refers to an election held in just one constituency(what you call a district), when the seat becomes open, following the death, resignation etc of the sitting member.
(I think in the USA, that's called a "special election"?)
I wouldn't presume. Racism is about how you see other people, not how you see yourself. You could also argue on a structural level that a lot of Latino Americans may imagine that they benefit by associating with the economy of white people more than they do with their own cultural heritage.
One could even question whether Latino can be properly considered a racial identity, though I'm not qualified to adjudicate that one beyond to observe that the question exists.
I get the impression that being Latino in America is a rather complicated thing.
Well, my impression was that @Ruth was posting the stats as a counter to my implying that a lotta Republicans are racist.
But my question still stands...
Among those Republican voters who aren't motivated by bigotry but rather concern for the economy, can we consider their voting choices rational?
Some of them, yes. It makes sense to me that the people most hurt by inflation would want to vote out the incumbent party. In places where Democrats are in control, like a lot of big cities, like California, homelessness just keeps getting worse and worse. Rent is insanely high, and a crap-ton of people are rent-burdened. Democrats where I live haven't been able to do anything about these things, and nationally while a Democratic president was in charge, inflation went up 20% in four years. So sure, give the other guy a chance. The economy was better when he was in charge before.
Okay, thanks.
But then, in what way do you think those voters were "lied to", as you stated earlier? Because, based on what you've written here, the Republicans WEREN'T lying when they said that inflation was outta control, the cities were goin' to hell in a handbasket etc.
Racial politics among people of Latin American origin is complicated - even before you get to the apparently "intra-communal" (they don't consider it's intra-communal) element, there's a floating number who consider themselves to be "white" racially. It's like grouping together all 'European' immigrants to America and then omitting the history of the interactions between those various immigrant groups.
This is part of the reason why those screeds in the 90s/00s about the coming permanent Democratic majority were more than a little misplaced.
The OP is trying to do something you are always complaining about needs to happen. You are always complaining about Brits saying things about the US government, despite this being an international site with contributions from all over the world. The OP is giving US voices an opportunity.
The people who contribute are the people who contribute. There are things that US ship mates go on about that I get tired of.
But the nature of the site is international so there are things we just have to put up with.
And we do not complain about Brits saying things about the US government. We complain about Brits and other non-Americans saying uninformed and ignorant things about the US government, about American politics and about Americans—things that those same Brits and other non-Americans could easily educate themselves on. Every time this conversation comes up, it’s noted by Americans that there are some Brits and other non-Americans posting who have a very good understanding of how things work and what the situation is here, without expecting us to spoon-feed them over and over.
Perhaps if we filled the threads about British political with the kind of stuff that that often fills the threads about American politics, you’d see the problem.
Inflation had already dropped almost to where economists like it to be, and cities are not the crime-ridden hellholes many Republicans make them out to be. There are people who are literally afraid to travel to San Francisco because they think they will for sure be assaulted by a homeless person if they do.
That Trump lied is not just what I think -- it's an objective fact. Google "Trump lies" if you want to know more.
As @Nick Tamen said, I'm tired of uninformed opinions and the unrelenting rudeness. We don't need anyone to give us "an opportunity" -- we can post whenever we want. The OP shat all over us, and you're all just fine with it because you don't think you need to treat American shipmates with basic human courtesy.
That would be annoying yes, but it would still be part of being an international site. Believe me outside of the ship we get a lot of stuff on social media and from US tourists who expect the UK to be exactly the same as the US. A lot of which comes across as patronising.
We all need to be free to post on threads from other countries. Yes it needs to be respectful and people do need an understanding of the systems in that country.
The US government is the most powerful in the world. What it does affects other countries drastically. We get more about you in our media than you do about us. With all this comes people talking about it.
I don't want to answer on @Ruth's behalf, but the one that's most relevant to this thread is Trump's claim that he had a plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war within twenty-four hours of being sworn in as president. He also said the same thing about inflation. Seriously, the whole Trump 2024 campaign was a massive tissue of lies.
Right, but that is there and this is here. I think the situation is more analogous to being from/living in somewhere which has been subject to the sharp end of US foreign policy and being told 'we have no interest in that'.
However, I recognise that that reflects the sort of Americans who are my friends. They are not necessarily typical Americans.
As I general rule, I tend to distinguish between a government and its people. I suspect, for example, that there are many perfectly decent Iranians and Russians. (Other examples are available.) It's very rarely that any British government has reflected my own values, and never with regard to everything.
True, and worth bearing in mind when someone says that the election of Trump (or, in our case, the madness of Brexit) was The Will Of The People™...
The things I didn't snip out of the quote above are true. About half the renters in the US are spending more than 30% of their income on rent. But that's a national figure. In some places it's worse.
