Today’s strong fundraising numbers come after a great week for the Biden-Harris team.
From leading the global charge for democracy to bringing down costs here at home, this week we got to see @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris do what they do best – deliver for the American people. pic.twitter.com/zsGgNnvhvf
— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) July 14, 2023
More Americans are joining the labor force—the highest share of working-age Americans in over 20 years.
Bidenomics is working. pic.twitter.com/bHjtz084OU
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) July 14, 2023
Note sender:
The press rarely prints the good news about the economy under Joe Biden’s leadership. https://t.co/LgZIVdHtDi
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) July 14, 2023
Note different sender:
“So we’ve got inflation waning, strong employment, the Dow very strong…And yet I know that we’ll spend the next six months hearing voters talk about how out of control inflation is, and how bad the economy is, and why they’re open to Trump 2024.” https://t.co/kIX1jUAiIN
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 14, 2023
Just take L and move on. https://t.co/rlHm6uQE8v
— Candidly Tiff (@tify330) July 14, 2023
A point to ponder:
Vaccines and Ukraine are very useful litmus tests for separating people with an actual critique from cranks or malignant actors. If you fail to have the broadly correct position on either you’re stupid or trying to maliciously manipulate stupid people.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) July 15, 2023
For the next 20-30 years you’ll be able to look at what anyone with any kind of platform said in 2021-2023 and have a pretty clear (necessary, not sufficient, but still useful) indicator of if they’re a serious person or good faith actor.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) July 15, 2023
Meanwhile…
On The Road – Albatrossity – Serengeti Day 3, Round 2
Baud
I’m kind of waiting to see which will be the first media outlet to feature pro-choice who are disappointed with Biden and/or are voting Republican.
Kay
On the general theme, a good addition from Margaret Sullivan:
I maintain the coverage of the Biden economy is but-her-emails levels bad. Negative all out of proportion or reality and lemming-like.
I’m glad it’s being recognized, but they need to stop doing this. They do not all have to follow the NYTimes political teamwith whatever narrative that company is pushing. They can do their own work.
NotMax
NYT “harrumphing.” Indeed.
Kay
In anecdotal but funny Biden economy news, I had my middle son the electrician for dinner last night. He’s working on a big infrastructure project in Detroit. He brought two pipefitter co workers who are up from Alabama to work. I asked them how long they expected to work overtime – they are working 6 12’s- and one said “until the Biden money runs out”. I asked if that’s what they all call it and they said yes. The Biden money. lol.
Kay
@NotMax:
He’s a successful President. It discredits them that they are somehow barred from at least admitting it. They look like they’re being told what to write, either that or just following the leader in a cowardly way.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Mousebumples
I know we’ve talked about this before, but I am proud of how well Bidenomics is working!
Not all sectors are doing as well, granted, and the TechBro downturn might be impacting some of the breathless NYT reporting.
My company is growing. Have dozens of openings and dozens of new hires each week. We’ve largely moved to allowing most departments the ability to WFH (if desired), so I think that helps with attracting talent. We had over 600 applicants for 1 opening on my team last month!
rikyrah
@NotMax:
I will say it again
They resent the competency of 46 and his Administration.
They phucking RESENT IT.
THEY MISS being stenographers who hung out on Twitter
Immanentize
@Kay: That’s funny because at the Uni where I still work (Saints be praised), we called the COVID relief money “Biden Bucks,” or just “Bidens” as in “how many Bidens did the Art School receive?”
Baud
“Aging Biden asks voters for second term despite failure to achieve utopia.”
/Future NYT headline.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Twitter increases the herd and follow the leader effect for journalists. It’s not good for their work. It’s good for their careers and book sales, but not their work quality.
Mousebumples
I’ve been calling it Biden Bucks. I like the alliteration, and I love the way it gives him and his administration credit.
Obama care was called that to try to diminish the ACA; however, some of the normies I know now associate the Healthcare expansion with Obama.
Thanks, Obama! (and Biden 😊)
Kay
@Immanentize:
Ha! The southern tradespeople come up and try to get into a MI or OH local because the pay scale is much better. Depending on the union, they have to put together 4 years up here before they can bid to enter (sometimes additional requirements) so these two pipefitters are trying that, staying in a camper. They were super polite – ma’ming me to death :)
Matt McIrvin
@Mousebumples: The TechBro downturn is over, as far as I can tell. Hit the sector hard in the first quarter of the year but they got off with one round of layoffs and austerity.
Chief Oshkosh
I don’t know what the answer is to the lousy job that the national press does. The big players are all owned by billionaires and many of the name “reporters” or “pundits” or “writers” (I’m not really sure what they are) are millionaires, all completely disconnected from the reality of 99.9944% of the rest of the world. Even when they are supposedly being introspective, they so deeply lack self-awareness it’s almost funny:
Hey, mister reporterman, you forgot to add “…when a Republican held the White House.”
