site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   24876 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A deep and enduring “vibecession” – Partisan differences are increasingly dominating perceptions of the economy.

By almost every metric, the US economy is doing quite well at the moment. There are many ways to evaluate economic vitality. The most obvious is the headline unemployment rate, which was used throughout the Great Recession to monitor the (slow) recovery. Today, though, unemployment is hovering near record lows at <4%.

Beyond this, there are somewhat nerdier, more technical measurements that still capture important aspects of the economy. Things like inflation, GDP growth, and the stock market. All of these indicators are somewhere between “good” and “great”. Inflation has come way down and is now around 3.7%. Core inflation, a better measurement of long-term inflation that excludes volatile commodities like gas prices, is even lower at around 2.5%, essentially hitting the Fed’s 2% target. GDP growth is surprisingly high for Q3 at 4.9%. The stock market is also doing fairly well, with the S&P500 being less than 10% off its all-time high at the end of 2021 and being well-above the pre-COVID high in Jan 2020.

Drilling even deeper, at this point you start to get the indicators people and the media can “fish” for in order to find bad news. Things like median wage growth, wealth inequality, and prime-age labor participation rate. The thinking with these metrics is that even if the more commonly cited stats are doing well, they might not paint a full picture. For instance, if the economy is growing but the rich are eating all the gains, then things like wage growth and inequality can show how most people aren’t benefitting. Likewise, if the unemployment rate has fallen because people have become discouraged and just don’t bother looking for work any more, then labor participation can show what’s really going on. The steelman of these metrics is that they can be helpful in painting a fuller picture, although in practice I’ve often only seen them used when people are willing to use motivated reasoning to paint the economy as underperforming (e.g. politicians, doomers, or the media just trying to create a story). That said, even by these metrics the US economy is doing well. Median wage growth is very high and is well-above inflation. Regular Americans are getting richer, and wealth inequality has fallen.. The prime age employment rate is also near record highs.

In spite of all of this though, many peoples’ opinions of the economy remain in the dumps. The consumer sentiment index has recovered only slightly from its record low a few months ago, but is still barely better than during the worst parts of the Great Recession. What gives? Well, there’s quite a bit of evidence that it’s just partisan emotional expression, i.e. “vibes”. There’s plenty of data showing that Americans tend to rate the national economy as being much worse than their own personal financial circumstances. Kevin Drum has some evidence that this national-personal split is mostly being driven by Republicans. 71% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans say the economy is doing well in terms of their personal situation. But in terms of the nation as whole, 58% of Democrats and just 5% (!!!) of Republicans say the economy is doing well on a national scale. So you have this goofy scenario where Republicans across the country say things are going well for them individually, but as a collective things must simply disastrous. Where is this “disaster” occurring? “Well, not here, but it’s surely happening somewhere”. The 5% mark is particularly interesting because it perfectly matches Republican’s approval rating of Biden. In other words, it seems like asking people how well the economy is doing is just a proxy for “what do you think of the current sitting president”. I’d doubt the numbers would correlate this perfectly all the time, but there’d still be a significant relationship. Whichever party doesn’t control the White House will see the economy in much more pessimistic terms.

Currently this is just applied to Republicans being pessimistic, but it’s almost certainly symmetrical. When Republicans eventually take back control of the presidency, it’s not hard to predict that Democrats will suddenly think the sky is falling in economic terms.

I could be because people are poorer in real terms than they used to be.

The inflation that already happened is still here and inflation remains elevated. More than that interest rates are way up which vastly increases people's housing cost (which usually amounts to their primary expense). People have gotten raises but they don't compensate for inflation or the consequences of interest rate hikes.

All taken together people are poorer, more uncertain about the future and a lot of things just feel scary.

Real incomes have gone up, not down. Inflation was high but there was also a corresponding increase in wages. Total wealth is also up.

Which doesn't compensate? Wage increases were some 6% 2022 compared to about 9.5% inflation, in 2023 were looking at 5% wage increases and 4% inflation.

