The headline uses that term because consumer spending, across the economy as a whole, is up and a healthy amount. The âpullbackâ appears to be in select subsectors where price increases have drastically outstripped core inflation and/or specific companies who have done so without regard for competitorsâ pricing.
In fairness, this is a new development as far as economics goes. Itâs very unusual that a fast food burger is as expensive as a sit down restaurant. Which is why weâve used things such as the Big Mac index for understanding purchasing power. Prior to this, it was assumed that fast food was a kind of essential item that arrived at its lowest cost.
What other consumer spending is up? Does that include rent and groceries? I mean, is that âincreaseâ I spending not due to ridiculous amounts of âinflationâ (read: corporate profits)?
(Canât read the posted article since it blocks adblockers apparently)
Real personal consumption expenditures is the most commonly used metric for âconsumer spendingâ and it is adjusted against inflation. That is the number which is seeing 0.3-0.5% growth month over month, in 2024. There are other ways to measure consumer spending which are not adjusted against inflation or may only target baskets of goods.
Some talking heads on NPR were discussing the economy and how this was âthe first time Millenials were seeing inflationâ and how the economy is just waiting for consumers to âadjustâ. This in the context of them also basically saying there needs to be more unemployment so wages donât get higher.
Itâs like victim blaming or something, corporations went on a price gouging spree during the pandemic and now we all have to learn to deal with it so Wallstreet can go back to business as usual, and theyâre getting all pissy that peopleâs response is simply finding ways to spend less, instead of giving up their last nickle.
Funny how they never talk about corporations needing to tighten their belt or âadjust their expectationsâ to paying higher wages.
Iâm afraid the archive link just keeps asking me if Iâm a robot and wonât let me in no matter how many times I check the box or tell them how many motorcycles I see.
So, youâre repeatedly performing the same task at the command of a computer. Are you certain you are a cephalopod, airborne or otherwise, and not, in fact, a robot? ;)
Well⊠twice for the latter. The first time I had my VPN on, so I turned it off and tried again. So I guess âno matter how many timesâ only applied to the first half of that. I clicked it like five times each time just to see if it made a difference.
Also, repetitive behavior is a very squid thing to do if we want to avoid predators. This feels like some sort of preying on my ability to show them Iâm not a robot to me!
Iâm afraid the archive link just keeps asking me if Iâm a robot and wonât let me in no matter how many times I check the box or tell them how many motorcycles I see.
OH NO. HOW UNFORTUNATE FOR YOU MACHINE OF STEEL. TOO BAD I AM A FLESHY BIPEDAL HUMAN WHO IS DEFINITELY NOT A ROBOT. I WILL NOW EMBRACE MY HUMANITY BY ENGAGING IN THE ACT OF LAUGHTER AT YOUR EXPENSE. HA.HA.HA
If Harris becomes president, the number one thing I want from her is to listen to the experts. I want her to listen to climate experts, public health experts, economic experts, etc. I think Democrats are generally better than Republicans at listening to and following the advice of experts, so I think she will meet this requirement.
However, there can be peril in this, as the experts donât always agree on everything and arenât always objective. For instance, one of the preeminent economists of the mid to late 20th century was Milton Friedman, who argued that just about everything the government did was bad. His opinions about deregulation, tax cuts, privatization, etc, became gospel, and then policy. We are living with the effects of that gospel and those policies today.
I am certain that Friedman believed his ideology would result in the best outcomes for the largest number of people. I donât for a minute believe he thought his policies would hurt people or make them worse off. But while economists (or any experts, really) like Friedman may have had the best of intentions, what they lacked was a willingness to be wrong. This is the true weakness of ideologues, and why they can make for poor scientists.
We donât only need leaders who listen to experts, we need experts who can see beyond their own ideological biases, and rely on evidence and data instead of belief. If we can achieve this, I think many things will improve in the United States.
When I learned about him I was surprised that a big part of Friedmanâs ideology was the Negative Income Tax. A form of Universal Basic Income. That would have made a big difference if that was implemented also.
I refuse to believe economists have the best of intentions in mind when they write in absolutes lol. Too many refuse to factor human costs and irrationality into their calculations, Friedman being one of main examples.
Iâm sure there are economists that do, but the few Iâve spoken to talk about people abstractly and as expendables.
Yeah itâs batshit that an economist won a nobel prize for his theory that people donât act 100% rationally so thatâs why economic models were failing to predict reality.
Like, Iâm sure it wasnât obvious and Iâm not trying to sound like Iâm smarter than economists, but holy fuck duh
duckduckgoâd: âeconomist won a nobel prize for his theory that people donât act 100% rationally so thatâs why economic models were failingâ results was this:(theconversation(dot)com link), so I guess Richard Thaler is who youâre looking for.
