One of my biggest fears as I started to get a little bit older was feeling out of touch with younger generations. Oddly enough, I think I am pretty in touch with them, and I find myself increasingly isolated by my peers. For example:
President Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen to the lowest levels of his presidency over concern for his handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising inflation, an NBC poll found Sunday.
Just 40% of those who responded to the survey said they approved of Biden’s job performance overall, the poll results show. His job approval rating has gradually fallen since April 2021 when 53% of Americans said they approved of his performance.
AdvertisementThe number of those who said that they disapprove of Biden’s job performance was 55%, a figure that has been relatively unchanged since October.
The President doesn’t control inflation and Biden is doing a great job with Ukraine. Not one fucking American soldier has died, we’re sending a ton of arms and money (we should send more), Europe is galvanized, Russia has been exposed as a paper tiger with nukes, and so on. He’s doing far better than I even expected him to do.
The inflation thing is baffling. First off, a lot of the inflation is price gouging. Second, the price of oil is high for a number of reasons (among them, price gouging at the pump). But it wasn’t Joe Biden who in 2018 blackmailed the House of Saud into pumping more oil, thus creating a glut, and causing tons of American oil and natural gas producers to go under. And it wasn’t Joe Biden who negotiated with OPEC in April of 2020 for them to DECREASE production for two years because he was worried about a glut and his fucking stock market during the pandemic. And it wasn’t Joe Biden who told everyone not to worry about the pandemic and fighting everything to slow it down and end it sooner. And it wasn’t Joe Biden who neutered regulations sop we can’t do anything about gouging. None of this was his fault. And there’s lots of other reasons, including having the fed engage in behaviors and actions solely to goose the fucking stock market. Or Wall Street pressuring oil producers to not produce more, as they are now. And on and on.
And that’s why prices are where they are today.
So yeah, I just don’t get it and I don’t understand why I am so out of touch with everyone.
Baud
I believe the historically low unemployment rate is bringing him down.
Betty
Joe Biden is also not the one to agree to a peace deal with the Taliban that undercut the person who became President in 2021.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I think it’s because he kept his promise to end the war in Afghanistan
hrprogressive
Our corporate overlords have done a fantastic job over the last 20 years of reducing the press to hagiography instead of journalism, every flavor of the right is engaged in full-on or light forms of treason, the “self-described true left” (which is not me, I hasten to add) think Biden is just as “ACAB” as the Trumpists for reasons that may have valid criticisms at their root, but basically turn into “Democrats haven’t turned America into a hammer & sickle worker’s paradise so they are all terrible fascists too”
Which leaves
A lot of low-information voters who glom onto a single issue like CRT or COVID Lockdowns and nothing else
A bunch of well-meaning, but “out of touch” people who think Washington still works as it did 40 years ago and/or from the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington era
And then
People on Twitter and Maybe This Website, but Maybe Not who kind of see just how terrible everything is, understands vaguely why (spoiler, it’s all about the $$$$) but still realizes that absent an actual sea change in this country, (D) is as good as we’re going to get anytime soon.
So, yeah.
Grumpy Old Railroader
I’m just a raggedy-ass dirty-neck brakeman so explain to me why the price of a barrel of oil can go up and then come down below the magic $100 per barrel but the price at the pump keeps inching up? Don’t get me wrong, I know our price at the pump ii way below a lot of European countries and maybe if it goes up to be really painful, people will get out of their cars and find other modes of transportation.
I just don’t get it when the price per barrel drops shouldn’t pump prices catch up at some point?
Old School
Obviously, you don’t watch Fox News enough.
Baud
Inflation is worldwide, so it really has nothing to do with Biden.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@Baud: I believe it is the wording of the polls. Most have very misleading questions
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I went to an exurban small farmer/middle tier farmer/commuter GOP mix last night that headlined Thomas Massie (one of my circuit outlying counties). It’s the information ecosphere that’s fucking us all. These people aren’t so much evil or incredibly stupid, it’s that their information loops are closed off and their analyses and conclusions are based off of that bad info.
No shit, I found him to be smart, friendly, engaging and a good retail politician that can keep his job as long as he wants it – it’s just that the baseline set of facts he operates from comes from the right wing puke funnel.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He really has done a poor job giving America haters new material to tweet about.
Mike in NC
The pandemic triggered corporate greed. They charge whatever they think they can get away with.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Another observation – these guys absolutely marinate in the message of cultural grievance and repeat it up until they start talking about grants and sewers and roads. On the good side, I got the distinct impression that the county level officials were pissed that the state rep and state Senator were so busy pissing off legislative leadership by being culture war firebrands that a badly needed, long planned major road improvement may be shelved for another couple of years.
One county judge/executive candidate lamented “they’re so busy making people mad that the 146 project got lost in the mix.”
Starfish
I took a road trip, and somewhere in the middle of nowhere New Mexico, gas was $4.99 a gallon, so now I am going to vote to give up my reproductive rights said no one ever.
RepubAnon
It’s traditional to blame Democrats for problems that are the direct result of Republican policies. If the Republicans get control of both the House and the Senate in November, and pass Rick Scott’s plan to eliminate Social Security over Biden’s veto – that’ll be Biden’s fault as well…
japa21
Quite simply, 80% 0of Americans are totally unaware of all those things you mentioned. Probably because they haven’t been told about them.
I know several people that believe that Biden shut down oil production when he stopped the Keystone XL. Again, nobody told them (and I am not just talking about Faux News) that the Keystone pipeline was still open and that the XL wouldn’t even be able to pump oil for 10 years, or that it would actually raise prices in the long run in the Midwest.
Kay
I don’t know but the economy is booming so I can’t imagine how unhappy these people are going to be when it slumps, which it will, eventually. Then they can stop complaining about gas prices and start complaining about how they can’t find a job.
I myself am just working busily to take advantage of the booming economy because I know from actual lived (and recent!) experience that high unemployment is worse. I have people complaining to me that they have to wait 6 months for delivery of a new car – if you’re buying a new car are you really in bad shape? Come on. There’s two sides to every transaction- if you’re paying 20k more for a home the seller is making 20k more. Media just threw “markets” completely out the window? These transactions only have one side?
Scout211
@Grumpy Old Railroader:
I agree. The wording is a part of the problem. But actually doing all this polling is useless for the most part.
It’s like a constant social media up vote or down vote on political and economic issues. The media could use all that time, energy and money to actually report on issues or educate the public on the complicated issues. But instead we get the constant measuring of how people *feel* about the President on each and every issue.
It’s just one more thing that I pay no attention to anymore.
zhena gogolia
Biden is doing a great job.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
?
Mai Naem mobile
I filled gas in my midsize suv the other day. It was not one of those premium rip.off gas stations and my.gas tank was close to empty. $77. I don’t normally complain about gas but $75 – are you fucking kidding me?. I don’t evem want to know what a gassing up a Suburban costs. Probably $125. Next car will be electric. The mile ranges have become better and the vehicle sizes are good enough. BTW, i doubt the Ukraine War is some strong issue with a majority of Americans. I would love to follow up with these poll participants and ask them some basic questions about Ukraine and my bet is that most won’t even know Zelensky’s name or remember that he was the guy TFG tried to extort .
Baud
@Kay:
I’m at the point that that would make me happy.
Cameron
My US rep sent out an email poll asking whether his constituents agreed or disagreed with the airline CEOs’ request to end the mask mandate during flights. 60% agreed. What a surprise.
BSR
Cole, I’m 58 and lately identify with Gen Z more than most other groups. Hang in there – it will get better! …and yes, Biden is doing a terrific job. In 2020 I thought he was too old for this, until he was the nominee, so I voted for him. He’s far exceeded my expectations, and has a really remarkable list of achievements, especially considering he’s still less than 18 months into the job.
Litlebritdifrnt
On topic but silly. Me and DH went to Madame Tussauds while we were in London. Horrible visit, not only because they have got rid of the interesting stuff (Chamber of Horrors) and replaced it with a crappy “taxi ride” through “historic London” but neither myself nor my husband could identify a full 50% of the waxworks on show. In fact I got excited when I DID recognise one of them “Oh look Obama!” The rest of them, absolutely no idea. They have turned what was once a really interesting look at the history of England into a crappy sideshow of the latest “celebrities”. That is when I realised I was completely out of touch. Also I have no idea why anyone would get mad at Joe Biden saying what he did. He spent the day with a bunch of Mums and Kids who are refugees who’s husbands, sons, brothers etc., are back at home fighting for their country, I would get pissed off too, and to be honest I think that what he said was mild compared to what he must have been thinking, anyone of us would have said a lot worse and anyone claiming otherwise is a twat.
Baud
@Cameron:
If that’s a GOP rep, 60% is an awful response for them.
Kay
I also live in a rural area and I can’t drum up any sympathy for people who drive gas guzzlers when they know they drive 70, 80, 90 miles a day. You were always paying too much for gas as to take home. By choice. I don’t make these decisions for them and either does Joe Biden. If you were paying 60 a week for gas and you’re now paying 80, I’m wondering why you were happy paying 60 when you could have paid 40.
NotMax
Have always been more in touch (whatever that means) with my grandparents’ generation than my own or those of the whippersnappers.
;)
Starfish
@Kay: In some areas, we have big housing problems. With housing values going up 10% a year, the older people who did not downsize are not going to be able to afford their taxes. There is also no place for them to downsize to, so all their money is tied up in their house. There is also a lot of homelessness.
OzarkHillbilly
Welcome to old (er) age, John.
Martin
Yeah. But Cole, something to consider. I worked at a university my whole life. I spent WAY more time interacting with students, working to understand them, etc. than people my age. I’ve spent way more time just casually talking with them, and spending time in their activities and in their spaces. And so, I see the world far more like a millennial than a GenXer (you and I are the same age).
If you spend time around students, and the frat, and all that, you probably are doing the same thing.
NotMax
The day one realizes he/she is getting old is the day you find yourself thinking “When did they start hiring policeboys?”
Kay
@Baud:
“Unemployment is at 9% and I can’t sell my house!” That’s what I’ll hear.
Bash my head into a wall. Did someone guarantee these people that every single piece of an economy would always run directly in their favor? How does that even make sense? Every transaction is a win/win in this fantasy? “Milk prices have gone up” Okay- who’s on the other side of that? Can we have that part, or no? There’s just buyers in this imaginary economy- no sellers.
