Behold the latest deep dive from Axios about Joe Biden's economic troubles:
Credit where it's due: the numbers are correct. But come on. Is it really plausible that Biden's big problem is that fast food prices are up 3.8% compared to wages?
Biden has three problems, ranked from biggest to smallest:
- Fox News etc. have run a scorched earth campaign of lies about how the economy has collapsed since Biden's inauguration. This is displayed pretty obviously by polls showing huge differences in economic outlook between Democrats and Republicans.
- The left has joined with the right because their very existence seems to hinge on convincing everyone that poor people are worse off than ever.
- The press is biased against good news—which is admittedly boring—and seems to be really reluctant to report on our current favorable economic climate. I'm not sure why.
That's about it. Slight real increases in Big Mac prices are not the problem.
"But there were warnings!" will be the headlines after the election.
Prices at McDonald's in particular are noticeably higher than they were a few years ago. It doesn't seem so bad at places like Pizza Hut or KFC, at least where I am. I suspect a lot of this is being driven by McDonald's aggressive pricing and higher beef prices, which people notice more because of their huge market share.
McDonald's prices have *doubled* over the last decade, while everyone else's increased by 60%.
https://www.scrippsnews.com/life/money/this-fast-food-chain-has-doubled-its-prices-since-2014-data-shows
McDonald's profit margin also doubled.
In response to Kevin's larger point, I think the one expense people are most concerned with these days is housing -- rents and house prices seem completely out of control to the average family. The Biden campaign has mentioned a few minor policy tweaks here and there to address it, but could be making it a much more central issue. Part of the problem, as we all know around here, is that housing stock and related regulations are almost entirely a state and local issue and the federal government, aside from subsidizing mortgages or something like that, can't really do much about local NIMBYism. Trump-style demagoguing isn't Biden's style, but on this issue, I think he could afford to throw around a little aggressive populism, claim he's "going to war" against the nefarious forces keeping housing prices high, etc. At least people would be aware that he's talking about it.
Krugman's been beating the drum about this at the NYT for months, but that's not going to convince anyone to take up his point. I don't see anyone even bothering to refute him. Mostly it's just cherry picking bad news. It's almost as if there's no civil discourse about it! I wonder why..../s
We must keep in mind that the Fox audience is concentrated in rural and semi rural areas that are and have been economically depressed for quite some time. And they are experiencing all the social pathologies that go along with poverty: crime and drug abuse, teen pregnancies, lack of education, etc.
If you live in these places (which encompass at least half of the land area of the United States) it is ridiculously easy for the professional propagandists in conservative media to make you believe the situation is bad all over (it isn’t), it’s getting worse (true only for rural people ), and things were fine when Trump was president - which is nonsense. But since those who live in rural America tend to be much more religious than other Americans, they are predisposed to believe unbelievable things, and conservative entertainers have no problem getting around that bit of cognitive dissonance.
There's a strain of evangelical Christianity that is basically "the more ridiculous it is, the more I will stubbornly believe it because that's how it is with Jesus!" That's how we ended up with large swaths of the country believing Covid vaccines kill more people than Covid, that we're in the worst economic depression in history because of Biden, and a cabal of globalist child predators controls the Democratic party.
The problem is not people who are really poorly off. Those people are no worse off now than during the Trump administration. In fact there has been some improvement in many areas. And most people are not reporting that they themselves are doing badly, as both Kevin and Krugman have repeatedly pointed out - they say that the country is in a recession, which is just repeating false Trump claims and right-wing propaganda.
The anti-poverty attitude on the left is also a constant - nobody on the left is "joining" with the right and they are not any more active now than during the Trump administration. What many on the left are still pointing out is that inequality is still increasing and the rich are still getting richer, which are facts. Even Kevin does this sometimes.
‘The problem is the rich are still getting richer’ will never be heard by the Fox audience.
If it is, their first thought is: "That could be me! The only reason *I'm* not one of those fat cats already has to be because of [select one or more options: a. immigrants; b. Young Bucks in Cadillacs buying T-bones with welfare checks; c. goddamn hippies; d. immigrant hippies]."
The people you're talking about, some of them anyway, are ones who never really recovered from the 2008 recession. In retrospect, it was a huge error for Obama to not run roaring huge deficits financed by negative interest rates, when that was possible. Though of course to pay off he would have to have spent the money on something worthwhile, and for many of the places you mean, that would basically mean buying people out and moving them to someplace more populated where there can be a local economy that works. Not something that would have been real popular.
It's like I said, people are sensitive to the price of their eggs, gasoline, Oreos, and Big Mac. Starbucks, too, if you partake, but as we all know, SB sux -- they deserve the lower same-store sales for fleeing to the suburbs.
And yet, no one is celebrating the potential good we can look forward to!
* Fewer bigmax, better health.
* Lower burger sales, fewer beef cattle raised
* Personal saving when folks pack their own lunches
In a sane world, the infotainment media would be publishing "brown bag recipes" and helpful hints on how to pack and if necessary warm your personally prepared vittles. Also eulogizing "The End of the Burger!"
Aside from one never-to-be-repeated moment during WWII when the country came together to sacrifice a lot of conveniences and comforts for a common goal, telling Americans to make do with less has never been a political winner. But emphasizing that higher beef prices right now are a direct consequence of climate change (namely severe drought the past several years in the southern Plains states and TX) might get some people's attention who wouldn't otherwise care. If more of those cattle were, say, grazing under the shadow of giant wind turbines, and feeding on fields using regenerative grazing techniques, maybe your burger has a future!
