A survey has found that abortion has passed inflation to become the top issue in the presidential election for women younger than 30. That’s a key finding of a KFF survey of female voters with results released Friday.
A survey has found that abortion has passed inflation to become the top issue in the presidential election for women younger than 30. That’s a key finding of a KFF survey of female voters with results released Friday.
It feels to me like inflation has improved now, but inflation (and accompanying gouging by companies due to having a nice clean alibi) was high for a while, we never saw wages really adjust enough to offset that much, and then things stopped getting more expensive.
So, cool, it’s not getting worse at the moment. It got bad enough to fuck us and didn’t really improve after that, but sure we can be glad we’re not still sliding down hill. Yay.
To be clear, not one lick of that point of view is based on evidence, just my personal experience and the general observations I’ve made both in terms of reporting and in reality. I’d update my point of view if presented convincing evidence, but this sure seems to be the situation to me.
ETA: You did say “current” and “right now” and my comment turned out longer than yours lol, so maybe this is me barking up the wrong tree anyway
I don’t disagree. People are definitely hurting right now. But inflation is a general terms for the costs of goods and services. Much of the increase we saw from Covid was unchecked price gouging from corporations. It is not realistically in control of the president. Of course the government could regulate, and while they should, we all know that won’t happen on any scale that is needed. Therefore, believing that inflation is an important aspect to this election is misdirected anger over something that is in control of billionaires and massive corporations. I understand this misdirected aggression, but it’s a shame that people are focusing on that being the most important thing this November. To me, it’s avoiding fascism and project 2025.
It doesn’t help that so many economists, the tech priests of capitalism, didn’t believe that it could be a thing that companies were gouging people. They were blaming it on workers, high employment and high wages for the longest time and not the true culprits. I still feel like the media hasn’t caught up with the cause, except for maybe Jon Stewart if you count him as part of that.
Inflation is explicitly not:
It’s a general term for the change in the costs of goods and services. It’s not a merely technical distinction and I think it explains the difference between your take and mine above.
Otherwise I mostly agree. I do think the president has a bit more indirect influence on inflation in particular than you’re allowing, but otherwise I think we’re basically on the same page anyway.