New York: rent-to-income ratio in 2022 was 68.5%
Miami 41.6%
Fort Lauderdale 36.7%
Los Angeles 35.6%
(Numbers from a paywalled January 2023 NY Times article citing a report by Moody's)
Homelessness rose 18% nationally last year. It fell a bit in LA County, but there are still around 75,000 unhoused people here (out of a population of roughly 10 million), so it's still bad. I see homeless people every single day in Long Beach. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/los-angeles-county-managed-to-cut-homelessness-but-wildfires-threaten-to-erase-those-gains
The biggest cause is the housing shortage. Democrats have been totally in charge in California for something like 15 years, and only one of their efforts to stimulate housing growth has born fruit: you can now build what's called an Accessory Dwelling Unit on the property of your single-family home (colloquially, a granny apartment - a separate little housing unit with kitchen and bathroom that you can rent out), and over 100,000 have been built in the last 7 years. All their other statewide legislative efforts have been blocked by local governments, stymied by economic forces beyond their control and/or by other regulations within their control, or doomed from the start because they were badly written. https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/02/california-yimby-laws-assessment-report/
So yes, there are very real problems. And they are shouldered more by Black and brown people, who are massively over-represented in those rent-burdened numbers. Me, I can afford rent. But if I were willing to move out of California, I could buy a home for less than I'm spending on rent.
Ultimately the lack of social housing is a direct consequence of the policies of the Conservative government in the 1980s forcing through a right to buy at massive discounts to council tenants (though, if you were a private tenant for some reason the right to buy your home at a discount didn't apply) and not permitting councils to invest the proceeds into building replacement homes. There have been various local issues on top of that, including local politics and economic circumstances.
And, for smaller properties the issue is largely that private housing developers make more profit from larger homes, especially when they can get hold of some dirt cheap fields in the middle of nowhere and throw up a suburb of housing with no amenities. Compounded by councils not enforcing regulations to include so-called "affordable housing" in the mix, or including amenities within their developments. Also, planning permission or zoning can also be issues especially when there are proposals to build affordable housing near the homes of wealthy folks with a lot of political clout.
And, of course, private landlords and developers quite like a housing shortage. It means they can rack up rents because everyone needs a home and someone will pay what you're asking. And, developers can sell their homes for more (without paying more to build them). When the government sets targets for building new homes they're always going to struggle when developers (who the government depend on to actually build these homes) profits depend on there being a shortage of homes for sale.
Which is, of course, a very simplified version of why there are housing shortages and excessive rents almost everywhere.
The problem is that the populists, whether that's Trump in the US or Johnson and Farage in the UK or AfD in Germany etc, ignore the complexities of the housing issues and make false claims that the problems have a simple cause and a simple solution - usually that "there are too many immigrants occupying homes" (which is a flat out lie that appeals to their racist and xenophobic ideologies) and that therefore the solution is to "send the immigrants home"; which even if attempted wouldn't address the fundamental problems and there would still be too few homes, with rents that are too high ... and, there'd be an economic crash to contend with as well. No one, and certainly not the populists, is suggesting giving money direct to local government so that they can by-pass private developers and build homes themselves (in the model of the old British council estate) or to give local government powers to brush aside complaints about new developments just on the basis of how it might impact house prices in nearby areas.
You have to understand that "the economy" is - for many - a euphemism for "my personal income."
There are a lot of places in America that have been in a steady economic decline for...welp, my entire life (started in the 1980s.) And they're increasingly feeling desperate about what feels like an ongoing regional decline. So, "the economy" doesn't mean jack shit to them when their personal or regional fortunes are sinking. Or how they simply are not where they were 40 years ago.
So, rationally, to them, "the economy" is an irrational agent that is punishing them. And that in itself explains a lot of what strikes you as "irrational" behavior.
And racism is, I think, a sense that "well, if the pie is shrinking, then we need to shove more people away from the table, because that means I'll get a bigger piece!" This is, in a very cynical economic sense, rational self interest. I detest it, but I do grasp the logic. I think it has a lot of predictive value if you want to understand these voters.
Thank you for explaining that so much better than I could. Not being Latino, I feel a little touchy describing it so bluntly, but yes. I think that's pretty much how it is.
Except that racism was hugely popular in the 50s and 60s when the economy was going great guns and real wages were rising rapidly. No, it's not rational, it's just misplaced grievance fanned by bad actors.
It's sweeping statements like this that have resulted in the Hell thread.
The economy can be "going great" and some people will still feel that their share isn't enough. Or they'll feel that their gain must necessarily have come at the cost of someone else.
Free link below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/magazine/denmark-immigration-policy-progressives.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1U4.PExG.mAV89VXZCB9Z&smid=url-share
Okay, so...
Joe Blow's number 1 issue in 2024 was inflation.
Trump falsely told people that inflation was out of control.
