Average: I can't afford groceries at the store. Inflation sucks.
Response: Well, inflation plays a part, but grocery stores are still recording record profits despite inflation.
Average: Are you suggesting grocery stores shouldn't make as much money as they can? Free market hater! Communist!
"You're right, prices are too high, and wages too low. Especially housing prices, and wages for young men without a college degree.
It's in part the consequences of some things we did.
Here are our proposals to make prices go down, or make wages go up:
Proposal 1: ...."
My deep belief is that the hard part, and the reason Democrats did not do that, is not in the difficulty to find solution.
The hardest part is that it meant recognizing they were, at least in part, responsible for the problem.
The second hardest part was recognizing that the problem was hurting a category of people that's "outside of the tribe".
So, faced with a complex problem, they decided to deny the problem existed altogether, focussed on something else (not necessarily unworthy issues, but, simply, not the one at hand.)
"Ventre affamé n'a point d'oreille."
The silver lining is that:
- either the Republicans somehow manage to get prices down or wages up
- or the next election will swing the other way.
It's still, after all, no matter what, "the economy, stupid" - just, the real economy, no the the fake financial one.
Why they decided to be myopic, and assumed that they had to defend the rights of women _or_ the rights of workers, and could not do both, is a bit beyond me.
They completely forgot about the other half of the electorate, and when reminded of their existence and issues, they considered the other stuff more important. This result shouldn't surprise anyone.
But, realize that any time you spend defending yourself is not spent explaining how you're going to fix the problem. It may be unfair, and that's one of the nicest aspect of democracy : given that people in power keep changing, at some point they don't feel bound to the choices made by previous governments, even of their own party, and can spend time trying to fix problems.
No chance of doing so if you start by arguing.
Also, some of the problems are _hard_.
Not in part.
And now you voted on the guy whose only concrete economic policy is to massively drive up inflation by imposing tariffs.
Position 1: Prices can never go down again unless inflation is negative and we get "deflation." Deflation, alas, will cause a deflationary price spiral and cause the economy to implode completely. Why? Well, reasons. Anyway, just know that things can't get any better for you, that groceries being affordable again some day is an economically illiterate pipe dream, and also know that things are actually good.
Position 2: Also, we'll just force stores to lower prices. Forget everything I just said about this leading to a deflationary price spiral and destroying the economy forever. Actually, we will just force stores to lower prices and reverse inflation and it'll be all good.
>Biden’s immediate focus is on the 3,100-kilometer southern border with Mexico, where Trump tried to keep thousands of migrants from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala from entering the U.S.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/02/biden-signs-3-executive-orders... >Mayorkas assured senators at a confirmation hearing last month that a plan to end the Trump-brokered “Remain in Mexico” policy requiring Central Americans to await an asylum decision in Mexico won’t necessarily happen immediately. He urged people not to rush to the border hoping for more favorable treatment.
... A few moments later.....
https://nypost.com/2024/03/22/us-news/monthly-record-for-feb... >The nation’s besieged southern border set a record for February(2024) migrant encounters with 189,922 attempted crossings as officials brace for an expected spring surge, according to new Customs and Border Patrol data. >The figure eclipses the prior February record of 166,010 encounters, set in 2022 and 156,000 during the same month last year(2023).
Position 3: Introduce policies that stimulate domestic production and decrease foreign competition. This will lower prices without forcing domestic producers out of business.
How, exactly?
The biggest causes of inflation were stimulus, supply-shock, and housing prices.
Stimulus started under Trump and was the correct response to COVID. Without it we would have had even worse economic suffering that we did. Inflation was the lesser-of-two-evils.
The supply shock was global, and there probably wasn't much to do about it, besides maybe some more supply-side stimulus.
Housing is just a shit-show, but people have been grinding to get more built to address the problems for years.
But stimulus was the thing that could have been changed the most, yet it kept us from having a much, much worse recession.
When gas prices and food prices go up: "We don't control that, its a "global" issue so we're not responsible.
When gas prices and food prices go down: "See everybody! Look! Our economic policies ARE working! You just have to trust us!"
This all we heard the entire four years Biden was in office. People are not stupid. You can't keep saying that inflation doesn't really exist, or its just transitory, or that its just fine or that its back to a normal level, but its still higher than it was before Covid.
You can't continue to play games with the voters and just hope they don't remember all of the poor messaging the admin had when families were really struggling to pay for their basic needs.
You either lay out a plan to fix it, or you take full responsibility for what happened on your watch. Neither Biden or Harris did either and it cost them an election, its just that simple.
"Google, how do you fix inflation?"
We know inflation is the consequence of many factors, but it can be controlled by different entities at each stage. The two groups most instrumental in the fight against inflation are The Federal Reserve and the government.
The Fed using interest rate increases to make lending and investing more expensive is an example of monetary policy.
The Fed misread warnings in the spring of 2021 when it was clear to some that inflation was spreading. The Fed argued that inflation would be transitory and that it resulted from unusual circumstances, ranging from supply chain issues related to the abnormal demand that came from the end of the pandemic.
The government can use fiscal policy to fix inflation by increasing taxes or cutting spending. Increasing taxes leads to decreased individual demand and a reduction in the supply of money in the economy. As you can imagine, fiscal policy isn’t very popular because raising taxes is a difficult political move. The last thing that we want to hear when inflation is rising is that our taxes will also increase.
The government could use other fiscal policies to lower inflationary pressures. If Congress were to limit pandemic relief spending and focus on not making the deficit worse, that would assist in reducing inflation.
So no, there absolutely is ways to fix it and they 100% were responsible for it. The problem is when you constantly act like there isn't a problem, by the time they realized they had to fix it? It meant the cure is going to be worse than the disease - usually in the form of either cooling off the economy with interest rate hikes, or pushing the economy into a recession or increasing taxes or gasp cutting spending.
This is not graduate level economics we're talking here - its pretty common knowledge stuff. But if you say Biden wasn't responsible for the inflation on his watch, then by your logic you would have to excuse every president who had a poor economy because "its not their fault" and "there's no way to fix it."
Unfortunately, most people (like myself) know that's a load of poppycock and voted accordingly.
It would not have undone prior inflation and it could have strangled the recovery in the crib. It wouldn't do anything about price gouging either and it would certainly have turned America against Biden and Harris. Its just a grab bag of bad ideas.
Also your preferred candidate has said he is going to drastically increase prices with massive tarriffs. This isn't strictly inflation but the effect on your wallet will be the same.
I would talk to actual economists instead of Google.
1. Try the Trump/populist playbook on the topic: identify the problem, empathize, be mad, let them vent, but don't really focus on a solution.
2. Advocate austerity as a solution to inflation. Might be less economically ideal, but more politically viable.
edit to add: iow, Harris and other Dems could have thrown Biden under the bus a bit to try to avoid some of the blame. It's cold, and Biden directed an actually decent response to the supply-shock-driven inflation, but it'd be a kind of shrewdness like getting Biden to drop out that might have helped.
And ideally put the blame on people who don't have any/much political or economic power within the country, like immigrants. Us vs them. "If we just get rid of 'them' everything will be fine"