I think you may be onto something!
Why is fewer cattle raised a good thing? That's not good if you're a rancher or beef processor.
Cattle generate incredible amount of wastes, which in feedlots, they stand fetlock deep in. This also creates the characteristic feedlot stench, which is laden with antibiotic resistant bacteria, and tends to blow into inhabited areas, causing health problems. The wastes, whether in the lot or in "lagoons" of crap will pollute the groundwater and in heavy rains, run off into streams, killing the fish and other aquatic life. Plus that pollution.
Their feed consumes millions of acres that could be used for human food, particularly produce (as opposed to grains). More pollution from overuse of fertilizers, which are produced from petroleum. Runoff into streams, contamination of ground water. Pesticides which do all of the above and are also hazardous to people and other residents of the biosphere.
And red meat tends to get you dead (or worse) sooner than about any other meat and definitely quicker than an all-plant diet.
But hey, enjoy your hamburger!
I don't really care about huge factory ranches or beef processors.
This would be good fodder for a chart, but I can't remember anything like the suddenness which interest rates rose. The effect on already expensive housing is incredible, not in an overall sense, but in a "how much did house A cost in 2020 vs. how much would house A cost now" sense.
There is no getting around that one, and I agree some rhetoric on it would be good.
Next up, and this is something Biden could do, is what is going on with consumer credit. I am happy to not have much of this debt, but rates are now pushing 30% for some cards.
Who else thinks that cries out for some regulation? Defaults cannot possibly be high enough to require that rate, and if they are, some regulations about handing cards out like candy might also be timely.
These two things alone are enough to convince the average low info voter, of any stripe, that "something is wrong" -- its not Biden's fault, but people always tend to blame the Pres for stuff.
"The press is biased against good news.... I'm not sure why."
The press has always had a bias for reporting bad news, while ignoring the good, but I think something different is going on today.
I would say the bias is now partisan and it is intentional, and I'm referring not to Fox, which has been a GOP propaganda outlet since its inception, but to the "mainstream" press, which takes its cues on reportage from the dominant journalism enterprise for as long as anyone remembers, The New York Times. The partisan, pro-Republican, conservative bias applies specifically to political coverage. The culture desk has different leanings.
The pattern is unmistakable to anyone who reads the Times every day. The Trump and GOP excesses get downplayed or ignored. The Biden flubs get blown out of proportion and the Biden successes get framed as something less than they are if they get reported at all.
I realize this is a shock to many people who find it hard to believe that the so-called liberal New York Times would generally side with Republicans over Democrats. But it's hard to reach any other conclusion.
No one but A.G. Sulzberger can tell you why that is for sure. But one factor (among others) may be the recent history of the Times's finances. The internet was a disruptive shock to newspapers everywhere. Most today are struggling, if they're surviving at all. The Times, too, was facing a near-death experience a decade or more ago. I remember talking with a friend at the paper circa 2009 about the dire gloom that permeated the workplace. A few years later, everything changed. The online subscription model suddenly took off. The culminating event was the election of Trump. Money flowed in like never before. Operations expanded. The stock price went through the roof, rising 4x during the Trump years. During the Biden years, the stock price took a dive and is now about even, underperforming the rest of the market. Trump, like a bad car accident, attracted eyeballs.
I wouldn't say money is the only reason media like the Times like Trump. But the circus sells, and if you don't consider that as part of the reason, you'll be missing the point.
But it's the failing New York Times.
News outlets are terrified of Republicans because they reflexively report everything they say as plain truth, so when wingnuts attack the press they think it's either real or everyone else will assume it's real so they have to treat it as real.
Wingnut billionaires buy up every news organization they can find, non-wingnut billionaires simply feel no such incentive.
There should be a form of anti-trust legislation expressly targeting how much news media a single person or entity can control.
Definitely this.
The fact that reporters never glance outside their windows to report if the sky is blue, instead framing everything as he said she said with no weight to each of the sides, is the problem.
What you pay for lunch is foundationally the problem!
Double the price at half the size gives you an exhibit right there on the table to demonstrate to your numbskull pals all the complaining you've been rehearsing that you get off Fox News.
It makes crap interactive and validates the wingnut with physical evidence.
If Democrats started a national boycott of fast food that would be a good thing from any point of view.
KD: "Fox News etc. have run a scorched earth campaign of lies about how the economy has collapsed since Biden's inauguration. "
That can't be true. I watch the PBS NewsHour all the time and that has never been reported
Also, nevermind fast food profit margins went from 20% in 2019 to over 50% in 2023.
That seems relevant.
Against the trend of recent decades, I think this would be a good year to link the Presidential and Congressional elections — Democrats should run against do-nothing Congressional Republicans, and a failed former President who never delivered an infrastructure program, or his wonderful health-care plan, or a secure border, or anything else but tax cuts for the rich.
"The left has joined with the right because their very existence seems to hinge on convincing everyone that poor people are worse off than ever."
wat?
Reactionary centrists like Drum just can't quit their hippie punching impulses
How has that been working out for you over the years Kev?
well?
> current favorable economic climate
Global warming is too a problem!
Oh, wait...