Jaicee said:
Me in particular noticeably more than others.
No worries! 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.
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. It's a return to below the previous baseline. You keep trying to minimize the situation at hand.
What are the dangers you see that I'm missing? 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: Spoiler! “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.”
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A) You in particular tend to say thing that I feel compelled to respond to. In my opinion, it is a side effect of the fact that we are pretty close on certain issues and so far on other ideas or rationales. Same with Rab and a few others who generally agree with many leftist ideas, but use that to make radically different conclusions.
C) My point was that this change is a return to the pre-pandemic baseline and not a drastic change in fortunes in the greater scheme of things. The overall inflationary trend line in relation to wages is still pretty average (or even slightly better than average). I feel this is important to account for when events occur outside of the economic system which have an impact on said system, especially when speaking about policy. In other words, if the pandemic hadn't happened and we had reached this price point naturally, no one would really be freaking out. As such, should we be taking drastic action to reverse this trend?
There are several avenues which I think we can go down to make the economy healthier in the grand scheme of things, but many others which I find largely heavy handed and addressing a problem which may not exist in the same magnitude that smaller scale analyses tend to believe.
D) Again, you seem to be alluding to an idea that I largely agree with (and correct me if I am wrong and you don't believe with the following statement):
It is not that the place we are at now is significantly worse than the place people were at pre-pandemic, it is that the relief efforts put in place during the pandemic improved the economic fortunes of many people (in particular low-income individuals). As such, as those measures expire or fall further into the past, people are falling into the same unhealthy place they were in pre-pandemic.
I do feel that the distinction between "Things are so much worse" and "Things have stopped being better" is important, because I believe that they have very different avenues to make things better. For example, pointing to inflation tends to be something Republicans do to argue for less stimulus, not more. This is because inflation often occurs when people have more money to spend. On the other hand, if the problem is not inflation, but instead a lack of public spending causing people to fall back into poverty or food insecurity or housing insecurity, the solution is not to decrease monetary supply but instead to increase it.
I believe that if the programs are enacted which I believe we both support, inflation will occur, however I do not really see that as a problem that in itself must be fixed as long as the economy as a whole is healthy. That is to say "stagflation" is bad, but we are not in stagflation, so full speed ahead.
F) The problems with price controls largely depend on how they are going to be enacted and what they are going to be placed on. It is a very detail driven question, and it is also a question of what the problem is that they seek to address. Price controls can also lead to shortages, by making certain goods less lucrative to produce for businesses, causing them to shift to other, more lucrative goods. It is not something I am necessarily 100% against in theory, but I would have to be very particular about the details to actually voice my support for it in practice.
G) Likewise, I feel it is a big assumption to make to assume that Manchin would vote differently had the infrastructure bill been tied to BBB, especially because when they were tied together, he still didn't support BBB.
I find it interesting though that your solution for BBB at this point is to break it up into smaller pieces and pass those which are more easily passed. Seems awfully similar to what happened with the Infrastructure bill. It isn't a strategy I am against if it get something passed, but my philosophy is and has been "Do what can be done", while yours seems to historically be "All or nothing"