It helps to work to get better politicians elected. At least that’s positive action.
Chris T.
@Baud: That’s too close to honest. An even more honest headline would say “after fixing the economy for everyone except the rich”, but that’s way too honest.
The actual headline will be more like “Aging Biden asks voters for second term despite unsolved problems”.
randy khan
I like that two-part metric for people who got things right and people who didn’t. If you miss one of those two you are likely to be very wrong about a lot of things.
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
I don’t really buy Sullivan’s explanation either – “there is a negativity bias”. I think they don’t report accurately or fairly on the Biden economy because they have a status quo bias- they are deeply conventional and rigid people. So Biden veered from what is their “standard” of economic policy (trickle down and austerity) and they need to retreat to what they know, which is GOP economic policy. They ultimately actually believe that the GOP is the standard and Democrats are the outlier.
They are the “center Right country” w/in a much more diverse and flexible and changing country. That industry. Brittle.
lowtechcyclist
Biden’s had the most successful Presidency of the past half a century, as far as I can see. And somehow the media keep making it sound like a failure. Boggles my mind.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Now that Musk is paying people to produce far-right content like admiring interviews with accused rapist and misogynist “influencer” Andrew Tate, maybe celebrity journalists will migrate off the platform to avoid getting the ick on their precious brands. Or not. I don’t know what will happen, but it does seem certain that the dynamic that existed before Musk bought and started ruining Twitter was unhealthy for journalism, so maybe he’ll inadvertently do democracy a solid by destroying the platform.
p.a.
@Kay:
What I noticed from my time as a New England Tel (& Tel 🤪) “lineman” (not a company title but accurate for the public) was how differently transient workers were treated by different local workforces. We had multiple out-of-region workers in after various Nor’easters, Hurricanes, ice storms. They liked working with us in RI, we were glad for the help. Guys who had worked in MA were invariably treated badly; they were viewed to be “taking our overtime.”
I even noticed this in company schools. We were getting regular pay plus travel, sometimes off-shift extra $ too, and sitting on our asses instead of humping poles in who-knows-what-weather, and Mass guys were generally miserable. Used to laugh about it with the guys from the northern states, they couldn’t figure it out too.
Then I worked some in MA, and after dealing with their management, I could kinda understand. Those Mass guys were, in Faulkner’s word, soured.
Kay
They’re old fashioned moralists too. They saw all the money going out the door to ordinary people re: covid relief and they KNEW “punishment” would follow, so they were thrilled when we got knocked down a coupla pegs w/inflation. The world is in order again! Working people are losing as is their proper lot in life.
I will never, ever forget how these fucking dopes all pushed the idea that “austerity” was the solution immediately after the entire working and middle class got knocked on their ass in 2009. Genuis.
Chris
@NotMax:
It usually doesn’t get this bad unless there’s an election year (2000 or 2016). This time they went all-in in August 2021 and they haven’t hit the brakes once.
They desperately want to kneecap his presidency, which is pretty much how you’d expect people to behave if they were Republicans looking back on four years of Trump and realizing just how badly they needed to change the conversation to blame the Dems.
NotMax
Elsewhere, the handwriting is on the wall — in indelible ink.
Kay
@p.a.:
I love talking to people about their weird work cultures and norms.
MI and OH are “reciprocal” so if you’re in in either state you’re in both so this plan of working up here to put together 48 months could really work out for them. They’re brothers – real ones – not just “brothers” in labor-speak.
Dorothy A. Winsor
This is worrisome. From the NYT, via LGM:
NotMax
@Chris
Methinks your #24 was a response to Kay in #2.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Commercial real-estate is crashing, likely never coming back and a lot of rich people are heavily invested in it . They are calling it the Richession.
Kay
@Chris:
I can’t prove this of course but I think some of the economic stats sort of indicate a lot of people didn’t really buy the negative reporting. The jump in retirement and job switchers and new small business starts and consumer spending to me says a certain amount of people were behaving like they would behave in a good economy – because it was and is a good economy.
Chris
@NotMax:
Well, it was supposed to be. Huh. Sorry about that.
Kay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
That’s a great point. We found the “people are hurting” segment that is driving this coverage- incredibly wealthy landowners :)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It will be Vichy Times
Kay
It’s so shortsighted too, because the economy will go down and now they’ve screwed up all comparisons and context. When it actually is bad (and it will be, sometime) they’re going to be jumping out of windows and taking viewers/readers with them.
Soprano2
@Kay: I guess none of the people in the press shop at any of the stores I do, where there are “price drop” or “price rollback” signs EVERYWHERE. WalMart dropped the price on a 12 pack of soda in cans by $1. That’s a big drop! I see this every week now when I’m shopping, prices in stores are going down, and the press is silent about it. They’re still pimping the inflation story! The price of gasoline is going down again in spite of Saudi attempts to elevate it! You hear little or nothing about that.
Baud
Y’all are just biased because you support Biden.
Another Scott
@Kay: Too many reporters these days don’t have any personal knowledge of what actual inflation does, and too many of those that do think that it inevitably leads to “wage-price spirals” like in the 1970s.
I cringe every time I hear some cub reporter talk about “record inflation” when a brief 9% spike is not anywhere close to a “record”.
It’s yet another reflection of the “race to the bottom” and “lock up real knowledge and expertise behind paywalls” stuff that we’re dealing with just about everywhere. The big news outfits don’t have grey-haired reporters with 30+ years experience any more – they have to cut people-costs, and Bloomberg and the like lock up all the data they can behind paywalls so that young reporters can’t quickly take advantage of actual real expertise (and cub reporters apparently don’t have the time to learn how to use FRED and the other government statistics databases but rely on press-releases from noisy political actors instead).
Like much of the rest of life, normal people are being forced to do their own research if they actually want to be informed as to what’s going on…
[/get-off-my-lawn]
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Soprano2:
They’re mad we got bailed out. Normal people can’t get “handouts” or bad things will happen because we have offended the Right wing economics gods. A bailout followed by a soft landing flies in the face of their rigid, brittle Ronald Reagan belief system. “Where is the punishment for the lazy workers?” they ask.
Ken
Maybe part of the problem is that Biden is expected to be competent.
TFG, on the other hand, started with low expectations and they only went down, until by the end of his term reporters were happy if he didn’t screw something up that day. They even stopped whining about the lack of press briefings.
Soprano2
@NotMax: The Times shows their hand more and more; they seem to want TFG back. If TFG had accomplished what Biden did last week, they would have been singing his praise to the heavens!
Anyway
@Kay:
Yes, that was my big peeve with the way the EU and the German banks were so hung up on Austerity (esp from the Greeks) and they completely looked the other way when Orban and the Hungarians were backtracking on democracy.
Tony J’s favorite BBC was pushing austerity so hard — faith-based economics. No metrics for anything.
catclub
This is extremely dependent on the party of the president. When Trump was president, democrats were less optimistic. BUT, Democrats also said the economy is good because Trump was riding the Obama economy. Right now, Trump and republicans are saying the economy is the worst ever, a disaster. The press is trying to agree with them.
Soprano2
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes, but that will also affect a lot of small business owners too. People who own businesses in downtowns where they rely on all those workers for the bulk of their business are struggling, if not already out of business. One unusual example – shoeshine people are almost gone, as dress gets more casual and fewer people go to the office. I know that the economy constantly changes, and things go in and out, but still it’s an example of some small people who are being hurt by this change.
Anyway
@Soprano2:
They just want a Rethug… inflation for assets and hold the wages for the little people.
catclub
@Kay:
Yep. The standard thing that right wingers say is that if you allow the poor to vote and win they will vote to send money to themselves. Actually that is what happens when the rich people win. they send money from the government to themselves.
Soprano2
@Kay: Yep, and they can’t seem to associate the fact that regular people didn’t crash and burn with the fact that the economy didn’t crash and burn either! Look at the contrast with what happened in 2009-2010. Atrios talks about that some, how the 2009 recovery was so handicapped by Republican insistence on austerity in government.
Anyway
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
This is a problem because so many retirement funds etc are heavily invested in CRE, and the knock-on effects of thinned-out and sparsely populated city centers will take a good long while to abate.
SFAW
@Baud:
Not necessarily more accurate than your version, but probably more consistent with the FTFTFNYT “ethos.”
Kay
@p.a.:
There are three unions in the Postal Service- clerks and mailhandlers, city carriers and rural carriers. Figuring out their respective rules and culture and norms was key to my working there as a manager. I think managing union employees is different than managing non union employees. You really do have to work with them. They’re at the table in a real way.
The rural carriers are the most white, the most male and most Right wing and also the best paid with the most ferocious union. Of course. :)
Hoodie
@Kay: I think a lot of them know it’s a good economy, but they’re pessimistic about it lasting because they’ve been marinated in 50 years of Chicago School economics. Most folks have never experienced Keynesian approaches to the economy (e.g., those from the Depression and WWII). We’ve had decades of deferred public investment and people have been accepting of it like the proverbial frog in the saucepan. Covid presented the first opening for a change, we’ll see if it can stick.
artem1s
let’s try adding a few items to that list.
Birthers
Reproductive health care scares – the pill causes millions of tiny dead fetuses in every womb
Climate Change denial; Ozone depletion denial; Chemtrail/5G loons
Men in Black / Black helicopters / New World Order
antisemitism Rothchilds – Soros bucks – John Birch Society assholes
Clinton Derangement Syndrome – ButHerEmail – Benghazi – Pizzagate – People Killary and Bill have murdered
Truth is the signs have been there for decades, the MSM just chose to ignore them and GOP was too hooked on the grift to give it up even to save their own party.