Baud
I feel I’m most in sync with the five and under generation.
Starfish
@Baud: How much do you love Paw Patrol?
Baud
@Kay:
They want an economy supported by the labor of a large and trapped underclasss of others. That’s what will make there happy.
Baud
@Starfish:
Chase proves that not all cops are bad.
Ruckus
John
You aren’t out of touch with everyone.
1 You are extremely likely to be out of touch with the people who watch Fake News (They may spell it different….)
2 You may be out of touch with people who are mesmerized by TV news and most US newspapers.
3 You are out of touch with people who like the taste of right wing bullshit, as one should be.
You aren’t out of touch, the above people are the one’s out of touch with the actual world.
Never underestimate the gullibility of people to believe whatever the last person they heard was telling them, especially if they pay for the words they hear and read.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s true. The kind of sneering tone I hear from better off people waiting for contractors- they resent that it’s a contractor’s market -that they’re in demand so they’re picking and choosing. They want it glutted with low wage labor. Like that’s a birthright they are being denied.
dexwood
@Baud:
Mi hermano.
Brachiator
I don’t get it either, but this is not just an American problem. There is grumbling in all the advanced democracies over inflation, the cost of gas, and pandemic recovery. Boris Johnson and the Conservative government in the UK are getting slapped around as hard as Biden and the Democrats here in the USA.
But there seem to be some childish and immature Americans who believe that Biden should be able to make everything better with a snap of his fingers.
Chief Oshkosh
Cole, I literally just had this conversation with a bunch of conservative acquaintances this afternoon, ages ranging from decades younger than me to 1.5 decades older than me. My take? They really are re-programmable meatbags.
Fuck ’em.
Geminid
. The Detroit Free Press tells me that the next stop on Trump ‘s comeback tour will be Macomb County, Michigan on April 2nd, this coming Saturday. He had a low turnout last night in Cummings, Georgia.
Honus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: yeah, the GOP cost them their toad but they’ll all go out in November and vote republican.
Sure Lurkalot
@Kay: At my final place of employment, I set my own hours and rarely got in before 9. By that time, the parking garage, which had been re-striped to make the spaces smaller, was filled with giant pickups that many people drove to work. None of these behemoths could fit in a space, such that I more than once had to eschew my paid for parking for another garage and pay out of pocket.
It was a Class A building filled with attorneys, accountants and other such professionals…surely some or many of them had no real use for a pickup as they were pristine clean and shiny. I still can’t fathom people picking a huge truck as their main wheels to go to their office job.
Suzanne
Look, their opinions of Biden have nothing to do with him and have everything to do with the fact that he isn’t on their side, of their tribe. None of this is fact-based. None of their opinions are based in data.
They aren’t really looking for a qualified person to do a job out in the world. They are looking for someone to serve as their avatar, to serve their interests, to give a form to their aspirations. Their aspirations are shitty, it’s “to do better than minorities and to have women under my control”.
Mathguy
The majority of Americans are stupid. The end.
RandomMonster
But how else was Airhead Kushner going to forge peace in the Middle East?!!!1!
gene108
@Baud:
Record low unemployment has disrupted the job market creating a labor shortage of epic proportion. I’m surprised businesses are still operating not being able to hire enough people.
Kay
@Starfish:
We actually have that housing problem even here- we have older people who can’t buy smaller modern housing – the kind they don’t have to take care of. But it baffles me, because I’m not a builder and I see this demand. Why don’t they put some up?
LivinginExile
@NotMax: When the state .cop that stops you looks like he should be wearing short pants.
scav
At least not understanding Americans in a chronic condition with me. What keeps taking a hit is my desire to understand them.
Starfish
@Sure Lurkalot: Some of my coworkers are like that. They are driving huge pickup trucks to their programming jobs.
I think the chip shortage contributed to some of this. Car companies only made the big cars that were very profitable. I hate this trend, and I hope that the high gas prices eat everyone involved in this.
Honus
Excuseme, “road” not toad
Honus
@Kay: um, the same reason Detroit doesn’t make smaller vehicles?
Ruckus
@Kay:
I know you don’t live near me but we have the same people here in SoCal, driving around in 1 ton pickups that don’t have a scratch in the bed, big tires and wheels, loud exhaust and $5.90 -$6.20/gallon fuel. Diesel is more. IOW they use them as transportation not as a work truck. I’d say just by the numbers I see on my daily 2+ mile walk that about 20-25% of vehicles are large pickups.
Baud
@gene108:
Very Yogi Berra.
No one owns a business anymore, too many people have jobs.
Matt McIrvin
Americans today fundamentally hate freedom and democracy and love dictatorship, so they’ll find some reason to hate any alternative. There’s nothing really to be done but to wait for Trump to get back in office and wreck everything again. Then probably fight a civil war because it won’t be possible to vote him out any more.
M. Bouffant
@NotMax: Policeboys? Hah! When did they start electing people young enough to be my daughter or son to state-wide offices, Congress & stuff?
M. Bouffant
J.C., some of us can see through it; most of them can’t.