The Democrats(I'm assuming) accurately told people that inflation was actually stabilizing at the point where economists like it to be.
Instead of doing a quick google to see who was telling the truth, Joe Blow decided that it must be Trump, and voted accordingly.
I would suggest that the possible logic behind Joe Blow's decision runs the gamut from "Trump must know what he's talking about 'cuz he's a smart businessman" to "Harris must be lying because she's a goddam [insert racial slur here]".
None of which really dissuades me from agreeing with the implied answer to @Sober Preacher's Kid's rhetorical question...
I think the logic is more likely based on very few people understanding how inflation works. When you've had a massive spike in the cost of living and someone tells you that inflation is back where we want it, you wonder why prices are *still* sky high, and it sounds like someone is pissing on you and telling you it's raining. Then you're primed to believe someone who tells you you're right and that they can bring prices down.
So, sorta like the guy who hears climate-scientists saying that global warming is a real thing, but instead believes the oil industry spokesman who points out that the local temperature last winter was colder than the winter before.
I have no sympathy with Joe Blow, but a Jane Blow I know said something during the Obama administration that is still stuck in my head because I think it says a lot about how many Americans experience "the economy." For a lot of America, the economy just pain sucks and it has sucked for the past 40 years. And nothing happening in the White House can change that. "The economy" as most people experience it isn't changing the steady decline of post industrial America.
I suspect there are places like that all over the world, thanks to globalization. I suspect there are places in England that pushed fro Brexit, and if you look at the people who did, there's a similar ignorant logic to it.
Do I sympathize? No. But I also try to be accurate if I'm describing their situation.
I was merely pointing out that my American friends are not necessarily representative of Americans in general.
I apologise if you feel I was being presumptuous; I was trying to be the opposite by acknowledging that my American friends are not a scientific sample, and might conceivably be unrepresentative of American opinion.
Perhaps I ought not to have said 'typical' but rather 'representative'. It's a fine point, but maybe an important one.
And it's not like listening to a climate scientist or an oil exec - it's hearing two different rich, elite people say different things and choosing which feels like they're on your side. Kamala Harris is back at home in Brentwood, a very wealthy neighborhood in LA, contemplating a run for the governorship next year. I'm sure it absolutely sucked to lose the last election, but she is not worried about making rent on the 1st of every month.
The problem is that over most of history inflation was fairly low. To that extent the kinds of inflation people experience are in historical terms relatively high.
In the period of the post-war settlement inflation would normally have been matched by rises in wages. But since the Thatcher/Reagan era wages and profits have decoupled, various tactics have been used to suppress wage rises, and there's been a move away from the kinds of tax policy that might address wealth inequality coupled with an unwillingness by centre-left parties to change course.
So yes, inflation has come down, but people at the bottom end of the wage distribution are still experiencing the increased precarity caused by rising prices, and each month more people who were slowly losing ground tip over the edge.
The extra liquidity injected into the system during Covid has largely concentrated at the top end of the wealth distribution, leading to asset price inflation, and the traditional markers (like share prices) of the economy looking really good, but these are increasingly decoupled from the circumstances of rising number of people.
I really appreciate having a technical explanation for something I've observed commonsensically. That's certainly what the Biden years felt like, "the economy" improved but standard of living for most folks stagnated, and that's what caused an awful lot of reasonable frustration. Sadly, a lot of people took out their frustration rather unreasonably.
It does; the rise in inequality goes back to the 70s, and the GFC was when the tactic of using cheap credit to paper over the loss of wages ran out of steam.
The moment of reckoning was postponed somewhat with a combination of very low interest rates and austerity - which was used as an explanation for belt tightening and could always be blamed on the previous 'excesses'.
The circumstances of Covid threw things into sharp relief though, due to the combination of relatively high inflation straight afterwards, making it easier to attribute blame.
My son works for Portland Metro which is a partnership between Portland, its outlying suburbs and Multnomah County in Oregon. It's primary responsibility is the public services of the area. Recently, he was tasked with writing a bond to reduce homelessness in the Metro area.
He found one reason why there was a huge increase in homelessness was the increased number of properties that were being used for short term rentals. Owners were making more money in short term rentals than regular leases.
The ADU program Ruth mentions has helped reduce the demand for short term rental properties in Portland, but it has not eliminated it in outlying areas. People do not want to stay in the city. Seems like they want to stay more in exurban (at the edge of suburban and rural)
@Ruth; a question to you: given the recent fires and now, floods, how do you think the housing market will be affected in LA?
BTW, I have been to San Francisco a number of times over the past five years, and Portland many a time. I had never been assaulted by any homeless person in either city. But I was once accosted by a beggar in Vancouver BC. The problem has been around since before Jesus.
I’ve been saying the same thing for years.
You can see the same butt-ugly attitudes in 19th century America, predating the social welfare state.