President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

https://www.lendingtree.com/debt-consolidation/household-expenses-struggles-study/

Key findings

• More than 1 in 3 American households are financially insecure in 2024. 36.4% of households reported in April that they had a somewhat or very difficult time paying their usual household expenses in the past week. That’s up 6.7% from 34.1% during the same period in 2022.
• Changes in household financial insecurity decrease with age. Americans ages 18 to 24 saw the biggest increase (25.0%) in difficulty paying expenses between 2022 and 2024, but that lowered with each age range examined. In fact, Americans 65 and older saw a 4.1% decrease in difficulty in this period.
• 31 states have seen an increase in difficulty paying household expenses. Between 2022 and 2024, three Western states — Washington (41.6%), Wyoming (33.4%) and Montana (30.7%) — saw the most dramatic increases in difficulty.
• Three different states report the highest financial insecurity in 2024. More than 4 in 10 households in Alabama (43.9%), Mississippi (43.6%) and Nevada (42.2%) reported difficulties in April 2024. Only D.C. reported that less than 1 in 4 households (24.9%) said the same.

Nobody would give a shit about Joe Biden being (and showing that he is) an 81 year old if people weren't feeling more and more financially squeezed by the month. ... life went on with a complete dipshit in Donald Trump in the oval office for four years. But 41 or 81, no incumbent is winning an election with that as the backdrop for the election. The ONLY thing that makes it a relatively close election is that it's Donald F'in Trump. What a sad state of affairs.

 

Good luck with the "Don't believe your lying eyes" tack.

1) Consumers have been spending. ... in the aggregate. But 4 or 5 out of every 10 people (as opposed to say 1 or 2 people if you go back a few decades ago) are now serious have nots who are not participating. That is the discontent. And a lot of the consumer spending that kept things propped up has been on the back of massive government debt ($1 trillion of new debt every 100 days now) that has essentially been helicopter dropped. That is running out. On top of it, consumer debt levels have skyrocketed at a time that interest expenses are strangling people. This is the reality (I can give you 1,000 more examples, even the airlines that would be huge beneficiaries of the debt binge feeding those TSA checkpoint checks you're doing are struggling again on fuel and labor costs).

https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/pepsico-pep-q2-earnings-report-2024-4ec40017

2) REAL income hasn't come close to keeping up with prices. ... which is precisely why you are so wrong. The typical American household has seen a decline in purchasing power of several thousand dollars annually over the last few years. No offense, but you are so out of touch with the reality people are living.

3) Consumer prices declined over ONE month according to a bullshit made-up number that isn't gospel and bears no relationship to people's actual household expenses. ... even if you take it at face value, that survey still showed an annual rate of price increases of 3 percent (3.3 percent core!). It also diverges in the reality people are living in, in that the CPI basket isn't weighted to represent people's actual expenses. ... as long as housing costs have run up the way they have (what people actually spend the bulk of their income on), you are telling people not to believe their lying eyes when you try to convince them that one CPI print represents anything except a bullshit number.