How good is the Biden Economy? Off the carts. Meanwhile TFG can’t string together an intelligible sentence at a rally of losers. Not only has wage growth been highest for lower-paid workers, real wages are now higher than they were pre-pandemic across the board. The Center for American progress pointed out that the data shows “every prime-age worker cohort has higher inflation-adjusted median wages than before the pandemic.” Proving the experts wrong, the Biden economy is booming while reducing inequality President Joe Biden has been having some fun with the economists whose predictions about the economy were so wrong. He jabbed back: “Experts, from the time I got elected, were insisting that a recession was just around the corner. Every month, there... Economists expected a recession because the Federal Reserve had hiked interest rates to fight the post-COVID inflation we’d been experiencing. Interest rates went up 5 full percentage points in 15 months. Rising interest rates, because they make borrowing more expensive, often lead to a recession, as companies and consumers cut back on spending. This time, however, the Biden economy appears to have avoided that scenario. Instead, we’re experiencing what Paul Krugman called “a better-than-Goldilocks soft landing.”
Bravo! Our wealth has grown more in the last three years than in the previous seven or eight. Wife, daughter and I all got raises. (I qualify as a low wage worker) Wife and daughter got big bonuses three years in a row. Daughter was recently promoted to VP.
Exactly....it doesn't feel like a 'roaring' economy to most people. In a February Marquette Law School poll, 35% of national respondents said the economy was “excellent” or “good,” compared with 65% who said it was “not so good” or “poor.” A February Monmouth University poll primed respondents with several metrics showing a strong economy — including “lower unemployment, higher productivity and a high Dow Jones average” — before asking whether their family had benefited. But sentiments stayed dour. Only 33% told the pollster their family had benefited either “a great deal” or “some” from the “economic upturn,” compared with 64% who said they had benefited “not much” or “not at all.” When inflation slows, as it has for a year and a half, it doesn’t produce lower prices. Rather, prices climb more slowly, allowing wage increases to catch up. Americans have noticed that food prices are up 20% on Biden’s watch. Another weekly ritual is a trip to the gas station. Although gasoline prices have fallen substantially from their summer 2022 peak, they remain about 30% higher than when Biden took office.
Is there something that might have kept prices for things like gasoline low in 2020? Let's see if we can brainstorm it.
I say it a lot, but the posters here don’t always feel the pain of the common voter. People here don’t care much about an extra 20 or 30 dollars a week in food costs, outside of the annoyance of it. To a lot of people nationally that means they have to sacrifice something else in their life, or buy less food. It’s a much bigger deal than is given credit for.
Inflation may be worse for some than cpi shows in that higher interest rates increase mortgages a lot, and car loans. Those don’t show up directly in cpi.
Please stop putting "insert blank" president economy. I have to say this every 4 years, the president has nothing to do with the economy at all. All he/she does is sign a budget, thats it. The Fed and Congress has alot more to do with the economy, and even that is limited.
Honestly I want a new car but I don’t need one. I like to buy them gently used but now the interest is too high and the used cars are nearly as much as new cars. I can wait until something happens.
I think wage increases has likely covered the extra $20 - $30 a person/week food costs for most people since 2020. What the wage increases likely hasn't covered is what @danmanne65 is talking about, which are larger purchases. New cars and housing, with inflation and higher interest rates, are much more expensive and wage increases hasn't matched. There's also a supply/demand issue with housing. People who bought "starter" homes five-seven years ago can't afford to upgrade, which means there are less starter homes on the market. Lower supply drives up prices even more, and it's a cycle. It's going to take some time for this problem to correct itself. But overall, the economy is doing very well. The problem is mostly with perception.
A reasonable concern in 2021-2022, but the reverse has been true since 2023, where CPI is actually reading higher than other measures of pricing of housing (e.g., Case-Shiller).
I’m not talking about house prices, I’m talking about increasing mortgage payments due to high rates https://www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1234...ng-economy-mortgages-auto-loans-larry-summers
I’ve only bought one new car since 2000, and that was a 2013 Ford taurus that had really big rebates. Otherwise always buy low mileage used - sedans. Recently I actually bought a 68k mile car, in great condition, vs usually buying around 20k-30k miles, which would have been $8k more. I almost always pay cash.
If you can get a better rate of return than the cost of the loan they say it’s best to borrow the money.
Mostly. Leadership to get infrastructure, green energy, and industrial reshoring can be done by potus and impact the economy
I think there was, the same event that caused massive UE for the short term due to those pesky Government imposed lockdowns.
I feel good about the current economy but I am guessing some people are feeling the pain of higher prices. It helps that we don't buy a lot of stuff. And while everyone does have to buy groceries, farmers markets and not eating meat keeps my bill minimal and my health on track.
