You’re unlikely to hear people in a breadline singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
The Washington Post is having some trouble figuring out why more Americans aren’t enthusiastic about the state of the economy, and why they’re not giving Barack Obama and Democratic politicians more credit for turning things around. But it’s not so hard to figure out.
I caught the first glimpse of this in a piece on October 3, which led with this:
The US economy is back on solid ground six years after the Great Recession, new data showed Friday, but President Obama and other Democrats are struggling to convince voters ahead of the midterm elections that they deserve the credit for the rebound.
Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne picked up the theme in an October 5 piece:
“Happy Days Are Here Again” is one of the most evocative anthems in the history of the Democratic Party. You have to ask: Why aren’t the Democrats, and the country, singing it loudly now?
A party controlling the White House could not ask for much more from economic numbers than the Democrats got in Friday’s jobs report, issued a month and a day before the midterm elections.
And the Post‘s Steven Mufson wrote a piece (10/9/14)–headlined “When It Comes to the Economy, Obama Has a Bush Problem”–that wrestles with the same question:
President Obama is pleading with the American people to give him some more credit for the economy’s recovery. If history is any guide, he won’t get it, and his party will pay the price this fall.
Mufson runs through some possible explanations, then gets to this:
A couple theories abound: Median income hasn’t recovered. Wealth has continued to decline. Jobs don’t feel as secure, with far more part-timers out there who want full-time jobs.
But complicating his message are stagnant wage growth, lost wealth and the stubbornly high number of long-term unemployed — statistics that Republicans have been quick to note.
That’s the thing: Voters who aren’t doing well aren’t likely to feel likely the economy’s doing well. You can wonder why they hold these misperceptions, or you can decide that they know very well how they’re doing. Economist Dean Baker points this out today (Beat the Press, 10/10/14), under the headline “Great Mystery at the Post, Why Are People Without Jobs Unhappy About the Economy?” He writes:
While Mufson seeks out expert analysis to try to resolve this paradox, he might try looking at the data for a moment. No one sees the economy. They don’t what the rate of growth is unless they read about it in the newspaper. What they do know is whether they have a job, whether their job is secure and their pay is rising.
Some stories aren’t that hard to figure out. As Baker notes, “The real question here is why any serious people would have any question about why the public is sour on the economy.”
Folks care about the “economic numbers”.
The ones on their bills and paychecks.
If they still get one.
That makes sense. Either I have been misjudging you, or you have changed. I’ll have to keep an eye on you now to see which is right.
Instead of giving the people a disposable income or a similar bailout like was given to banks and tax cuts to the already flush with cash we get credit card debt, student loans, rising costs for housing, threatened cuts to social security, military spending, and wars.
They think Obama can placate us with his cheap psychology. Any fool can see what’s going on.
Well it’s no mystery why the Pundits can’t figure it out; they have their hands in the pie and are stealing the plums as fast as they can shove them down their throat. To them, everything is hunky-dory. When you live in a ivory tower, the real world ceases to bother you.
The Corporate Lords and Masters are only concerned about their tiny little peckers and how much they can screw the people. We were supposed to be getting the Eagles of Enterprise, and all we getting is the Kochroaches of Commerce.
The above mentioned factors certainly affect voter sentiment. I would also hazard to guess that the following has something to do with voter discontent:
1) Seniors are a large voting block. Many of them have not been able to retire due to loss of jobs and investments during the 2008 economic collapse. They are still digging themselves out of hole or still in the hole.
2) # has meant that seniors are taking jobs that could have opened up to young people so youth unemployment is high.
3) Huge numbers of low-income homeowners lost their houses and few of them have rebounded. Instead, they have seen the banks bailed out.
These issues are long-term, systemic ones — and there are likely others I haven’t mention — that have impacted the Democratic base.
Really? The Great Wall Street Gangster bailout, the most reliable number of which I’ve seen is $15 trillion and counting – and to put that number in perspective the US military establishment and its auxillary security apparat will spend, down to the last bullet and salary, including $60 billion stashed in the civilian Department of Energy to “stockpile and maintain” nuclear weapons in contradistinction to the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – a trillion dollars this year. And after all that, the Wall Street dice throwers investments (sic) are so shaking, the bailout continues to the tune of $80 billion monthly in what is comedically called “Quantitative Easing.” Just this past Sunday Chicago aided the propagandist’s image washing, to wit, Bank of America’s image-washing, by calling the annual Chicago Marathon, the Bank of America Marathon. Why is it that the US taxpayer, whose largesse is infinite, is subsidizing the five richest (sic) people on the planet’s – the Waltons, hold the anti-emetic – import business with food stamps and health care? Their workers suffer calluses and feet bruises, and the emetics merely kick their feet up on the desks of their corporate boardrooms and calculate the pennies in their bank accounts? Praised be the coming collapse. Right on Tee. Very intelligent comment, Wojtek Sokolowski. Bravo. Gary Reber, you ignorant slut. Oops. Sorry. Wrong gender. You immaterial capitalist. Redistribution is occurring even as we mumble: but the wrong way, from up to down. Been in the ghetto lately? Read Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, in which, blacks are every bit today as enslaved today as ever? Oh sure, we have 3 trillion to slaughter Iraqis, and by the way, we could have BOUGHT the oil for 33 cents on the dollar, but to pay reparations to blacks for building this country? Not a chance. Capitalism is a dying beast. And investment defined is profiting off other peoples’ labor. Praised be the coming collapse.
We will not be able to put America on a path to prosperity, opportunity and economic justice by sticking to the old redistributive wealth solutions that DO NOT WORK.
Correct, redistributing the Wealth from the Poor to the Uber-wealthy will not work. Never has, never will. As Ghandi said “You can not solve a problem using the same poor decision making process that got you into the problem in the first place. That poor decision making is the idea that all we need is “portfolio” to invest in.
Here is the Simple Solution: Stop sending all the working class jobs out of the country, and giving the already, fat-assed cat uber-wealthy, tax breaks for destroying the jobs in the first place.
America works, when Americans Work. Not when the Waltons and the Kock brothers steal every dime and hide it away in a secret account. Thats how we will get back to prosperity. Anything is nothing more than “Pipe Dreams”, where the pipe is a bong.