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naraburns  nihil supernum  5mo ago (text post)   27943 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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Bernie Sanders put out a statement

It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right. […]

Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not. In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions. Stay tuned.

It's worth mentioning that Bernie Sanders is dead wrong about a lot of things.

For one, he says that inflation adjusted earnings for the average worker are down over the last 50 years. But... they're not. When we consider government transfer payments, the average worker actually makes a lot more than they did 50 years ago.

So what does Bernie want? More transfer payments of course. Which he can then continue to ignore as he trots out his entirely false theory of economic history. Communism has been tried. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

It's worth mentioning that Bernie Sanders is dead wrong about a lot of things.

Is he really though?

Hasn't a signifigant portion of the culture war over the last 8 - 12 years been about how the "official numbers" no longer reflect reality? The powers that be assure us that inflation is below 5% and then when asked why a chicken dinner, or a tank of gas, costs twice what it did a year ago they respond with some nonsense about how "vibes" are clouding people's judgment of the "true" economy.

when asked why a chicken dinner, or a tank of gas, costs twice what it did a year ago they respond with some nonsense about how "vibes" are clouding people's judgment of the "true" economy.

Unless inflation statistics are completely falsified, there's simply no way that's actually true. Perhaps people opted for a different chicken dinner than before because they're easily manipulated.

Unless inflation statistics are completely falsified

I believe that's the idea. I have no dog in the fight either way, but it certainly seems like people believe that inflation statistics have been falsified (or are fatally flawed) because their lived experience does not jive with the statistics.

By way of personal anecdote, I do almost all of my grocery shopping at Costco, and have done so for my whole adult life, all the way back to when I was a teenager living at home. For pretty much that entire time, until around 2016, 2 gallons of fat-free milk was priced at $4. I suspect it may have been a 'loss-leader', but $4 for two gallons of skim milk was the standard for years. Around 2016 or so, the price suddenly shot up -- I think it was $4.50 or maybe $5, still quite cheap but compared to the baseline a shocking price hike, especially given the price changed all at once (it had been $4 during my previous Costco trip). There was another price hike in 2020, during the COVID year, and ever since it's been going up and up and up. I know that there have been supply problems for milk, so they discontinued fat-free entirely [EDIT: in my area] except for one specific store, and a month or so back they started selling individual gallons of milk (Costco milk has always come in a 2-pack).

I just came back from my latest Costco run. 2 gallons of 2% milk cost $7.50.

I'm aware that milk is a single commodity, that Costco milk is cheaper than expected, that there have been supply problems for a number of reasons, all that. I am well aware that the plural of anecdote is not data. My point is to contrast the top-level 'this is my experience of inflation' vs. 'this is how the government is reporting inflation'.

In the last decade, according to my personal experience, milk has practically doubled in price -- a near-100% inflation rate.

In the last decade, according to this graph, the price of milk has gone up by about 33% in nominal dollars, but stayed perfectly flat in inflation-adjusted dollars.

It would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that the government has been cooking the books for inflation.

For what its worth my experience mirriors yours. My eldest is 9 years old and i remember that when they first started eating solid food ground beef was something like 3 dollars a pound, today it's closer to 8.

My admittedly imperfect impression is that that the prices of food and gas have more than doubled since 2016. Yet the official line continues to be that inflation is minimal or an illusion.

Is anyone else here old enough to remember the 5 dollar foot-long promotion at Subway? What does a large Itallian BMT cost you today?

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