Q1 GDP 2024 Revised Down

Happy* news for ETGator?

*applicable for Democrat admins only.

 

Do you think that's what 'stagflation' is?

 

GOP narrative: the country is falling apart, crime ridden, overrun with illegal immigrants, the economy is a disaster. Put our orange god back in and magically everything will be just wonderful.

 

What do you call it when a question is based on incorrect information?

 

Yes, the inflation rate is decreasing. Definitions matter.

 

They just don't seem to understand what inflation is.

 

The opposite of inflation is deflation. There's nothing worse for your economy than deflation. You want mild inflation

 

You don't know what stagflation is.

 

For anyone who wants to educate themselves:
Stagflation - Wikipedia

In economics, stagflation (or recession-inflation) is a situation in which the inflation rate is high or increasing, the economic growth rate slows, and unemployment remains steadily high. Stagflation, once thought impossible,[1] poses a dilemma for economic policy, as measures to reduce inflation may exacerbate unemployment.

The term, a portmanteau of stagnation and inflation, is generally attributed to Iain Macleod, a British Conservative Party politician who became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1970. Macleod used the word in a 1965 speech to Parliament during a period of simultaneously high inflation and unemployment in the United Kingdom.[2][3][4][5] Warning the House of Commons of the gravity of the situation, he said:

"We now have the worst of both worlds—not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of 'stagflation' situation. And history, in modern terms, is indeed being made."[4][6]

Macleod used the term again on 7 July 1970, and the media began also to use it, for example in The Economist on 15 August 1970, and Newsweek on 19 March 1973. John Maynard Keynes did not use the term, but some of his work refers to the conditions that most would recognise as stagflation. In the version of Keynesian macroeconomic theory that was dominant between the end of World War II and the late 1970s, inflation and recession were regarded as mutually exclusive, the relationship between the two being described by the Phillips curve. Stagflation is very costly and difficult to eradicate once it starts.

 

No, that was your quote, not mine. Is your argument that you weren't trying to imply that was the situation now, contrary to your claims yesterday?

 

The Misery Index is inflation rate plus unemployment rate.

US Misery Index

During our period of stagflation from 1972 through 1983, the misery index was around 15-16. During Biden's administration it has averaged 9.5, with a peak of 12.66 in June of 22. If that peak had continued for a year, we could call this stagflation, but it didn't.

 

If (G-d forbid) Trump is elected we're almost certain to see a real return of the stagflation of the '70s. The Donald has more less indicated that he will impose inflationary tariffs (which could also have the effect of slowing economic growth), devalue the dollar, and nominate a Fed Chair who will keep interest rates low to accommodate Trump not unlike what Arthur Okun did for Richard Nixon.

 

Yeah, the combination of extremely high tariffs and deporting millions of low wage laborers is the kind of thing that could lead to actual stagflation (not the imaginary stagflation ET thinks we have now).

 

I would add in a second Trump Administration we could expect inflation in food prices to exceed the levels of the early Biden years considering that the vast majority of crops in the US are harvested by immigrants both legal and undocumented, the same for meat processing plants. Although the data is several years old the facts are almost certainly unchanged:

USDA ERS - Farm Labor

https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2021/01/01114806/EW-FoodSupply-factsheet.pdf