The New York Times printed excerpts from a focus group of Trump leaners today—though I have to say that the participants mostly struck me as more than just leaning. Maybe they weren't all MAGAnauts, but they were pretty devoted to Trump.
In any case, the whole thing is worth reading for the smh value, but one non-Trump thing that stood out to me was the fact that at least half the group spontaneously complained about how much everything cost:
You’re working more, but less money is coming in....Just the cost of everything....The cost of living is not consistent with wages anymore....There’s no money coming in to the average American....I’m worried about the cost of living.
As you all know, none of this is true. Both prices and wages have gone up at about the same rate since before the pandemic, so the cost of living is a wash. But that's not what a lot of people see.
In other results, most of the participants felt the country was less safe than it was at the end of the Obama presidency and that Trump was a strong guy who got things done. Neither of these things is true. Trump rather famously accomplished little, and crime has dropped pretty steadily since 2016:
But none of this matters. People believe what they want to believe—or what Fox News tells them. And then, having "done their research," they're off to the polls.
It certainly seemed like the folks in the piece have swallowed the kool ade.
Fortunately this is all due to economic anxiety and concerns about law and order, and it has nothing at all whatsoever in any way to do about race.
True, there is a clear underlying current of ethnic status anxiety that is observable in white working class - or perhaps one can say older white non-professional non/limited uni educated.
It reminds one - to remove race as such from analysis - of the anxiety of the N.
Irish Protestants and their relative decline, and backlash. Status anxiety about one's own group (whatever the base of the identity) is quite potentially toxic.
that does not mean of course that the economic anxiety is unfounded, rather these are probably deeply related issues. (the law and order anxiety in the face of objective data indicating it's nonsense on other hand seems purely really proxy for ethnic status anxiety)
The political challenge for the USA is addressing these dual things productively. The current bourgeouis Left, rooted in Uni educated professional classes and bought in to Uni common room type identarian focus is rather off-mark for response, reinforcing rather than reducing such reaction.
A majority-minority in reactoinary backlash mode is very dangerous.
Economic voters want to know when the cost of eggs will drop back down to $0.99 a dozen and gasoline costs $1.99 a gallon.
It is indeed price anchoring.
Between popular innumeracy and the very fundamental human mental bias to anchoring of expectations there is the danger of inflation from a political PoV.
Everywhere, every geography / country bursts of rapid inflation (comparatively rapid inflation) generate absolute negative political backlash in the wider population. Even if objective numbers show catch up.
Thus the inflation denialism and poo-pooing was a deep error
"As you all know, none of this is true. ..."
This is silly. If your income isn't keeping up with inflation you are being hurt even if other people are doing better.
Guess you missed the note on Kevin's plot of wage gains, the one that said "adjusted for inflation".
While its true that the average or median person is doing alright, these kind of stats are just averages. It is always true that some people are having a rough time or have seen their situation deteriorate.
This is true even when the overall economy is doing well like it has been the last few years.
As a lifetime employee of a huge corporation, these "averages show everything is fine" posts annoy me. My company gives raises exactly once a year and for as long as I can remember, this once-a-year raise is somewhere around 2-3% and I don't have any reason to expect this year's raise to be any different (assuming I don't get laid off).
Am I just in the wrong business? Are there really companies out there that adjust employee's pay throughout the year for inflation? Are any of them hiring?
Clearly, you need to be in upper management. Their constantly inflating salaries drag the averages up to where it all looks rosy -- on average.
"...and crime has dropped pretty steadily since 2016:"
The homicide rate is up.
Not according to the FBI.
"Not according to the FBI."
The FBI's figures are through 2019. There was a 28% spike in 2020. See here .
Are those stats just made up, because there's no citation at that site. Pretty sure it's 2023 and homicide has dropped 7% this year.
"...Pretty sure it's 2023 and homicide has dropped 7% this year."
Still well above the 2016 rate.
Like I say, again this exists on both sides; it's just if you live within one narrative you no longer question it.
Democrat equivalents include claims about how "racism" keeps rising, how society discriminates more and more against women, how hatred for gays is on the increase, blah blah. And just like these cases Kevin deplores, facts and explanations have zero impact against ideologues convinced they know the higher truth.
That's the way the zealot thinks. What's distortion and lies by THEM is simply clarifying the truth (which sometimes requires shading, or even ignoring the facts, but hell, it's in a good cause, right) when done by US.
Casuistry isn't just for the Jesuits. Hell where do you think the word sophist comes from?
Both sides strikes again! Do you have a script you engage to pump out this drivel?
You really think there is apoint answering name99? Just skip to the next reply.
Please don't feed the troll.
I work with morons like that. Faux loving jackases, afraid of their shadow. Torture on a daily basis.
I don't know that it's even Fox. More like vague impressions from seeing Trump on TV. He "seems strong" to them, so they assume he must be capable. Low-information voters often think this way, and I've long been convinced that Trump's secret sauce is his unparalleled ability to appeal to low-information voters who don't understand how government actually works or pay any attention to policy details.
That is about right.
Republicans were doing it for years, but Trmp is far better at it.
The idea that you can learn anything useful about any topic from a "focus group" of 11 people is an illustration of how farcical the US media/public opinion survey complex has become. The Times could have written a much more informative story about Trump voters' opinions by getting ChatGPT to summarise a week's comments at the New York Post.
Yes exactly. 11 people allow the media to create any narrative they want and pass it off as a true expression of the people.
It is hardly an illustration of a "public opinion survey" complex, as a focus group is fairly the opposite of surveying.
It is indeed an example of the innumeracy of journalists and an example of poor analytical thinking that a focus group by itself is particularly useful or informative. If defined along with a broader survey and aligned with that, it can be but stand alone, it's Man on the Street rubbish.
+1
MAGAts live in the bizzaro world, where everything is opposite what it is in the real world.
Even NPR (!) seems to prefer going to a bunch of know-nothing, biased men on the street (or in a "diner") to ask serious technical questions, like the state of the economy, immigration status, federal spending, foreign policy, and the like.
You tend to get ignorant responses from ignorant people. That's not "news." And it should not be.
Still waiting for that fucking newspaper to run a "Biden voters still like Joe Biden" piece. We do however get frequent "Biden voters think Biden is too old" pieces.
I won’t vote for trump or any republicans. Not ever. But this country is so messed up that it kind of deserves to suffer through this current clusterfuck. If trump wins, I’ll be fine - probably - so it will be hilarious to see it all come crashing down. Assuming that’s what happens. Bring it on.
I’m here to say that I generally and genuinely appreciate Mr. Drum’s presentation of numerical data. But I continue to have deep doubts about his dismissal of cost-of-living concerns among the general populace.
I, myself, work in a factory. We are paid decently, at least above average for this kind of work in our region of Maine. My total wages for this year will end up around $83,000 unless I work a whole lot of overtime the next two months.
As it stands, I will run out of money every pay period well before the next payday, again unless I work a whole lot of overtime. It seems that I am not a fortunate resident of the Chart House in Graph-town in the great state of Statistics.
Please tell me again how cost of living versus increases to income is a wash.
Statsitics can never tell all the stories of 300+ million individuals.
No matter how good the economy has been, and it has been quite good for most Americans, it can never be good for everyone at all times.
No matter how low inflation is, some people are falling behind.
I dont say this to dismiss your story. But your story also doesnt mean we should ignore the reality of hundreds of millions of other Americans.
You’re making over the median household income for the country and you’re running out of money? Sounds like somebody needs to spend their money more wisely. But sure, blame elected officials lol
The main problem in this country is stupidity.
"... Sounds like somebody needs to spend their money more wisely. .."
So what's your annual income?
The lived experience of most people is that prices have gone up. The cost of a new car has gone up around 60% since 2012. The cost of HVAC and water heating equipment has gone up approximately 40% since the start of the pandemic. Costs of veterinary care have gone up dramatically since 2019.
Private equity has been buying up all sorts of businesses, raising prices and then cutting compensation. America as a country, is being slowly strangled for profit margin.
That's the lived experience and Trump voters may be wrong a bunch of other things but they aren't wrong on this one. Even a casual lefty is having this experience of costs not keeping pace with income. The difference is that we aren't blaming Trump or Biden, we know perfectly well that this is the result of policy decisions since Reagan which need to be reversed by someone with the cojones to buck Wall Street and corporate America to do it.
Many hourly wage earners did not receive pay increases the past year unless they changed jobs or were earning minimum wage and received an increase by statute. That is true for most median wage earners, too. Averaged wage gains are not received across the board by all wage earners. Telling people the complaints about their stagnant wages are untrue is a conceit practiced by the one dimensional pundit.
It has become common knowledge among working folk that they only way to increase your wages is to change jobs. All that hand-wringing about quiet quitting and the Big Reset was just cover up for companies holding the line on compensation to make their margins and employees catching on to the game and bailing.
Your story does not appear to be true. Median wage gains were large for both job-changers and job-switchers.
https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker
Obviously the average/median anything is not received equally amongst all parties. But wage gains were fairly wide spread. It is always true that job switchers get larger pay increases than people who stay at the same job.
One of the things that made the economy so strong over the last few years was the strong labor market that empowered so many people to take new jobs that improved their situation.
This is not a bad thing. The market was much improved for job-switchers and job-stayers.
Many wage earners received no pay increases the past couple of years.
During an interview with the Brookings Institution, Anne Case noted, “GDP may be doing great, but people are dying in increasing numbers, especially less educated people. A lot of the increasing prosperity is going to the well-educated elites. It is not going to typical working people.”
Most of us don't get COLA. We get, if we're lucky, a 3% raise once a year. So, while overall wages may have met inflation, most of us haven't kept up and will probably never make up the difference.