Kay
@Soprano2:
One of my sisters said sort of conspiratorily to me “now we know they can bail us out and it will be fine- they didn’t want us to know that” :)
We know. We don’t all actually have to lose our job and house and savings every time the roulette wheel lands on that.
Kay
@Hoodie:
You said it better (and shorter) than I did. Agree, 100%.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay:
Rich press people jumping out of windows? It’s pretty to think so.
Chief Oshkosh
@catclub:
They did the exact same thing when it was clear that Obama had actually pulled us out of the Shrub Mighty Recession. Hell, we used to be subjected to White People from the Heartland on our TVs whinging about how the economy was the worst ever as they were being interviewed while on their third vacation of the year to New York City.
Chris
@Kay:
I don’t know, I think the polling showed a lot of people absolutely believe the economy’s doing badly.
I think it’s more complex: people believe “the economy” as a whole is doing badly, but people aren’t acting as if the economy is doing badly, because they personally are doing mostly okay. So they do the kind of things you’re describing, but at the same time they still believe they’re the lucky duckies and most people must be doing really badly, because that’s what they see on every news outlet around them.
I think this helped us in 2022, because people who aren’t personally feeling the urgency of a bad economy are a lot less likely to be motivated to vote to punish the people in charge for it. We’ll see if that happens again in 2024. The media is sure as hell doing everything it can to ensure it doesn’t.
UncleEbeneezer
@lowtechcyclist: They have to BothSides. And since the other side is convinced that this is the worst Administration ever, they have to meet them half-way. The Times has shown repeatedly that they are willing to let MAGA, Flat-Earth, Global Warming/Covid Denialists define what is reality. When 30-40% of the population believes 2 + 2 = 5 well then you’d be a bad journalist to insist that it’s 4.
Chris
@Anyway:
The bailouts weren’t supposed to help the Greeks, anyway. They were bailing out the German banks. Greece was just the relay station between the banks and the people bailing them out, as well as the schmuck bait so people would stay angry at the Greeks rather than the bankers.
The Moar You Know
@Soprano2: I’ve been seeing the same thing here in SoCal. Lotta staples, grocery type stuff; discounted or just plain price cut. The only place I’m not seeing it is in gasoline, which would really help the working folks, but like you I’m seeing a lot of downward prices these days.
My main shopping go to place is Costco so it’s not just the traditional discounters.
JMG
One reason for the news media belief that the economy is bad is that the well-paid few at the top of the profession are well aware they are part of an industry that is dying at an ever quicker pace. I believe survivor guilt influences how they see the economy.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie: “New Deal democrat” keeps posting about some economic indicators that suggest another recession coming before too long. Unemployment seems to be at a bottom, crawling along without further improvement, and in the US business cycle that generally means it’s going to start creeping up again soon, but I think that is partly because the Fed is pretty much trying to keep it from getting any lower.
If the Fed gets sufficiently mollified about inflation, maybe they stop raising interest rates or even bring them down again. But then there’s the possibility that developments in Ukraine or something else outside of our control bring more inflation.
Kay
I lay it on the (truly lousy) NYTimes political reporters because while most people don’t read the NYTimes, journalists do, and they play follow the leader. We saw that with but her emails and we’re seeing it again, in equally as egregious a manner, with the Biden economy. I think Twitter compounds this, because they’re all reading one anothers comments and following links and rather than that being broadening it creates an even more rigid and insular groupthink.
The Moar You Know
@Anyway: CRE is not just taking a beating in cities; it’s getting killed everywhere. It’s normal in a downturn for CRE to take a beating, the problem is that we’re not in a downturn but CRE is getting slaughtered as though we were in one of the worst ever.
There will be knock on effects for people’s pensions, etc. Hopefully we can avoid the worst of it.
Matt McIrvin
@Anyway: I remember all the fuss on the right here about how the US was headed for the same crisis as Greece unless we went to extreme austerity and dismantled what remained of our welfare state. It was completely delusional. If I remember correctly, Greece’s trouble came in part from sharing the same currency as Germany and the rest of the Eurozone, so they didn’t have the corrective effect on exports of their currency getting weaker.
Jeffro
@Soprano2: there is a piece up in the Post about how most Americans are actually better off financially now than they were before the pandemic – higher bank balances, despite inflation.
(now there’s the story we’ve been waiting for, right?)
Anyway, it seems like most businesses have figured out that consumers’ excess cash has just about dried up and it’s time to go back to business as usual, which would seem to mean sales and discounts.
zhena gogolia
The front page of my hard-copy NYT has a chilling article about the plans TFG is making to be Putler as soon as he’s elected.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Kay:
This. The press is largely controlled by those with lots of money, thus the conservative focus. Democrats are never going to stand a chance unless they turn Democratic.
We hear what the wealthy want us to hear, and nothing more.