Sure Lurkalot
@Starfish: I retired in 2017 so my anecdote was well before the chip and car supply chain issues. As far as I could tell, it was their choice to drive a pickup.
CaseyL
That 40% approval rate breaks my heart. I can’t fathom it at all. USAians are really, really stupid.
HinTN
@Mai Naem mobile: I just bought a 2022 Toyota hybrid at the dealership so I could trade my Lexus play toy. I asked why Toyota isn’t in the all electric market send they said that if 20 (?) % of the vehicles in the USA went all electric the grid couldn’t support it. I hadn’t thought about it that way before.
Sure Lurkalot
@Kay: Luckily, my taxes are low and subsidized (based on age and length of ownership). I live in a duplex where an HOA takes care of most of the maintenance but I would love something smaller. But smaller is easily and at least $250,000 more than what I own.
Baud
@HinTN:
Toyota didn’t invest in electric. They have been pushing hydrogen, I believe.
MagdaInBlack
@Sure Lurkalot: Status symbol. Vanity trucks. Proof they’re manly, well off and can afford a useless vehicle. Except, now they can’t. My pity is non-existent
Eta: Useless by choice, because god forbid you scratch that truck bed or get a speck of mud on the thing anywhere.
different-church-lady
Sometimes ya just gotta make a choice: be in touch with reality, or be in touch with “everyone else.”
Ruckus
@Kay:
Why don’t they build more affordable housing? Well that word affordable is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. It is always about the money. Look up the Forbes 400 and tell me how many people on there are billionaires. The total valuation of the 400 is $4.5 TRILLION. Even if that is inflated that is extreme bullshit. That people starve in this country and there are 400 people whose valuation is 4 1/2 trillion dollars. It is all about the money, who has it and how much can they get in their grubby paws and how can they get more. And a lot of them provide absolutely nothing positive to the world. Ever look up what a lot of the yachts that billionaires buy cost? Not the cost of their estates but the cost of their yachts and that doesn’t take into account the upkeep. And people starve and can’t pay rent or medication or doctor bills or even health insurance, even with the ACA, or taxes because those with more money than sense shouldn’t have to pay a fair share of taxes – according to their lawyers/tax accountants/paid for politicians.
Do I sound pissed off? I sure as fuck hope so….
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: If you have chrome on your pickup truck, you’re not using it as a pickup truck.
Suzanne
@Kay:
Because it’s really difficult to do it profitably, at scale, in the places where people want to live. There’s a lot of risk involved in spec construction.
Raven
@different-church-lady: oh bullshit
different-church-lady
@Kay:
We don’t build housing to house people. We only build housing so that developers can make money.
MagdaInBlack
@Ruckus: Do you sound pissed off? Just a wee bit. Right there with you tho.
Another Scott
re Inflation, obligatory Dean Baker at CEPR:
Emphasis added.
The housing market is already slowing down according to number that CalculatedRiskBlog tracks (because mortgages have gotten more expensive). Housing leads the economy, so…
I have generally thought that Powell has done a good job, and a big part of his job is managing expectations and objectively Fed rates going up 1-2% this year shouldn’t be a big deal when most actual humans pay a lot more on their loans, but as Baker says throwing the US into a recession (even a mild one) isn’t going to fix the pandemic or the supply chain issues. I have to think that he knows that (he always says the economy follows the course of the pandemic in his extended remarks), but …
Hang in there, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: Housing is one of those things that sucks in a nonpartisan/bipartisan fashion. “Affordable” housing at the scale we need is going to have to be built in large tracts, will look very samey-same, and will not really be mixed into other neighborhoods. It will consolidate people together by class.
Martin
@Grumpy Old Railroader:
At some point it will. Long boring Martin comment ahead:
To start, there are two commodity markets here. Oil is one and refined gasoline is the other. Exxon can drill the oil sell it on the market, where Shell buys it to refine it, sells it again on the market where some independent gas station buys it. This is generally good for prices as it allows the efficiencies of the oil extraction business to translate to price benefits in that market, and then efficiencies in the oil refinement business in the gas market. The downside to this is that it gives speculators two places to influence the market. They can speculate that oil prices will go up, buy some today, stick it in storage, and then sell it on the market later when the price has increased. This is called arbitrage. So long as the storage cost is lower than the profit from the trade, they come out ahead. They can also move it from a market where demand has fallen (weather, etc. ) to a one where the demand has gone up and again, if people in Texas are desperate for fuel, trucking it down from Illinois might be profitable. Speculators generally have the effect of smoothing out the market prices, but they also have some net overhead, so the result is that your peak prices aren’t as peaky, and your average price is slightly higher. And because this can happen at both the oil and gas markets, they can sometimes get out of phase. Doesn’t usually happen, but it does happen.
You also have regulatory impacts. Here in CA, due to air quality reasons we use a special formulation of fuel. That means that gasoline refined in Texas can’t be sold in CA. This means that the supply/demand within CA for gasoline is somewhat decoupled from there rest of the country because you can’t just take surplus Texas gas and truck it over to CA to help average the price between them (fractionally raising it in TX by adding demand, and fractionally lowering it in CA by adding supply). But oil from Texas can (theoretically) be sent to Calif because the oil commodity market is a bit more flexible than the gasoline one is. I say in theory because oil isn’t perfectly fungible (substitutable). If CA is set up to refine heavy oil with a lot of sulfur from the bottom of some reservoir and TX is set up to refine light oil without much sulfur from newer reservoirs, then the refinery is going to have to make some changes to shift from one to another. And that’s going to have a cost and take some time.