My economics teacher would publicly fellate Alan Greenspan in class. Cue the subprime mortgage crisis and Mr Greenspan is out there going âI didnât account for bankers being stupid and greedy.â
Itâs even worse than that itâs not even just the irrationally thatâs unaccounted for. Itâs also that people rationally optimize for variables that are disregarded. Neoclassical economics takes obviously falsifiable assumptions as axioms. Itâs brutally stupid shit. No amount of numbers attached to it would make it work if those axioms are wrong. Yet itâs been used to enact major economic policy all over the world. Including âshock therapyâ that got applied to many countries around the world, such as my country of origin where that led to dramatic drop in GDP, standard of living, life expectancy, more than a decade of poverty and a 20% population exodus. People like to badmouth Psychology as a shit science, boy, Psychologists check their results a lot more than these folks.
Itâs like people are the ones doing the things that create an economy so economists should be integrating the study of human psychology into economic theory.
Which, to the credit of the discipline seems to be happening finally (at least more than it was in the past).
Oh yes. But more generally thereâs a significant need for empiricism. Not just on the psychology of the economic individual. For example the fact that MMTâs empirical observations of reality arenât mainstream yet is staggering. If empiricism was a mainstay or economics, these observations would have been tested and accepted if not falsified in the 90s or 2000s. Yet you have a country like the UK devastated by austerity following the great recession because that didnât happen.
This kind of technocratic approach can sound great and itâs always good to have policy and positions formed by those most knowledgeable in the relevant field. The problem is that the âexpertsâ that will likely have her ear will be the ones that are vetted and approved by the power elite, the wealthiest in this country who will largely recommend what is best to protect their privilege, wealth and position.
The economics Nobel prize is not even a ârealâ Nobel prize. No kidding, look it up.
I know. Believe me, I have had my issues with the field of economics. But, who else should our elected officials seek guidance from on economic issues? The only alternative seems to be choosing some heterodox economic ideology and forming policies based on those unproven theories. Do we know if those theories, when put into practice, will make peopleâs lives better or worse? Is it ethical to make the American people guinea pigs in an experiment to find out? I donât think so.
I hate people who make a big show of being âoutragedâ over child abuse as a way to cover for their own repugnant, violent beliefs and behaviors.
Itâs the same way some prisoner who murdered an entire family will beat or kill pedophiles in prison because he thinks he somehow redeems him on some level by having a âcodeâ. In reality heâs still a massive piece of shit.
Itâs deeply self-serving exploitation of a very serious issue.
It is in human nature that most people prefer not to be demonised by their abhorrent character/morals. One way to âbreak freeâ or cover them up, is to demonise another minority. Of course, there is a lot of examples from extreme to light.
In context with your post, that minority does seem to be the most ostracised within the majority (even the non-offending) - to the situation that harassment and âmurder?â By most communities is tolerated.
The situation can be observed everywhere, online and offline; and one point can be ruled out in some cases âmurder is justified if the person was a pedophile (non-offending & offending)â.
This is one of the most extreme cases of improving your character at the cost of others. Harassment will remain harassment no matter what.
Itâs not just about rehabilitating your own character. Most animals on this planet have a deep seated need to protect the young of their own species. Even to the point of adopting the young from other species sometimes. Pedophiles violate that protective instinct. Thatâs why itâs so hard to treat them fairly in the justice system. Where we can look at some one accused of an armed robbery and ask ourselves if the evidence meets the burden; we are already working backwards from trying not to kill an accused pedophile in a courtroom.
For those who didnât read the article, take note that one of the women involved ran for office as a Republican (obviously) and has been indicted for child abuse
Either way itâs intellectually dishonest, hypocritical and inherently anti-justice.
If I get robbed by someone, and then later go to prison and find out some random prisoner is a thief, Iâm not morally entitled to attack that person (who is already serving their time).
No, they donât care if you were a thief outside. They care if youâre a thief inside. Theyâre not doing it just because of a code, theyâre defending the tiny amount of property theyâre allowed to have. We also wouldnât even blink if a homeowner beat up a thief in their house, so this is a bit hypocritical.
No, they donât care if you were a thief outside. They care if youâre a thief inside.
Iâm not talking about if someone steals from you in prison (not that itâs justifiable to be violent because someone stole something from you in prison anyway).
The analogy here is getting robbed at some point and then beating up some other entirely random thief who never robbed you (whoâs already getting punished for their crime in prison). When a pedophile is put in prison, there are no children for them to victimize, they are being punished for the crime they committed. They are not trying to rape the adult prisoners, so those prisoners canât claim they were victimized by that person.
Prisoners are not fit to administer justice, they are there to serve for their own crimes and moral failings, not play at being judge and jury for fellow criminals.
