For this extraordinary cluelessness and cruelty alone, we should vote these bastards out.
Biden and Trump caused the recession together. Biden has done some to improve things. But for anybody to claim that people’s savings aren’t being wiped out by inflation is the height of contempt.
In the USSR we were also always told that our economy was super duper amazing. And it also felt insulting.
Yes the economy is so great that all the money we carefully stuff into savings each year hoping to buy a house and escape the rental market… instantly gets negated by inflation, rising house prices, and/or interest rates. I suppose I should take that money and buy us all smartphones and concert tickets and pretend the economy is great, too?
I don’t know. My retirement portfolio went up hugely. Unemployment is almost nonexistent. People are flying in record numbers. Restaurants are crowded again. New construction is going up. People are buying homes. Things certainly feel robust and optimistic. There are problems, for sure. But the middle classes seem to bustling right now.
LikeLike
Yes. Government policy has been co-opted to bestow continually rising real estate prices on the boomer generation so they can use their houses as retirement piggy banks… with the result that nobody who makes less than $100k a year can buy one anymore.
Go, middle class. Straight to hell.
You’re contradicting yourself when reading this post and the other post titled “Proud of America”
You’re basically the American now saying how terrible things are and how this is not a good economy and how the system fails and it’s all bad yada yada yada
Comparatively it’s a freaking great economy compared to just about everywhere else in the world including countries like Canada, the whole European Union, China, Russia, etc. There is hardly any other country I’d rather be.
LikeLike
“People have lost all perspective. They’re living charmed lives but they are nitpicking everything into oblivion. “
LikeLike
The economy is definitely great in comparison with China, that’s true. But it’s bad in comparison to what it was on the eve of COVID. We are being robbed even today by the COVID measures. If we don’t realize that, it will repeat. It will keep repeating until we learn our lesson.
Do you guys not notice the grocery bill? The prices for pretty much everything? Have your salaries grown to keep pace with the growing prices? Mine didn’t. Neither did my husband’s.
Not just in comparison to China, but in comparison to just about every other country in the world. Our inflation is crazy low compared to countries like Argentina, Turkey, and most others.
Yes, inflation sucks and it’s not a good thing, but I fail to see how that is Biden’s fault. The fact that it’s going down and we haven’t gone into a real recession/depression bodes very well for the people who Biden put in place to handle things. Of course things are not going to be as good as before COVID, but putting blame on that on Biden doesn’t make sense.
LikeLike
Biden and Trump caused it together. This is not a partisan post. And I did credit Biden with doing some things to improve the situation. But if anybody tells me that their savings have grown in the past two years, I’d really like to hear how they achieved that. Mine are flat but only because I took an extra job as a translator.
LikeLike
I have really been wondering about the grocery thing. We notice it immensely. A year ago, we moved to a new area, paying the same rent, but living closer to everything, so 1/4 the expenditure on gas, and by crossing the state line we no longer pay a 10% sales tax on groceries, and also, no state income tax. Our expenditures should have gone down significantly. We are as careful as ever. But rising grocery prices have eaten all of that savings. Every penny.
When people say they have not noticed this… I am extremely curious about why? Who are these people? Is this people who don’t cook, and restaurant prices haven’t gone up as much because there’s more margin there for shrinking portion sizes and taking less profit, before actually raising menu prices? Is it just that they make such a ridiculous amount of money they don’t notice when food prices go +50% in just a couple years? Are they just really really bad at keeping track of where their money’s going? What’s going on there? Do they live in some magical place where food prices are still chugging along at 2018 levels?
I’ve definitely noticed it. The only ones who haven’t are probably the very rich.
But that’s more a factor of massive numbers of people retiring during COVID, resulting in labor shortages and increased wages.
The average American trucker is 50 years old. These are the people who haul all our stuff, if a significant number of them retires that’s going to have a big impact. There is a similar imbalance everywhere. People no longer want to be school teachers, the trades are also aging out, etc. It’s a confluence of issues that goes well beyond just “Biden suks, Trump suks” etc.
Yeah, anybody who still thinks Biden or Trump actually had any control over decisions made while they were in office… hasn’t been paying attention. There are some people pulling strings in the WH, but they’re not elected. I have zero interest in the upcoming presidential elections. Nothing above state level makes any difference anymore– and depending on where you live, that may be down to county or city level.
My husband and I are a couple of retired geezers living on Social Security, and we definitely notice the higher prices on just about everything.
LikeLike
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment