| sundin13 said: A) Yeah, I like to express when I disagree with people around here. It's kind of my thing. |
Me in particular noticeably more than others.
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B) Thanks for the clarification with regards to the record that has been set. |
No worries!
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C) A discussion about inflation without talking about other parts of our monetary system is fairly meaningless. I chose "wages" as my means of providing context to the discussion, because you too spoke about inflation in the context of wages. I don't think that is unreasonable in any way. |
Seeing as I'd already pointed to the clear discrepancy between the rates of wage growth (about 3% in 2021) and price growth (7% in 2021), I guess I just don't see what value wage growth rates from 2019 and 2020 added to the discussion. The point remains that the cost of living is growing at a rate that's increasingly outpacing people's ability to afford it.
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D) As for your "more data", there was one big red flag that jumped out to me in that first paragraph. Comparing May to December. Personally, I find myself spending far more in the colder months like December than I do in May, which is often mild enough for me to get by without any type of heating or cooling. As such, I can't say I'm particularly surprised by people feeling worse off in a December than they do a May. A better comparison would be to look at last years data from December (using the US Census Household Pulse Survey data, comparing the timeframe encompassing the first week of December 2020 and the first week of December 2021): December 2020: 40.5% of families reported no difficulty paying household expenses That is a difference of less than 1%. For comparison, the week after that initial sample from December 2020, 38.9% of families reported no difficulty paying household expenses, a number that is lower than the number for December 2021 and to me, demonstrates that the figures for December 2021 are not outside the range expected for a December before the inflation that occurred over the course of the year. |
While that's a clever workaround of the point, the comparison of May to December seems much more judicious to me in that May was roughly the peak period of impact for the most recent Covid relief bill (a point in time by which most Americans would have received their final round of stimulus checks, but also would not have yet burned through them fully for example) while December was obviously a point in time after that aid had largely expired. In other words, comparing May to December highlights the impact of allowing the relief measures to expire. Moreover, that situation was actually true in both years because in 2020 likewise there was a large Covid relief bill that was of course passed early on in the year that was allowed to expire before December before, at Donald Trump's personal behest, a minority of Congressional Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in supporting a much smaller second relief package. A December-to-December comparison then highlights two comparable periods in which relief packages had wholly or essentially expired. A May-to-December comparison, by contrast, highlights the difference between having relief in place and not having it there. In a policy formation sense, that data is far more pertinent. The data all combined points to strong benefits of economic aid both during a recessionary period (2020) and during and inflationary period (2021) and that people fall behind in both contexts without it.
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E) As for the data relating to saving, it seems to largely be a response to the programs that were previously enacted. That is to say, this is a return to baseline, not a catastrophic change. That however isn't to say that this baseline is particularly healthy. I support many of the measures aimed at improving the quality of life of those in lower income brackets, but as I say below, the first thing we need to do is accurately diagnose the problem. The problem here doesn't seem to be inflation, but rampant income inequality and lackluster public investment (and a lot of other related or semi-related things). |
It's a return to below the previous baseline. You keep trying to minimize the situation at hand.
| F) I largely agree with your assessment of where much of this inflation is coming from. While some is certainly responsive to economic necessities (such as chip shortages and increased labor costs), others are the result of corporate greed. The feeling exists that there is more money to make (partially as a result of the savings cycle you mentioned and the wage increases), so businesses are increasing costs betting that people will continue to pay. As of now, they seem to have largely bet right, but it still disappoints me that Democrats like Biden have let them get away with it, largely at their own expense. I feel the first thing that should be done about it is to simply diagnose the problem but obviously that alone won't fix it. Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure what the solution is. I support price controls on things such as Insulin and housing, but on everyday items, that seems like a bit of a dangerous path. |
What are the dangers you see that I'm missing?
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G) Why would you assume that things would be any different if the infrastructure bill was tied to BBB? If the two were tied together, the difference that we'd be seeing today is that nothing would have been passed and we'd still be in this same situation. Yes, of course the bill that fewer people objected to was easier, but I see no real moral or political failing in passing it. |
I feel that it's a big assumption to make that a certain senator would necessarily vote the same way under other circumstances wherein the only way to get the infrastructure funding he tacitly supports would be to sign off on a larger public welfare package. Such a situation creates maximum pressure in reality, which is precisely why the Progressive Caucus HAD insisted that the fates of both bills be tied together. That Manchin (and at points Sinema) could even propose just passing one separate bill in the first place gave them leverage they wouldn't have otherwise had. It should never have been an option in the first place in my view.
What's done is done though, so what can be done in the here and now of the reality we have to salvage any of this, you might ask? Bernie Sanders recently proposed a partial solution that makes a great deal of sense to me in remarks made to the Guardian:
“We have tried a strategy over the last several months, which has been mostly backdoor negotiations with a handful of senators,” Sanders said. “It hasn’t succeeded on Build Back Better or on voting rights. It has demoralized millions of Americans.”
He called for reviving a robust version of Build Back Better and also called for holding votes on individual parts of that legislation that would help working-class Americans. “We have to bring these things to the floor,” Sanders said. “The vast majority of people in the [Democratic] caucus are willing to fight for good policy.”
There are surely individual elements of what is today the Build Back Better Act that even the senators in question would not vote against if actually placed before them as a matter of record. Something can yet be passed, surely.