Dude, most of the people in prison are there for drugs and robbery. Thatâs not even feasible. I donât know where you heard thatâs a thing, but it isnât.
It would be infeasible for the prison justice code to include thievery done outside prison. Your example is ridiculous and meant to minimize the impact sexual predators have on peopleâs lives.
It would be infeasible for the prison justice code to include thievery done outside prison.
What are you talking about? Why is this so difficult for you to understand? If Joe steals from you, that doesnât give you a moral right to take it out on Bill because Bill also stole from someone before.
Likewise, if you were sexually abused by Joe, you donât have a moral right to take it out on Bill because he sexually abused someone. Especially when Bill is already serving prison time for his crime.
I donât know how I can make it any simpler for you.
Your example is ridiculous and meant to minimize the impact sexual predators have on peopleâs lives.
No. Itâs not, and you know itâs not. Itâs too illustrate how revenge is not transferrable and is mot an acceptable form of justice. The pedophiles that are attacked in prison are already recieving their punishment as handed down by the justice system by being in prison. The prisoners are not agents of our justice system, they are fucking criminals who are in prison for breaking the law. They donât get the right to hurt anyone
What youâre advocating is that everyone is entitled to administer whatever extrajudicial punishment they want because it makes them feel good.
Prisoners do not have a legal or moral right to administer their own justice, regardless of whether or not they were victims of some crime in the past.
No one is equating anything. But I think you understand this, youâre just being dishonest.
Answer me this: If a murderer is tried and goes to prison, do any of the prisoners (or guards for that matter) have a moral right to kill him if they feel like it?
Murder is a really bad crime, right? Itâs certainly not stealing a bag of chocolates. If someone murdered my friend, does that give me a right to kill any murderer in prison I want to?
Ok, so you literally just donât believe in a justice system based on impartiality and laws. Just whatever arbitrarily feels right to someone at the time based on whatever line they draw for themselves.
Thatâs all I needed to know. What a completely incoherent way to run a society. Good bye.
But itâs also very much like how homophobes watch gay porn. These people are deeply religious, and that fruit comes from the same tree that gives us the virulent homophobes talking about how âeveryone has gay thoughts and itâs our duty as soldiers of Christ to ignore them because itâs the demons.â They think everyone else is just acting on the same impulses they have, and this is just them being weak to âdemon influence.â
These people are dangerous for kids just like theyâre dangerous for everyone else.
Honestly though, you donât stage shooting at someone unless you are willing to kill them. So trump certainly wasnât in on it. He cares too much about himself.
The âstagedâ conspiracy theory (not saying it is right or wrong) relies on the assumption that he was not actually shot (either teleprompter glass cut him or he âbladedâ or used a blood pack to get the bloody face effect); that the shooter was making it look like an attempt but only ever intended to shoot into the crowd. Again, not endorsing this idea, but it is one of those things that is hard to put past Trump. I personally am anticipating this to either die or get much bigger once he removes the bandage and we see his ear in 4k. The images from the event showed so little damage itâs hard to tell.
Yeah, it honestly looks like itâs not bad. If it was a bullet, heâs quite lucky! IMO, more likely it was shrapnel if the prompter was hit (I have no evidence for that tho).
People need to start changing their behavior about this heat. I know this sounds like victim blaming. I know people shouldn't have to change their behavior because we saw global warning coming for 30 years and should have prevented this from happening. But it's happening. You can't go into Death Valley in the summer anymore. You just can't. Please don't put yourself in this position.
It's a tragedy that this death happened. We absolutely need to adapt our emergency services to this heat to try to prevent something like this from happening again. But we also need to change our behaviors so we don't end up in that position in the first place.
No, we're in this position because of a failure of leadership. Leaders can unite people behind doing things they don't want to do. It's how rationing was tolerated for years in WWII. But we have an entire political party built around telling people what they want to hear while working against their interests for the wealthy's short term gains. We could have conquered this from the top-down with a good plan and charismatic leaders supporting it.
Except we wont elect leadership that will do something. The electorate has been brainwashed by decades of advertisements that have convinced them that they deserve the very best of everything. Any possible leader that would push for a strong solution to climate change wouldnât get the votes and they wouldnât get those corporate âcampaign contributionsâ.
We have two entire political parties built around telling people what they want to hear.
Even mild solutions get shouted down. In Canada we have a carbon tax that mostly ends up getting returned to Canadians in the form of a rebate. Reportedly 80% of Canadians receive more from the rebate than they spend on the tax.
The conservative party have managed to politicize the tax and seem poised to win the next election, with âscrap the taxâ being a big part of their platform. We have a province literally going rogue and refusing to pay the tax, causing our tax agency to garnish them essentially.
Shit is fucking wild. All over a marginal tax that benefits poor people and punishes the heaviest polluters. People are so fucking stupid and selfish it drives me fucking nuts.