Oil refining also not a static thing. What a gallon of oil produces varies, not just between the light and heavy oil above, etc. but also based on what is needed. In Europe, where there are more diesel cars, they shift their refining to produce more diesel and less gasoline. In the US, the reverse. You’re also producing kerosene (aircraft fuel), solvents, lighter fuels like butane, heavier tars and naphtha, and all kinds of stuff, and all of those markets are tried to be kept in a certain balance. Sometime gas prices are sacrificed to produce more aircraft fuel, etc.
And there’s a seasonality to this as well. We’re currently in the process of shutting down refineries to shift them from producing more winter home heating oil to producing more gasoline for summer driving. This takes a couple of weeks and leaves the gasoline market with a bit less elasticity.
And finally, there’s the retail effect. If you are a gas station owner, you’re going to raise prices at the earliest sniff of a wholesale price increase but probably won’t lower them until your competitors do. And how long that takes depends on how much you sell. If you have 10,000 gallons of gas you paid $4/gal and are willing to sell for $4/gal (make your money on cigarettes and Mountain Dew) and the price of gas goes down to $3.50/gal, you aren’t going to lower your prices until your $4/gal gas is sold. And if your competitor sells gas faster, they can either choose to lower prices and undercut you, or keep them at your price and pocket the profits. This is just normal capitalism, baby – what the market will bear.
So, you get a situation like this where there’s a war. This throws a lot of this stuff into chaos. To start, the speculation goes into overdrive. Russia exports 5 million barrels of oil a day. Will that remove 5 million barrels a day from global markets? Or will that continue to show up? Right now the US and a few other nations have boycotted Russian oil, but most countries haven’t, so that oil is still in the market. But there’s potentially money to be made by betting that boycott will expand and oil prices will go back up, so while it’s cheap, buy it, put it in storage for later. That’s oil that can’t turn into gas and can’t lower the cost of gas.
At the same time demand for oil in Ukraine is probably falling. Gas stations getting destroyed, cars getting destroyed. Some cities shutting down. Some industries shutting down. But at the same time, is NATO gearing up? The US is sending assets to Poland – that’s a demand increase. We might be building up reserves around Europe in case we need to mobilize troops. That adding demand, keeping prices from falling, etc. So it’s all pretty complex looked at as a whole.
Finally, you have the general effect of an elastic vs inelastic market. Gasoline is a pretty inelastic market. That means that demand isn’t very responsive to prices. If you need to get to work you need to get to work and it doesn’t matter if gas is $3/gal or $5/gal. You don’t buy less gas, you just complain about it more. Inelastic markets are VERY vulnerable to supply side shenanigans. This is why OPEC works like it does. OPEC is a cartel to regulate the supply of oil. They directly control prices by extracting more or less oil. The US is a little less susceptible to this because we have competing oil companies and laws about price fixing and cartels. But you see this manifest by oil companies buying thousands of leases and then doing dick with them. They could drill, but not drilling makes every barrel they do extract more expensive, so why drill, unless your competitor drills. And because ramping extraction up or down takes time, adding refinery capacity takes time, everyone in the system is risk adverse. They don’t immediately throw new capacity up until they’re somewhat assured that the demand is durable. A one month price spike won’t pay for the new capacity so everyone has to just suck it up.
Bottom line, US producers at all levels are using the global uncertainty due to Russia and various resulting policies to take profits rather than risk losing money. And that will likely continue until things settle down.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne:
As long as money is this cheap and markets are left unregulated, there will be no such thing as “affordable” housing.
Another Scott
@Grumpy Old Railroader: Q: Inflation in the US is higher than it’s been in decades. Your grandparents, who used to have to buy a loaf of bread with a wheelbarrow full of cash when Democrat Jimmy Carter was President, could tell you how horrible tax-and-spend inflation is. Democrat Joe Biden is President along with a Democrat Controlled Congress and they just passed several TRILLLLLIIIIOOON DOLLAR spending bills. How angry are you that Democrat Joe Biden has made inflation so high that you cannot afford the gas to join the Truckers Convoy and drive around the Capitol Beltway all day??…”
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Odie Hugh Manatee
You’re right about the price gouging. I believe that businesses are inflating prices to rip off the public, passing the blame off to Democrats and Biden. Win-win for these (mostly) conservative assholes. Kind of like how the owners of mass media have convinced conservatives that everything but the approved outlets are all evil “liberal media”.
Yup, all of those (largely) conservative owned media outlets are liberal. Sure… right.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: Eh, even luxury homebuilding at large scale would be good. In many locations, older homes would then slowly transition to being “affordable” homes. Really anything that increases the supply of housing at this point would be good, in the in-demand places. But many municipalities have made it really freaking hard to build. I even notice it in my practice, zoning ordinances and public review and design committee and impact studies and etc etc etc have gotten even more onerous.