Maybe people are so used to increasing wages and stagnant prices that even mild decreases or wages and prices keeping track feels like a decline?

Both average real incomes and real disposable incomes have beat inflation.

Maybe people are so used to increasing wages and stagnant prices that even mild decreases or wages and prices keeping track feels like a decline?

Perhaps, although the second point of the post was that the noticing is inexplicably much, much more severe by the party not occupying the White House.

Total wealth is also up.

From the post:

This translates to an increase in wealth of about $51,800 for the median American household over three years. Not bad! Median family net worth is now about $192,900.

Man, I'm really enjoying the increase in wealth that comes from a spiked monetary supply that added a hundred grand to the estimated price of my house. With all that extra net worth, I can do really cool things, like have basically zero opportunity to move in the near future because houses cost twice as much to finance as they did a couple years ago!

Seriously though, this stuff just comes across as incredibly tone deaf. Listing "wealth" in nominal dollars when the value of dollars is down substantially is silly. Treating an increase in the price of houses as wealth-building is the kind of thing only a dishonest economist could love. Ignoring that this extra $52K in net worth is offset by an enormous runup in government debt is short-sighted.

You don't need to buy a house to move. You are actually richer if your house increases in value.

My house increasing substantially in value actually makes me slightly poorer. My city decided they needed to perform an off cycle property tax evaluation, so my taxes have now gone up by a noticeable amount.

You can sell your house and have more wealth than before your house increased in value.

Equity in your house is only barely wealth. Sure, when you die or laughs retire, you might cash out. Or you could actually pay off the mortgage in 30 years, right before you retire. Maybe you can pay a variable rate starting at ~9% to access that "wealth". But for most people, all that extra "wealth" does for them is increase their property taxes.

HELOCs are a thing that let you turn home equity into actual cash.

Maybe you can pay a variable rate starting at ~9% to access that "wealth".

Nobody reads anymore do they?

why read when you can dunk on the outgroup and cover yourself in glory.

This is a great example of the above post because in fact people are much wealthier (adjusting for inflation) and have higher incomes (adjusting for inflation) all across the income distribution.

https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1714673518229549380

And yet the personal savings rate is down, to a historical low. Consumer debt is up.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savings

https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html

This would seem contradictory. If people are wealthier why are they saving less and financing more?

Look at your own damn graph! The precipitous fall in debt shown on the second graph comes in... 2008. Does this not perhaps tell us that taking rising debt as a measure of a bad economy is not a good idea?

Different question. Nobody contests that 2008-2010 was a 'bad economy' (we can also look an unemployment rates to get an inkling).

The issue here is that many metrics are currently showing a 'good' economy and yet, for individuals with bills to pay and debts to service, they might not have a positive outlook based on their actual material circumstances.

Do you note how debt rates were rising as we headed into 2008. That is to say, could we interpret rising debt as sign of a pending recession/correction?

Or, more precisely, what do you think happens when millions of people are overleveraged and then many of them default on debt and/or go bankrupt (or literal banks go out of business) at the same time?

Why isn't that happening currently?

could we interpret rising debt as sign of a pending recession/correction?

I wouldn't say so, but either way this is irrelevant, because it's a completely different question to whether the economy is 'good' or not. Unless you think people (i.e. Republicans) are rating the economy as poor because they've looked at the FRED charts and decided we're headed for another 2008.

Look at it this way. Even retrospectively, most people would describe the early 2000s as good economic times, no?

I wouldn't say so, but either way this is irrelevant, because it's a completely different question to whether the economy is 'good' or not.

I don't think it's irrelevant. The economy isn't just a snapshot, it's a trendline with predictive value. We've got an uptick in the trendline right now, but is it a dead cat bounce or actually indicative of healthy and sustainable economic growth.

Here's the fed in July 2007, after the fuse on the bomb was lit.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/mpr_20070718_part1.htm#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20economy%20generally%20performed,4%2D1%2F2%20percent.

Well if you look at the graph from up the thread, it shows that debt is levelling off.

In any case, would you disagree that the early 2000s were a 'good economy'.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats