• D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Last year the bread price went from 2.50 a loaf to 2.75. This year the price of bread ONLY rose from 2.75 to 2.90. See? Things are getting better! very-smart

  • star_wraith [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    rate of inflation

    Weasel question. If the inflation rate was 15% last year and then “only” 13%, then technically the rate of inflation has gone down up obviously you still have the issue of higher prices than last year.

    • GinAndJuche@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Did you read the basket of goods they use? It includes a tv ffs. Apparently tv prices matter to people who have to choose which meal they skip.

      The wall is too kind for these stains upon humanity

      • I for one am purchasing a new TV each month. It’s a staple for our household. We go out and it’s like a nice little tradition we’ve established. Then we put it in the living room, hold hands, and skip around it chanting while we burn the old one at its feet so it knows to behave.

      • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        Tv did take a huge dip in price (completely unrelated to the fact the majority of people were watching content on their phones or computer screens I’m sure) so literally every article uses them, the one thing that’s decreased in price, as a comparison point to show stuff isn’t getting more expensive.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        The fact that I have a very very rich great aunt who never spent a dime on herself (her husband who died before I was born, so must have been when she was in her 40s or so was like one of the earliest investors in AT&T and obviously that paid off big.) is pretty much what’s keeping me able to not be homeless. So…yeah, that is essentially the case.

  • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Real average hourly earnings increased 0.8 percent, seasonally adjusted, from October 2022 to October 2023. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.9 percent in the average workweek resulted in no change in real average weekly earnings over this period.

    edgeworth-shrug

  • Mindfury [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    hey nerd, break question 1 down into income quartiles for me.

    oh, look at that - the other 4 questions have immediately been explained by the rate of wage increase per income quartile? wow

    • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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      11 months ago

      In the 1800s news media was firmly owned by the merchants who regularly gaslit the entire population.

        • WayeeCool [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          Exactly! The article OP posted is from a Financial Times, an outlet that has been publishing this kind of shit since 1888.

          Both Marx and later Lenin were dunking on the very same print media outlets still active today. We still meme about Lenin talking shit on the Economist, which today is publishing the same shit they did back in 1843.

          Fkn Marx was a newspaper columnist in New York for a few years. The New York Times is publishing the exact same shit-lib editorials and opinion peices today as it did in 1851. If you want a wild evening of reading, I suggest digging through their archives for coverage of the abolitionist movement and slavery around the time the US civil war was kicking off.

  • SwitchyWitchyandBitchy [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    “Do you think the rate of inflation has risen or stayed the same since this time last year.”

    People are correctly pointing out that inflation has made prices worse. The fact that the rate is down is little consolation when the rate has been very high and is still higher than for their salaries.

  • Great_Leader_Is_Dead@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    There’s now like 2-5 Op-Eds/Twitter threads a week about how the economy is ASKCUALLY doing GREAT now, and every one gets posted to r/neoliberal

    • WayeeCool [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      The funniest part is no one wants to talk about why roughly 10% to 15% say there is no inflation, they are wealthier than ever, and life is great but the other 90% of the US is screaming that they are living on the edge closer to homelessness and ruin than ever before. Sometimes these same articles will mention that luxury car sales are at an all time high as further evidence that the 90% are just being delusional.

      Which socioeconomic class do your think the authors of all these articles and posts fall into, the 90% or 10%? Same people always try to point out to fellow Americans that by being in the US a person is automatically in the global top 10%, which is an insidious lie. It’s eye opening for most Americans when they learn only the top 15% of US households fall into the global top 10%, that most Americans don’t take home the required $150,000 USD or greater but a few tens of thousand each year and are indebted with zero savings. The sheer number of US adults who only manage to earn roughly $20,000 USD per year is hard for these people to wrap their minds around.

      The US government only tracking “household income” rather than a break down of incomes for individual working aged US adults is also a slight of hand. An unspecified number of individual people living under one roof with multiple incomes being combined to get that household income number, further skewed by millions of functionally homeless (couch surfing, living in cars, living in motels a few days a week) working adults most of which are lower income being just ignored.

      • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        It makes me wonder who this stuff is actually for, are they trying to convince the vast majority of people? Or are they just trying to reinforce their own safe little bubble?

        • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          i think they are trying to convince atomized poor people that they are delusional or their problems are purely their own, an anomaly, and completely their fault.

          gaslight gaslight gaslight. better rise and grind because everyone else is making bank. inflation? ha that’s just because you need a third job dummy nobody wants to work anymore

        • CrimsonSage [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          I dont think think a lot of it is conscious. Lots if these people are professional class libs for whom data is more real than the world outside their door. So for them if the data says things are fine then it must be fine. Everyone else is mistaken because they arent “smart,” read “educated,” read “gone to the right finishing schools,” to understand it. But they never ask why the data says what it says or how it could be wrong. It’s a unique kind if modern idealism.

  • AssaultRifle15 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Fish hook theory is proved correct once again. Libs and Conservatives are both fully on board with the “facts don’t care about your feelings” method of argument and don’t seem to understand that being smarmy to people who are miserable doesn’t get them to like you.

    • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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      11 months ago

      That’s the ultimate irony of these fucksticks.

      People like the Koch brother (half way there) and all the other far right pieces of dogshit spent decades astroturfing and fueling this anti-government sentiment. Selling the idea that government is hated by everyone, government is inefficient and ineffective so private corporations are the better alternative. That allowing wealth to accumulate in only a few individuals will benefit everyone as they fund humanitarian projects.

      One thing I gotta hand to guys like Rockefeller is he took his son’s advice and actually did give a fuck load of money to prop up stuff that benefited society. This isn’t praise for him, no, it’s just recognizing that he wasn’t a total buffoon. He and his son and family (and many other tycoons then and since then) realized you either have to give back or eventually things will degrade so far that people snap and TAKE back what you stole.

      Unfortunately the Koch-types let their wild dogs off the leash and they have no power to control them anymore. Things like repealing Roe v Wade was supposed to be the carrot forever in front of the hogs so that they accept the tax cuts for the wealthy. Cutting social security was always supposed to be promised in the pursuit of “cutting taxes” and making the damn disabled and elderly (obviously they’re all faking it) go back to work. The non-dipshits knew that passing such unpopular laws not only would end the game for them it would also cause societal ruptures that they couldn’t undo. You can’t shove the country ever further to the right for a century and then when the inevitable comes to pass, and the boom post-WWII completely fades, start screaming “woah woah too far guys! We gotta keep THAT law!”

      There are people, a lot of them, who somewhat-correctly identify government programs as failing to meet their proposed goal. Social security disability is one. Medicaid, various unemployment programs, food stamps/EBT, etc. They fail to see that the reasons those programs fail is due to systematic dismantling and crippling via defunding, understaffing, and means testing. Neoliberalism, basically. The idea that the “market” can and will solve all problems, so why do we need social security? Mix that in with radicalization of (ironically) many poor workers to knee jerk question and resent anyone who does become old enough or disabled enough to break through all the means testing and red tape to get benefits and, of course, racism, and it’s a perfect recipe for advocating against their own best interests and for, no exaggeration, ultimately the total dismantling of the federal government followed by state governments (which are already inadequate).

      This is something the “tea party” (idiotic name) types and their outgrowth which includes people like pdf file Gaetz, Gym Jordan, etc. openly advocated for for like 20 years now. At least 15 years. To shut government down (brother!) to defund every “unnecessary” agency (guess which are unnecessary? Hint: it sure isn’t the military or FBI), and basically to grind everything to a halt.

      A ridiculous idea, one that the Koch brother (never gets old) surely is not thrilled about seeing actually possibly happening. Because all he really wanted (his personal views on abortion, gay marriage, God, etc. are totally irrelevant) was to keep his taxes down and make sure he and his family and his capitalist buds could make billions of dollars and continue directing how Washington is run. If there is no government, or society starts SERIOUSLY declining (imagine the homelessness if social security were cut by say 50%), their wealth starts becoming pointless. Riots are inevitable if enough people are homeless and hungry. That’s why they’ve always favored the “bread and circus” route instead of the full on authoritarian “pick up that can, citizen!” approach. It’s more peaceful (in their home country - key point), safer, more enjoyable. If they can’t go to the airport anymore without a person chucking his shit at their limo before he’s blown away by private police in front of them, that’s not so much fun anymore!

      I don’t know how they can recover things. If I were a betting person, I’d say they can’t recover neoliberalism. It’s going away one way or another. The only thing left to see is how right wing authoritarian things get, how bad things get, at least in the US. Other places may well have strong leftist movements rise up. The US, due to 80 strong years but over a century generally, of anti-socialism and anti-communism rhetoric is surely going down the fash pipeline. Probably anyway.

      • Trustmeitsnotabailou [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        The big difference between now and rockafellars day was that their was actual competition amongst the elite.

        Now they are all on the same page. Have crushed competition and having done that have allowed their ranks to be filled with buffon fail sons that can’t plan more than the next quarter out.

      • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        11 months ago

        elderly (obviously they’re all faking it)

        always knew those dastardly elderly were faking age. Don’t get me started on all these workshy “dead” people

        Mix that in with radicalization of (ironically) many poor workers to knee jerk question and resent anyone who does become old enough or disabled enough to break through all the means testing and red tape to get benefits and, of course, racism, and it’s a perfect recipe for advocating against their own best interests

        once knew a guy who would say “I’ve broken every bone in my body who needs health and safety” he really was a fucking moron

        on the general point

        I agree about the problem but they might be true believers and just not realise the problem they are creating. It’s entirely possible that they don’t understand that these issues will happen because they don’t actually think about what happens to poor people

        • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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          11 months ago

          Yeah, that’s true. Some people might actually be deluded enough (Peter Thiel fuck his name not googling it types) to believe in some sort of anrchocapitalism hellscape. Into which they’d instantly become enslaved by some massive Bezos Amazon slave factory (chattel slavery instead of the slavery of forced to sell labor for a wage). But I guess good luck explaining that to them… many seem to have the imagination of a 14 year old. They’re definitely not all stupid, just extremely naive and uneducated if they think a world with zero federal government will in any tangible way be better than this one. I know a lot of people want or joke about “going back to monkey” or back to feudalism style arrangements. That’s definitely not their plan though. They want something more like a Mad Max style future but they think they’ll be the robot guy in charge of water (spoiler: they won’t be).

          • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            11 months ago

            They want something more like a Mad Max style future but they think they’ll be the robot guy in charge of water

            I don’t think this is it again I just don’t think they understand that this will happen

        • bigboopballs [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          11 months ago

          It’s entirely possible that they don’t understand that these issues will happen because they don’t actually think about what happens to poor people

          or they like what happens to poor people

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      Guns very cheap. Bulk ammo is relatively cheap. Meanwhile basic needs keep rising with no end in sight. Sounds like a good combination for a country that never has homicidal maniacs shooting up public places due to misplaced rage.

  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Hilarious tbh. The audacity to publish a poll where you shit talk one segment of the population, not to mention 90%

  • Judge_Juche [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Stancil as great, I hope he never gives this up. Like its been explained to him dozens of times every day for three years now that peoples experience of the economy really can’t be captured in macroeconomic data and ultimately it’s people’s lived experience that will drive voting in 2024. And yet every day he logs on with a new GDP chart and screams at people that their should change their opinion on the economy becuase of the chart.

    Also the only people that follow him and engage with him are leftists who are there to make fun of him.

    • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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      11 months ago

      “Your Fridge is incompatible with YouTube, update your Fridge’s software to continue watching YouTube on your Fridge.”

      tries to update Fridge’s software

      “We sorry, but your Fridge is no longer receiving upgrade support.”