I get that no one wants eyesores, but to an extent, place making should be iterative in order to have a lower barrier to entry, and some amount of ugliness is the price you pay for that.
Cacti
After he kept his promise to end the Afghanistan war, the media never stopped piling on.
Your average “independent” is someone who doesn’t follow politics and thought George W. Bush was the kind of guy you could have a beer with.
HinTN
@Baud: That may be but they are also actively engaged in figuring out the endgame for their batteries. Small steps.
Another Scott
@Baud: Toyota has its fingers in everything automobile related. They’re huge.
They know electrics are the future. They’ve been investing in the technology for 20+ years. But they’re a conservative company and will not be too far ahead of the market.
Supposedly the electric bz4x will be on sale in the US this year.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Emma from Miami
Before trusting the polls ask the following questions:
(1) Who did it? Some pollsters are not exactly scrupulous.
(2) How did they phrase the questions? Some “polls” are designed to get specific answers.
3) Who paid for it? For obvious reasons.
My first polisci college professor hammered that into my head first week of class.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Emma from Miami: Yes, this. I am sensing “The war is being boring so it’s back to our narratives”
Suzanne
I bought my first house in 2003, in what was at that time the waaaaaaaaay outskirts of the PHX east valley. Hell, it’s still far out. But at that time, there were tons of housing options for first-timers like me. Development going on for miles. Drive til you qualify. Lots of 3/2s and 4/2s, with small yards. But most people financed with ARMs. I did not, but I would have gotten a much bigger mortgage if I had. I sold the house six months later and made a tidy profit. I said it wasn’t sustainable then, and I was right. But after that crashed, nothing replaced it.
Wapiti
@Kay: Housing sells by the square foot. Why build a 1500sf place when you could put in a 4800 sf place?
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: If ugliness and eyesore were really issues I would not have “McMansion Hell” to keep me entertained ?
Martin
@Kay: Same situation as the oil. There are two ways to make money in the housing market – build more housing, and don’t build more housing. If you have equity in the housing market, the most efficient way to make money is to prevent more housing from being built. If you don’t have equity in the market, you want to build housing so that you can join the first group and stop building it.
One of the biggest dynamics in the current housing market is private equity moving in and buying a FUCKTON of rentals and properties in the US, and then just wringing every last penny out of them. And they don’t want ANYTHING built and are working overtime to block any new construction.
You also have existing homeowners blocking construction for the same reasons, even in really liberal places like San Francisco. Liberals care about the homeless, but most care about their property values more.
One of the biggest, and most unspoken problems in the US is that cities are going broke. And adding homes doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. And this ties back to cars. You need a certain ratio of taxable land to infrastructure to break even. The problem is that most of the US has tipped to the wrong side of that ratio. We need more roads, more parking, etc. to move people from suburban housing to suburban style services and retail. The idea of a ‘downtown’ where you could park and walk to a variety of different stores and services doesn’t really exist any more. Instead, you drive from one to the next, and park at each. Parking generates no tax revenue, but needs to be serviced by roads which cost tax dollars. A 40′ or 80′ retail storefront in a downtown district generates a shit-ton of tax revenue relative to the 40′ or 80′ of road infrastructure that needs to be maintained. But require that 40′ storefront have a minimum parking requirement of 30 spaces, and now that storefront is producing the same tax revenue but needs 150′ of road infrastructure – 4x more, and probably turn pockets, and so forth. No more tax revenue, but way more expense for the city. Add in a drive through lane and that goes even higher.
And this is true for housing as well. Nice single family residential neighborhoods have a massive amount of road infrastructure relative to taxable land. This is fine if the relative costs balance out when the housing is built, but if the relative costs change, it can bankrupt the city. So, how does that cost change? Labor costs are a factor as are material costs. Asphalt is mostly made from oil, so oil prices are a factor. But the killer is the rate of maintenance, which is mostly a function of the mass of the vehicles driving on them. Big trucks do more damage than small cars. So what happens when all cars get heavier? Road costs go up. But how much could car weight have changed, surely not that much. Well, 20+ years ago 80% of vehicles sold were cars, now 80% are SUVs and trucks. Average vehicle weight has gone up by about ⅓. So, have road maintenance costs gone up by 33%? No. Road impact is proportional to the 4th power of the weight per axle. Raise car weight by 33%, and you increase road impact by 213%. The cost to maintain roads has tripled, just due to heavier cars. There isn’t a city in the US that has balanced their tax revenues against a 3x increase in road maintenance costs, which is of course exacerbated by the larger cars needing more land dedicated to parking which further lowers the taxable ratio to road costs.
So you have this compounding problem which has reached a critical state. Reductions in federal transportation dollars, fuel taxes not changing for inflation, or being cut because gas prices get too high, consumers choosing ever larger vehicles and a general national attitude of low taxation has made it so many cities can’t even afford to zone for residential because they can’t build the roads to service it. And there’s no upside to the additional tax revenue because it’s still a loss to the budget.