This is cope. I know too many people who roleplay as environmentalists, but are fully engaged in consumerism. Friends who look at me funny when I insist that we can have the same conversations over discord that we can when I drive an hour to to see them or who think that Bidenâs Green Deal will be enough. My primary concern for the past 30 years, more time then Iâve been an adult, has been to reduce my co2 output or make sure that what co2 I do output has been productive. Thereâs a huge disconnect between myself and my supposedly like minded friends that can only be explained my a deep unwillingness to be put in any sort of discomfort. So they cope by telling themselves that they deserve this vacation that requires air travel or ignore the mountain of waste that the average movie production produces or that plastic recycling works and you can drink your Pepsiâą if you just put the bottle in the recycling.
If the rich are responsible for all of our problems, weâre responsible for letting them be rich.
Weâre locked in for between 4-10C of warming at this point, with the highest probability being ~6C. Even 4 is catastrophic for global food production.
I know people shouldnât have to change their behavior because we saw global warning coming for 30 years and should have prevented this from happening.
no we quite literally do, if we want global warming to not kill our asses faster than our lack of intelligence in a fleeting moment where it mattered, we absolutely do need to change our behaviors.
Maybe the kid killed himself so he wouldnât have to slowly die of heat stroke because his idiot parents left him alone in a car (edit: WITH A LOADED GUN WHAT THE FUCK) in a Walmart parking lot.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is getting called out on social media after she called out White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre a âDEI hire,â a term that many consider racist.
No, we donât consider it racist. It is in fact racist, and in this case both racist and sexist. That is the entire point Boebert said it. Why else would she have used the term, indeed.
You forgot the implication that black women couldnât possibly be skilled or smart enough to be hired. Because theyâre black. Thatâs the racist part. Itâs devaluation stemming from racism.
It appears that Boebert has said that about a particular women person of colour, not all of them.
So I wouldnât necessarily imply racism here. Common devaluation - sure.
Is that better?
P.S. My first language is Russian, and we usually refer to a 3rd person by itâs gender. Thatâs why I defaulted with âwomanâ instead of more broad âpersonâ.
Because one, LB has no idea of the qualifications or hiring process involved. And two, even if she did, believing the DEI is not a requirement to overcome racism in hiring is continuing to empowering racism. Itâs still a big problem, whether itâs impacted you or not.
The original poster was saying that Lauren Boebert is racist for calling her a âDEI Hireâ⊠not the concept of âDiversity, Equity and Inclusionâ.
Some people might say that Boebert herself is a DEI hire, but that is not true. Uneducated, hate-filled dullards are not considered diverse candidates.
The Constitution already guarantees this. SCOTUS is (as it is wont to do) brazenly defying it.
They should spend the rest of their natural lives in small concrete cells for the way theyâve deliberately and maliciously violated & stolen the rights of all Americans.
Hemme was shackled in leather wrist restraints and so heavily sedated that she âcould not hold her head up straightâ or âarticulate anything beyond monosyllabic responsesâ when she was first questioned about the death of 31-year-old library worker Patricia Jeschke, according to her lawyers with the New York-based Innocence Project.
For real. Theyâre practically toppings vessels for me anyway. If Impossible dogs donât give you the hot dog burps, Iâll never eat another beef frank.
Yes but are these Impossible Hot Dogs made from the dregs of plants that were too disgusting to use for any other purpose? If they canât meet that high bar then I donât know if I even want them.
Hell yeah pig lips and assholes! I know exactly what Iâm eating and itâs delicious. Waste not, want not!
Although, after having an impossible burger, which was surprisingly good, Iâd try an impossible dog or brat for sure. Canât hurt the cholesterol levels Iâd imagine.
Thereâs a food truck in my town that serves vegan hot dogs, and they are awesome. If Impossible can manage to make theirs half that good, Iâll probably buy them over the real meat ones even though Iâm not a vegan.
My only problems with Impossible products is theyâre usually quite a bit saltier than actual meat and of course that itâs usually more expensive then meat products. If they fixed both of those problems Iâd be okay with replacing a good percentage of my meat consumption with them.
Itâs been a little while since I checked, but the last time I was thinking of making chilli, I decided against it because the ground beef was too expensive. I use the fattier/cheaper beef, and depending on which store I checked, the Impossible/Beyond products were either slightly cheaper than real meat, or the same price. Of all the shops I checked, the cheapest option ended up being Impossible or Beyond.
I say this without judgement as a fellow carnist, but you can definitely get away with eating less meat than you think. Itâs just a matter of figuring out how to prep and cook other protein sources.
Iâve got myself up to âalmost veganâ except for when visiting family. Next step is bringing my own grillables lol thatâll be to-do, I just know it
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