Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
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55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
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49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
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49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
Except it’s literally the opposite of that.
The other person who talks about income inequality is also wrong. While it’s usually a safe bet that it’s rising, at any given point in US history ever since 1980, it’s actually going down now for the first time in God knows how long.
You are the first person I’ve seen claiming income inequality isn’t growing. I’d love to see a source for that. Income growth outpacing inflation is totally different than reduction in income inequality.
Sure. Two ways to visualize:
Income by race – you can literally see the lines squeezing together, as income on the higher lines falls (inflation), and income on the lower lines rises even beating inflation.
GINI coefficient is the usual statistical metric. It’s a little more abstracted, but maybe more rigorous. Anyway you can see the steady trend line of it always going up, and then a little down tick at the end as it drops. Not really like “oh okay it’s fixed now,” but definitely also not “okay Biden spiked income inequality like everyone else does,” since it started moving in the actual opposite direction.
Thank you for the sources. Some comments:
Yeah, fair. The racial breakdown was just the first thing I found and I thought it was a good stand-in for breakdown by income levels. I just looked, and managed to find more of exactly what I was looking for – a chart explicitly broken down by income level. It shows a huge boost in income for the bottom half of Americans.
Well, but that’s not Biden’s fault, is it? He came in with some monster economic problems, and they ate up some of the gains of the good things he was able to do, and this is another example. To me. I don’t really know enough of the details of how the tax credits work to say that for sure, though, that’s just sort of my first interpretation.
Nice, I like that Time article better. It reinforces the GINI articles analysis: middle class folks wages didn’t go up with lower class wages. I think that’s sorta a good thing? Ideally the top 10% would not grow, but the bottom 90% would. But help getting to the bottom 50% is definitely not a bad thing.
Also, I never said the income inequality growth is Biden’s fault. But more that it’s the reason all these articles about how good the “economy” is doing might not be seen in the same light by people who are still struggling.
We can do better, and I think closing that gap is everyone’s goal, but the methods to achieve it can vary wildly.
Yeah, makes sense. I do understand how “naw you’re wrong the economy’s actually getting better yay Biden” could lead to a pretty violently disagreeable reaction.
Because the truth is that people have always been poor in America. We are just more advertised to than ever before and feel like we are temporarily embarrassed millionaires. There have been decades of romanticizing individual success with less emphasis on systems and social contract. There was an attack on unions. We had a shift from a war on poverty to a war on welfare. These decades long decisions will take a lot of time to change but Biden is starting. He can’t say that the America we grew up in was a bad deal so he has to stay positive yet tactful in continuing to support unions, education funding, housing programs, childcare, healthcare, and so many things that we should have as an advanced economy.
And the efforts will take time. Maybe a generation. We’ve had right wing economic environment since Reagan and are slowly shifting back to pro-labor and pro-union environment with Biden. If we lose the momentum from the past 4 years we will certainly be worse off. I would encourage everyone to read history of labor movements in the US. They take years, decades even. But they do have lasting impacts that we often take for granted, like safer working conditions, days off, reduced child labor practices… I know it sucks for things to be more expensive right now, especially with corporate profits at all time highs, but throwing away this progress would be a huge loss for all workers in America.
Agreed. Changes this large for society will always take time. That’s why it’s important to not burn yourself out on one issue, or one fight. You gotta buckle in the for the long run. But keep fighting for change in a way that allows you to keep fighting. I feel guilty sometimes for not getting more involved in issues or causes that I think need support, but I have to remind myself that no one person can fight every battle. Forgive yourself from time to time for “not doing enough”. So long as you keep coming back to the table when your pace allows it.
Isn’t that just showing an increase in income that’s like a tiny percentage? Didn’t that “raise” come during a period when inflation increased significantly and cancelled it all out?
Honestly, it’s super annoying that you replied all defensive as if anyone was attacking Biden. It’s hard to take anything you say seriously now. I’m voting for the piece of shit but it seems insane to pretend he’s actually trying to help poor Americans at the expense of corporations and their shareholders.
There’s an ongoing class war and there’s bipartisan support for the rich in all three branches of gov.
Those are already inflation adjusted dollars - gains on the chart represent gains above inflation. The source is here with more explanation, and looking over it actually will show some important / upsetting caveats to what I said - just bear in mind that for some confusing reason, it is showing percentage change in a lot of its charts, instead of the raw underlying number.