US zoning is completely busted, being too wedded to protecting car ownership and preservation of homeowner equity. And things just haven’t yet gotten bad enough to really break through that. CA has recently banned R1 (single family home) zoning. My city is building almost nothing but medium density mixed use – five over ones. Retail on the first floor, medical offices, a bodega, restaurant, etc. and 5 stories of residential above that – either rental or condos. That’s a LOT of tax revenue relative to road infrastructure, and it’s infrastructure that is less likely to be used, because you can walk to the dry cleaner, to the restaurant, to the bodega so the cost of that infrastructure goes even lower. But towns and cities need to have the willpower to do that, to change the zoning, etc. But I live in a planned city that is very well equipped to making these changes and changing how they plan roads, services, etc. Most cities don’t work this way.
WhatsMyNym
@Kay:
You make much more money building for the high end market.
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: And why is it that it’s too risky to build affordable housing? In the end because government isn’t creating and implementing policies that will support affordable housing.
Cincinnati keeps giving tax abatements to gazillion dollar condo buildings. If anybody should be paying taxes, it’s those people, they have the money and can afford it.
Martin
@Suzanne: The downside to that (and I generally agree with you here) is that if you move luxury to high density, then support for infrastructure shifts. You wind up with areas that now also have good mass transit where the luxury homes are, and the low income folks are shoved out into the edges of the city in low density housing with no mass transit, and their transportation costs steadily bankrupt them. Much of the problem is that it’s not up to developers to do the holistic view of this, and the city itself doesn’t do that work.
In my opinion, given the stupid amounts of capital floating around the economy with nowhere to go but buy land to rent seek off of, that we need to rethink the role of public housing, where housing can be evaluated without the burden of how to drive profits off of it. Over ⅓ of multifamily residences (apartments) are owned by private equity. That’s insane.
Poptartacus
Don’t sweat it bubba, most people ain’t worthy of touching
https://youtu.be/LBHN7aJGogY
Grum Grumby
@Brachiator: The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, explained
Also, the whole theory of republican governance is to shrink the government to the size it can be drowned in the bath tub, block anything and everything Democrats may attempt — even their own policy proposals — just for spite/sabotage, and stoke grievances.
Raven
@Suzanne: my folks bought just below Bell Rd in 1978. Man has it grown!
Soprano2
@Kay: This is what I want to say to them – “No one made you buy a vehicle that gets 8 mpg when you drive 30 miles one way to work every day!” That’s on you.
Grum Grumby
@Another Scott: BRILLIANT! Stealing.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Agreed. What I like is guys driving around with 10in wide tires and their 4×4 jacked up 10-12 inches, which is compensation for something personal they are likely missing….
Eolirin
@Martin: Really does seem like housing and other basic infrastructure is going to need to be brought entirely national to deal with these issues. States aren’t going to be able to fund this stuff well enough on their own either unless they’re CA or maybe NY. And the markets are clearly stuck in a dysfunctional place just like the healthcare market. I have no idea how we get a strong enough political alliance going to make that possible though.
It’s going to be an incredibly heavy lift even if Democrats have full control over the government and don’t need to worry about filibusters. And it’s not clear we’re still going to have control over the legislature next year.
seefleur
@Baud: The only one in my family who makes ANY sense to me is my 5-year-old grandson. I hope he isn’t looking at me and thinking “what the hell is wrong with gramma that she’s nodding in agreement with me?”
seefleur
@NotMax: Uh huh – I work in law enforcement and the last 5 officers that have been hired, I’ve been sorely tempted to ask them to PROVE that they have a driver’s license. We’re letting Doogie Houser leos carry guns with actual ammunition!?!?
Raven
@Ruckus: sheet, I have 74 nova baby moons with the bow tie, beauty rings, brushed aluminum “flags” on the cab and a sweet hood ornament! I ain’t compensating for shit! I hauled 20 bails of pine straw just yesterday. https://flic.kr/p/2m1mRN9
Ruckus
@Cacti:
What if you don’t drink, what does that do to GWB’s desirability as a drinking partner, especially if that is the only half ass reason you might think of to wanting to be in any way near him or having him make any decisions on your behalf?
Mart
Missouri has very low gas taxes so that clouds my views. We seem to be paying about what we paid in the 2008 spike, not accounting for inflation. Never get why all the hair pulling when it goes up a buck or two; especially from those concerned with climate disaster. Back in one of the earlier price spikes heard a talking head on NPR speculate that $10/gallon would drive the transportation costs so high jobs would come back to ‘murica. Interesting theory.
MagdaInBlack
@Raven: I love it
I am having Jerry Jeff night here, so the truck fits my mood
Ruckus
@Raven:
You also don’t drive a 2021 or 22 F350 or similar vehicle and you use your truck to haul stuff, not to drive that truck to your office job 35 miles each way.
EZSmirkzz
Well John, while I have my magical thinking cap on I’d say it’s because you didn’t park a Winnebago in your backyard instead of putting gardens and such. YMMV of course. Now being aware of all internet traditions as all of us should be, you will recall how much fun we used to have in the blogosphere and the debates over calling it the blogosphere or blogistan, and whether it was correct to be covered in cheeto dust, and other important stuff like commas and digressions.
Covid has really weirded people out, and frankly to be honest with you, Americans didn’t really need the push, so I *assume that God has a sense of humor, *(so as not to commit the sin of presumption,) and we need to start having more fun on the intertubes as best we can.