Baud
Maybe we should consider supporting going back to a system where media in this country was rankly partisan. This pretend neutral stuff isn’t working.
Suzanne
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
That’s because America’s cities are full of low-quality, low-density commercial buildings that aren’t easily converted or shared. Not talking about your downtown glass office tower….. think two- or three-story tilt-up buildings out by the freeway interchange.
This shit has no value.
Jeffro
Btw speaking of the Post, Mr. Gary Abernathy has thrown in the towel – halfway – and admitted he was wrong when he wrote/thought that the GOP would abandon trumpov post-Jan 6th.
(But don’t y’all dare call it a cult, ok??!? – G.A.)
Hey Gary – if enough of you “principled” conservatives would speak up, call the trump cult what it is, and refused to vote GOP until the orange man was gone for good, maybe you wouldn’t be in this pickle. Woefully admitting you were wrong about how deranged most of your party’s voters are doesn’t actually do anything. You have to use that WaPo platform and really speak out, m’man!
Geminid
@Anyway: When the Lerner family bought the Montreal Expos in 2008 and moved the franchise to DC, their commercial real estate empire was thriving. Now the Nationals are up for sale.
Kay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I don’t blame them for blaming Presidents for a bad economy because Presidents claim credit for a good economy (whether they had anything to do w/it or not) so that’s fair and a good counter to bragging or puffery. But this is different- they created a recession narrative out of thin air. There may be a recession coming! I mean, to a certain extent it’s cyclical so that’s not a hard call. But if you’re in the facts business you can’t create it ahead of time. Cannot. You cannot talk it into being.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne:
Hey, that’s where most of my career happened!
Hmm, come to think of it, I’m not in one of those right now…
Gin & Tonic
Nine years ago today, russia shot Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 out of the sky, killing all 298 on board. The world (yes, including then-President Obama) did nothing, and now we see the inevitable outcome.
catclub
Obama was half sold on ‘austerity’ and ‘balanced budgets’ which only get applied when Democrats are in power. Biden is MUCH better in that regard.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
Well, the other side already went to that model years ago.
Matt McIrvin
@Gin & Tonic: And a certain troll here colonized every single comment thread with garbage about how the Ukrainians must have shot it down because Bush lied about Iraq.
The Pale Scot
Despite the protestations that this couldn’t happen, the panty sniffers have started the march to criminalizing birth control.
Slouching Towards Sterility:
Peachy Keenan
Fucking hysterical, the greatest threat to America is birth control.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@catclub: The austerity narrative is hard to shake because it matches what you’d do with your household budget. But the economy is not a household.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Even in your household, you wouldn’t respond to a budget crunch by refusing to even try to get more income. But the low-tax/low-spending ratchet only went one way in American economic discourse for a very long time.
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
And that troll tried really hard to sell me that story, because I’m the only Malaysian who regularly comments here.
Kay
@The Pale Scot:
Students for Life, a professional anti womens autonomy lobbying group that regularly appear in mainstream interviews, oppose birth control. They’re never asked about it.
I read this long interview with the president of the largest (and richest) lobbying groups working against womens rights after Dobbs and she was so incredibly confident that they would reach some kind of “consensus” that was closer to the public – to the point of “arrogant”. She predicted that blue states would curtail womens rights too, due to public pressure. I remember thinking “I know your base better than you do”. Completely and utterly predictable that they would go nutjob Right. They’re pushing criminalization for women who are caught getting standard of care health care in their states, too. Less than a year ago they all assured us they would never do that. It’s a deeply dishonest “movement”. The dishonesty infects everything they do.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I was sort of vulnerable to it, I admit, because I’m frugal and so it appeals to me on that level. But I am aware of my bias :)
UncleEbeneezer
If your opinion on FTFNYTimes isn’t already low enough, check out this great episode of The Anti-Trans Hate Machine podcast:
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
There’s really only so low the unemployment rate can get: even at full employment, at any given time, some people are going to be in between jobs. If they’ve just quit one job and have good prospects for the next, they still show up as unemployed in the Current Population Survey. (ETA: I don’t know what they say now, but 4% unemployment used to be considered full employment on account of a normal incidence of people being in between jobs.)
Also, there’s still a shit-ton of unfilled job openings where employers are practically begging for workers. They don’t show up in the unemployment rate, but there should be a measure that counts them in some way, shape, or form, because you don’t get from 3.6% unemployment to 5% unemployment without all those unfilled jobs being filled or otherwise going away first.
So in terms of how far we are from 5% unemployment, we’re really more like at 1% or 2% unemployment, but those are unemployment levels you can’t actually get to. Which is why we need a different metric that takes those unfilled openings into account.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Krugman laid it out in pretty stark terms at the time:
Normally, when a country is in the hole Greece is in, it reacts by devaluing its currency in order to attract more investments that can help get the economy going again.
Normally, when a province of a country is in the hole Greece is in, the central government arranges relief for the citizens while trying to restructure the province’s finances so that doesn’t happen again.
Greece was in a worst-of-both-worlds: it couldn’t devalue its own currency because it didn’t control it, and it couldn’t count on relief (at least not the humane kind) from the “central government” because the “central government” is controlled by foreigners who don’t see them as fellow citizens in need.
Hence, the shit show.
different-church-lady
I don’t fret about the economy because of Biden. I fret about the economy because our corporations are run by greedy soulless assholes.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: There’s been so much hand-wringing about CRE and conversions, but downtown high-rise buildings are just a drop in the bucket of square footage. This is why I keep saying that the best approach is really scrape-and-start-over with the low-rise buildings. Redevelop some of those sites for residential. Conversion of the big downtown office tower is mostly financially and architecturally infeasible, but if you redevelop the low-quality buildings, the larger buildings can still serve as office.
Chris
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Which wouldn’t even be insurmountable if people realized that was going on, but most of the population continues to think the media is liberally biased.
Which makes you despair of ever getting anything done: if the public thinks that way about the media, then any attempts they’re going to make in their head to correct for media bias is simply going to go the other way, and give them an even more distorted impression of the truth.
(This really starts to hurt in situations like 2016, where the public impression is “well, we all know the media are liberals, so for us to be hearing so much about HillaryzEmailz, it must be really bad,” whereas when anything negative about Trump filters through it’s “oh, of course they’re gonna say that, they’re all liberals.”)
lowtechcyclist
@The Moar You Know:
Unless people’s pensions are incredibly overinvested in CRE, I can’t see that being a problem. If commercial real estate were that big a part of the economy, would the Dow and the S&P be going up the way they are? Certainly not! If your pension’s in a S&P index fund, you’re doing fine. If more than about 5% of it was in a narrow sector like CRE, that was mismanagement.
Amir Khalid
WaterGirl, if you’re here, I’ve just emailed you a couple of Aoife’s photos for posting.
Brachiator
@Kay:
This is not true, and has never been true during the Biden administration.
Yes, the media is biased, especially the New York Times, which jackals love to hate. But the media has been accurately reporting the economic news, particularly the reports from the Fed and Treasury.
For example, NPR mainstream reporting about the economy is sometimes terrible. But NPR specialty programs like The Indicator and Marketplace and especially Make Me Smart are nuanced and get it right. The same is true of economic focused media such as The Economist.
Also, and this was true of Trump and Biden, the stock market is not the economy. Just because billionaires are raking it in does not mean that the economy is strong.
And an easing of inflation does not mean that food prices or housing costs have declined.
But the job reports are great and Biden absolutely deserves applause for that.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: I always thought of BiP as a true believer (akin to the Old Believers) more than a troll.
Geminid
@NotMax: I was not surprised when Erdogan assented to Sweden’s NATO membership on the eve of the summit, just a little relieved. The wiley Turkish President was always going to say “no” right up until he said “yes,” and there were clear signs he would relent on this question.
rikyrah
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
which is why you have those bullshyt articles about returning to the office and why it’s good for you every other day
Kirk
@Suzanne:
I think there’s also a catalyst if not another driving element in the heavy wfh movement. Those buildings are convenient for commuters, nothing else. Reduce how much your labor force commutes and you don’t need the real estate.
I think we had a paradigm shift, and we’re in the past-change disruption.
Kay
@Brachiator:
That’s not political reporting though. The political reporting has been but her emails bad on the Biden economy. The NYTimes did some excellent work other than their political reporting in 2016. That doesn’t change that they behaved like crazy people covering Hillary Clinton. It was measurable, and measured. They covered that story WAY out of proportion to reality and they have done the same with negative news on the economy.
If ordinary people were given a choice between 10 or 15% unemployment that loses them years in income and wealth build or some inflation what do you think they would choose? I think they would choose Biden’s approach. I will never ever forget 16% unemployment here. They were knocked down so hard I was afraid they would never get up. It was cruel and unnecesary.
The comparison isn’t to some “perfect” theoretical economy. They made choices in the Biden administration. Good ones, I think, on balance.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
And he was a regular commenter at Booman’s joint where he was accepted. Still pisses me off.
rikyrah
@Ken:
We watched how they behaved during Dolt45’s term. Which is why we have no tolerance for their whining at 46
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
And, it pays to have a President who was there at that time, up close and personal. Biden learned what not to do and corrected it this time.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Lips so pursed.
gvg
@Mousebumples: One problem is that many businesses have many unfilled positions even if they aren’t growing. There is a labor shortage. That is good for wages in a way, but it tends to maen many jobs have people working very hard because they are doing what should be their job plus part of a coworkers that they son’t have. And they don’t always have options to move. Besides, the conditions are pretty widespread all over so you can’t really escape them.
Tired people are cranky.
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: BiP was a paid stooge, no question. The only mystery is why he was so invested in us.