And yeah I get that - I feel like I am becoming humorless and just yelling at people all the time good things about Biden. My feeling on it is more or less, why are you guys making me stick up for the Democrats I don’t even particularly like them. But it seems to me like people are spreading very specific malicious bullshit about them in this election, which is upsetting to me (because of the “bullshit” part and its potential impact on the US and the world if it swings the election, not because of the “Biden” part, if that makes sense).
To be fair, in the second article you linked it actually indicates that post-tax inequality increased due to specific COVID era tax breaks expiring, while pre-tax inequality decreased. I think most middle to lower income people are not going to care that their pre-tax inequality is getting better because that doesn’t result in a feeling of the boot easing up.
I also think that when many people speak colloquially about wealth inequality they’re thinking more in terms of “1% vs 99%” mentality rather than racial income inequality. Not to say that it’s not an important metric to monitor, but I think the class divide is more useful to focus on when talking about general income disparities and is what most people mean when they say wealth inequality.
Could Biden do more to help with income inequality? For sure. Will he? Probably not that much. Will he be better for it than Trump? 10000% yes.
Yeah. Hard to say that’s Biden’s fault though. He was handed an economy that was in the throes of a catastrophe (literally still in the middle, with almost half the country still on Covid assistance to some extent), and he managed to actually recover it and make some small amount of positive progress even with more than half the existing system being against the idea (like rabidly against it). And then people are throwing that positive progress back in his face like “THIS ISN’T ANYWHERE NEAR ENOUGH, I’M STILL STRUGGLING, SO FUCK YOU.” Like yeah… it’s not enough. You are correct. Your solution for that problem seems kinda counterproductive though, my guy.
Agree. It’s just for some reason hard to find a version of that chart that shows particular quartile lines or something, and I was more or less assuming that racial inequality trends would match up with non-racial inequality trends.
Also side note, WTF is up with the Asians, those guys are killing it.
Definitely agree it’s not really Biden’s fault. I think people in general attribute way too much of the state of the economy to the president when it’s Congress that is passing the laws that are affecting the most change. Although presidential appointments to regulatory bodies do play a big role and that is something I think Biden has mostly done a good job with and deserves credit for.
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Yeah, it’s accurate; a lot of that monster inflation that spiked in 2022 and then came back down was Covid follow-on effects, and it definitely made people worse off even to this day. Blaming Biden for that seems weird though.
Biden did continue signing massive spending bills well after it was clearly having issues. My state had so much covid money left over they were funding all sorts of random shit just to spend it.
Your assertion is that things like the infrastructure act and CHIPS act and etc were what drove inflation (instead of driving wage growth which is what most people are saying they did)?
I’m not sure what you’re saying here; are those the bills you mean? Those are the big ones I’m aware of, and he funded them by raising corporate taxes; it wasn’t just inflationary spending.
My assertion is that after approximately 2 trillion in covid funding by Trump, the additional 3 trillion from Biden is a major contributing factor to the inflation that was observed. The follow up of an additional approximately 1.5 trillion from the bills you listed doesn’t help either though.
Do you think that Biden should have abruptly stopped Covid aid instead, as soon as he got into office?
Fascinating
The assertion of almost everything I’ve read on any level about it was that they did help, since as I mentioned they were funded by increasing tax on wealthy corporations, so there’s no reason to think they would have any effect at all on inflation, i.e. their main impact was to increase wages vs inflation.
What did you read / what did you listen to that gave you the impression that they didn’t help, or that they had an impact on inflation?
Those bills already spent the money though, the inflation happened. The paying for it part is based on a decade of tax revenue that hasn’t happened yet. If even 10% of that “responsible” spending has come back as tax revenue I would be surprised.
You can’t argue with reality my friend. I’m my lifetime alone, costs have gone up to the point where it felt like they teased us with the dream of being able to live comfortably before it was taken away. You can’t tell me the economy improving is benefiting me when it’s NOT. it adds nothing to my paycheck, it doesn’t affect my industry. The only reason I’m not underwater is because I have a union.
Wage increases on the bottom are somewhat higher on a percentage basis, so if you made $10/hr one year and then $11/hr the next, that’s a whopping 10% increase, but given how prices have increased that’s really not great. These sorts of gains would have to be sustained over multiple years (like how inflation has sustained over multiple years) to make a good difference.
Wait but I thought Biden was hurting the poor on purpose and inequality was getting worse on purpose and even having inherited a fantastic
And so on
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