Right now we are hearing a drumbeat of negativity from the national media which thrives on food fights not kumbuya while dutifully informing us of Wall Streets opinions on all things great and small that bend our thoughts to bean counters economic self interests. Like the Book says, there is nothing new under the sun.
I know you are an atheist so I hope you know I’m using biblical references to chap your ass and the asses of the two Republican’ts that still read your blog, not out of a showy display of knowledge which is the sole providence of religious conservatives of the various and sundry religions that plague the rest of us with their holier than thou pontifications, having forgotten that their halos fit on their heads a little too tight when worn here on Earth.
I haven’t been paying as close attention to things as I used to, so I’m not really sure what to advise on the mood of the country, other than to remind everyone to have some fun. I’m up to 23 years in sobriety now, so I hope you keep chasing me until I croak, which at my age could be any day, especially since I got an electric bike, for my knees man, for my knees, not my second childhood … WHeeeeee!
Keep the faith, Peace
Also too, fancy new email ain’t it?
Another Scott
@WhatsMyNym: That’s part of it, of course.
But when housing goes up, land goes up (and vice-versa). A builder isn’t going to sell a house for $300k if the 1/4 acre lot is worth $300k.
I think a part of the problem in the US now is that speculators bought up housing (and rental units) hoping to make a killing by renting them out via AirBnB arrangements (i.e. as hotels, but without the regulations). That seems to have fallen out of the news as a business model, but all of that inventory didn’t seem to make it back to the normal market.
Framing lumber prices going nuts the last couple of years or more hasn’t helped. (Part of it is forest issues in Canada and TFG’s trade policies, but a lot is demand exceeding supply.)
Ultimately, supply and demand has to work. It sucks, but there’s no better system. California’s recent action (as I understand it) of allowing duplexes where single-family zoning was the norm should be a national policy. It’s no panacea, and it won’t help overnight, but without zoning changes the only alternative is more sprawl which just makes everything worse.
Cheers,
Scott.
Raven
@MagdaInBlack: when you’re down on your luck and you ain’t gotta buck . . .
Raven
@Ruckus: and take Artie for rides!
MagdaInBlack
@Raven: ” It’s A Good Night For Singing” album, specifically ?
Always my favorite.
Raven
@Raven: of course it is a Gary P. Nunn song
LeftCoastYankee
Rich folks have (through great propaganda efforts and expense) made it an article of faith in our national conversation that wealth (no matter how acquired) is an indicator of intelligence and competence.
Conversely, an idea which can’t be turned into a profit are lesser, whereas the worst ideas are accepted as amazing if they can pretend to promote profitability.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
Well, yes. But it’s also a question of scale.
I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about this, having lived the early part of my life on Long Island in those post-war suburbs, then to Phoenix and Tucson in the 70s-90s suburbs, and then back to Pittsburgh, in a prewar neighborhood that was a streetcar suburb but is now urban. Like anything else, housing responds to efficiencies of scale. Pittsburgh has a lot of houses of the same typology but they’re all different. That’s charming, but inefficient to build, if your goal is to house a lot of people quickly and affordably. Levittown on Long Island was one of the first master plans, but the Sun Belt has really “perfected” that way of living. But the scale of the projects is just gigantic. Entire square miles are developed at a time. The financial risk is similarly large. But the payoff is great, because they can build entire blocks worth of houses at a time, all from a prescribed menu of floor plans, so cost is controlled. It’s great for the buyers, because they don’t have to deal with any of the permitting or zoning or design bullshit.
Small-scale development just cannot compete, unless it is working for a higher-end part of the market, like bespoke custom homes. And there really is not a developer who wants to build a neighborhood of homes for working-class people. And, quite frankly, there is probably not a municipality that wants that in their boundaries.
evman
@HinTN: I asked why Toyota isn’t in the all electric market send they said that if 20 (?) % of the vehicles in the USA went all electric the grid couldn’t support it. I hadn’t thought about it that way before.
The salesperson who told you that is clueless or lying.
The USA has plenty of capacity for 20% EV because EV primarily charge at night when grid load is low.
The fastest & cheapest way to make more electricity is to put solar panels on almost all business roofs so EVs can also charge when parked at jobs or people shop during day.
JustRuss
Meh, most people at dealerships barely know anything about cars, let alone the US grid. Financing they understand.
Ruckus
@Raven:
Damn! I left out the best part!
Ruckus
@Mai Naem mobile:
My last vehicle was a full sized van that I had for my business. A fill up around here would be about $175. I did once get 12 mpg but it’s normal milage was 11 mpg. Hot, cold, loaded empty I owned it for almost 10 yrs and I got 12 mpg once. In all that time I drove it about 25K miles so that’s over $13,000 over 10 yrs at today’s price here in SoCal or about $110/month. Imagine if someone did 25K miles per year…… How expensive do electric cars sound now?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne: Its all about where people WANT to live. In St. Louis, we have a ton of single family or duplex homes that are tiny; row houses and the like. For years, we’ve been hearing how we should just tear them all down because no one wants to live in such small housing. The issue is the elderly want to live in the suburbs and exurbs, not the city or near by suburbs. They will say it is crime, but I think we all know what they really mean.