VOR
@UncleEbeneezer: The GOP has been working the refs for decades. The Media know if they say anything positive about Biden it will result in coordinated attacks from the GOP. TFG and his MAGAts put this into overdrive, encouraging unhinged people to act. As a result, you get threats of violence and sometimes actual violence.
different-church-lady
@MomSense: I think we jackals have a pretty good track record when it comes to hounding off bullshit-mongers.
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
I hope one of the FrontPagers takes that article and boosts it. It is, indeed horrible.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Did you see the Red State Attorneys General, requesting that the Biden Administration violate HIPAA so that they can get their hands on the names of women who go and obtain abortions outside of their Red States?
NotMax
@Suzanne
High rises heat sinking, also too.
One additional design factor for architects to consider for the foreseeable future.
Chief Oshkosh
@Brachiator: So you’re basing your statement that the media is accurately reporting on the economy because 2nd or 3rd tier NPR programs may be providing correctly nuanced reporting while at the same time saying that NYT is biased.
Sure, you can cherry-pick (“The Indicator” ?? — never hoiduvit), but overall the media (and especially broadcast media giants) are largely anti-Biden, anti-Democratic, and pro-Republican, pro-conservative, and at least fascist-curious.
And this is during “good times!”
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
Yeah, I’d like to see that too. It’s been well over a year since I first read about the people around TFG being much more prepared to take advantage of the actual and implied powers of the Executive Branch, plus the rather enormous leeway it’s given, when they get back in power. They’d be starting from where they were in December 2020, not where they were in January 2017. Last time, TFG wanted Cabinet officers from Central Casting; this time he wants known cultists from the get-go, ready to push a right-wing authoritarian agenda.
I’d like to see whether the NYT has anything meaningful to add to that. But even getting that message out from their soapbox is a plus.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Oh, no. No I have not. People think HIPAA is broader than it is. It’s strong where it applies but they think it applies everywhere and it just doesn’t.
This issue enrages me in a way nothing else has in years. It feels so personal – like they’re crowding me.
gvg
@Soprano2: ? Shoe shine people have been pretty much out of business my entire life. I see them in old black and white movies from before my parents were kids. Shoe repair shops are rare and also that is not new.
I am going to add that nowhere that I have lived had much difference between city and suburbs. Downtowns have been small areas that used to be dead, and some have been rebuilt as night life close condo areas with some businesses like banks, but they aren’t really a concentrated business area. In Florida, the suburbs pretty much are suburbs with various commerce areas scattered around. The suburbs are not separate. They are not fleeing city schools. There are school districts that get bad reputations and have more minorities, but those are mostly suburbs too. It shifts around, and tends to be the older, smaller neighborhoods.
Miss Bianca
@The Pale Scot: OMG, I followed that first link and just…couldn’t. I mean, once upon a time I could read stuff like this for the lulz, but I ain’t laughing anymore.
These people are sick. Seriously deranged. They need help, and they’ll never get it or admit it.
Chris
@Chief Oshkosh:
It’s especially during good times. During moments of especially unprecedented Republican incompetence, they’re usually shocked speechless into providing something somewhat approaching unbiased coverage, as happened in 2008 and 2020. But during good times, like 2000 and 2016, they feel safe to concentrate all fire on the liberal and wax poetic about the fun fascists.
Brachiator
@Kay:
You make a good point when you distinguish political reporting from economic reporting. Political reporting has been pretty damn bad.
But it is simply not the case that reporting about the Biden economy has been as bad as the relentlessly negative Hilary Clinton coverage.
And the media is not a monolith, even though conservative buyers keep buying news organizations and turning them into right wing monstrosities.
Nuanced and accurate reporting is not hidden or stifled.
The Pale Scot
Because they paid Goldman Sacks 300 mill to cook their books to make them eligible, and GS paid off the Germans with “preferential” rates to keep their mouths shut.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Greece has all kinds of problems, including a notorious level of non compliance with respect to income taxes.
The Pale Scot
CALPERS, the Cali Public Employee pension fund is way overexposed, due to it being captured by supply side idiots.
Kathleen
@Chief Oshkosh: Nothing makes the media’s legs tingle like rich white people who are angry because Democrats and Black people.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: We have a glut of strip mall space in my city. There’s one place at a relatively busy intersection where they tore down a building that was a radiator shop and built a 4 unit strip mall several years ago. There has never been an occupant in it. There are lots of empty spots like that. There’s another spot that was a bar like ours; we looked at it before we bought our building. That was in 2019; it’s still empty!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not just Republicans. Evan Bayh made the fabled (and ultimately, thankfully, pointless) Simpson-Bowles Whatever the price of his vote for the ARRA. Current MSNBC firebrand Claire McCaskill bragged about cutting it. The Faceless and Forgotten Great Plains ConservaDems (Dorgan, Conrad, Johnson, Baucus, Nelson) were a solid bloc for austerity.
jimmiraybob
Let’s call this Positive Monday.
I would just like to use this open thread to express my gratitude to Marjorie Taylor Greene for glowingly endorsing the work-in-progress that is the Biden-Harris administration.
the pollyanna from hell
@Anyway:
Throwing retirement funds into the stock market had the effect of co-opting folks into unnatural alliance with billionaires.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: I actually think I do better if I go back to the office about once, maybe twice a week, to talk to people and collaborate in person and get generally energized. But go every day and the terrible commute wears on me, more than the experience of being in the office.
And, besides, even before COVID drove everyone out of the office, businesses seemed to be interested in cramming all their office workers into smaller and smaller open-plan spaces, without even the luxury of cubicles. That was already squeezing the corporate real-estate market. If they really wanted everyone to come back full-time, maybe make it worthwhile.
StringOnAStick
@Matt McIrvin: Exactly. My husband ‘s former employer ripped out all the cubicles and installed a tiny desk system that reminded me of elementary school, one long slab with tiny “walls” and a single drawer for your stuff. They took all their programmers and stuffed them into a call centre-like environment, and then the loss of experienced staff really accelerated. They spent a fortune on this stuff, Covid hit, everyone moved to WFH, staff numbers collapsed and they just sold the building and moved into something much smaller with “hoteling” for when people come in. They greatly expanded their hiring of programmers in Argentina, partially because they are cheap (and in a similar time zone), mainly because so many of their programmers left and they can’t get replacements. My husband is so, so glad he retired; working there would have killed him by now
It is a little perverse because the WFH people at his old company who moved far away to smaller cities are a bit trapped because there are now in towns too small to support their careers if they can’t WFH; many learned programming on the job and don’t have degrees . Our former Twitter employee neighbour works for an Israeli company now, plus teaches programming at the local community college. Small town and he needed to cobble together more employment.
Ruckus
The press rarely prints the good news about the economy under Joe Biden’s leadership.
Why would they?
It doesn’t directly benefit their bosses, the wealthy class that wants, no NEEDS to have more money. It benefits the people that aren’t the wealth class, you know that stinking majority and the minorities that help make that majority.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: 2.3 unemployment rate in my Northern Virginia county according to the state unemployment website I am working with.
So I’m worried about finding a job of course, but I’m willing to take something outside my legal field, and hopefully there have been enough retirements that there are jobs open.
Kayla Rudbek
@Anyway: as it’s currently practiced, economics is a branch of Puritan theology and not an evidence-based science.
dirge
I think the complaint regards what we might call political reporting about the economy. This has indeed been so absurdly misleading that it’s hard to imagine how it could happen accidentally.
For example, particularly from cable/broadcast, the endless, urgent reporting on the price of gas/eggs/baby formula. No explanation of the cause of those problems, but always sure to note that it’s a political problem for Biden. When the problem is resolved, sometimes because of the Biden administration’s intervention, conspicuous silence.
The current thing that’s making me crazy: all the numbers tell the story of a strong economy, so why do most people think it’s bad? Stay tuned as 19 unqualified hacks endlessly rehash all the silly reasons you mistakenly think the economy is bad, even though it’s not. Truly, it’s a mystery why you think the things we’re going to spend the next 43 minutes telling you about.
Also, this is a huge problem for Biden, even though it’s all totally imaginary, because, inexplicably, people who watch my show believe this garbage. Why can’t Democrats message effectively to the audience of this show I’m hosting right now? Crypto-Republican ratfucker Mark Penn is here to discuss.
Ruckus
@Chris:
I KNEW there was a good reason I don’t watch or read the news. There just isn’t enough news to cover 24 hrs a day by multiple vendors. It has to be glorified and covered in minute detail because there really isn’t enough actual news to have TV and radio covering every day, all hours of the day. And most of it doesn’t affect most people. But anyone over what 50 yrs old has been exposed to 24 hr news their entire lives. And not just one channel multiple channels. There is rarely anything important enough going on, but banging those drums gets done because there is money to be made. From Fear.
Chris
@Ruckus:
What’s infuriating is that there’s actually so much fucking news to report out there, far more than you could ever fill 24 hours with, even if you’re just restricting yourself to the news in the United States. But the media only cares about the same half-dozen-to-a-dozen things, so the 24/7 news cables just put them on repeat all day.
Remember that time in 2016 when they literally couldn’t stop broadcasting an empty podium that Trump was supposed to show up at but hadn’t yet, rather than changing the channel to the speech Hillary Clinton was giving at the same time? Look, I’m not even asking them to broadcast Hillary Clinton’s speech. They’ve had Clinton Derangement Syndrome for so long they don’t even remember how it started, let’s not be asking for miracles. But is it really that much to ask that you not broadcast a goddamn empty podium? How hard can it possibly be to broadcast something that’s more newsworthy than that?