Do you know the difference between the types of candidates the media likes, and the types that are good for the American people? What kind of correlation do you think exists there?
(I do know the difference between wealth and income, and I’m even happy to explain some other time why wealth inequality is still going up even in the face of these gains for working people. It’s still weird to me that wages for working people are a metric you are so hostile to, apparently.)
Do you understand that an individual with $150 billion dollars net worth (a measure of wealth) can have zero or even negative income? And that same individual can be funding election campaigns and revolving door opportunities for house reps and for senators? And give gratuities to Clarence Thomas? This could even be the reason for negative income.
At the same time a poor working stiff could have her income doubled and still NOT be able to SAVE anything?
And how all this is a GIANT structural political problem, and indeed a THREAT to democracy itself?
Yeah, I think you’re gonna have to teach me all this stuff from square 1 again. I thought that increasing wages for working people was a good thing, and the guy who wants to be king and kill his political opponents and has an organized plan for how to make it all happen was the giant threat to democracy, and Clarence Thomas was being funded by people who didn’t like Biden, but it sounds like I’ve got it all tremendously mixed up somehow.
Also, you didn’t answer my question, even though I answered yours. You just pretended that my answer was “no I don’t understand wealth inequality, can you please explain it to me in the style of a half-drunk sophomore business major whose dad paid for his college and car, proving why Ron DeSantis is a genius to someone he is convinced he is smarter than”
(You do not need to answer; I am asking these things rhetorically but I think the productive part of this conversation has run its course and then some.)
I thought that increasing wages for working people was a good thing
Imagine you have a patient with body temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The environment is at -20F. You increase the heat around the hypothermic patient by a massive amount to +50F. Is that good enough? If you stop here and have no further plans, is that good or bad if saving a life is your goal? But it’s a massive movement in the right direction!
Now imagine that all the workers got a 20% raise. All the landlords read the same news as everyone else and raise their rents by 30%. Your wages increased massively but your ability to gain wealth is as bad as it ever was.
In other words, Biden must improve people’s ability to accumulate wealth at the lowest quintile and THEN brag.
Wait so the ability to bring in more money per week doesn’t help people to accumulate more wealth in the bank over time?
Dude I had it so wrong, you got teach me more
Now imagine that all the workers got a 20% raise. All the landlords read the same news as everyone else and raise their rents by 30%.
Yeah, I get what you’re saying here. I think I’m starting to understand. Let’s plug in the actual numbers. So let’s see, cumulative inflation since 2019 is 20% which is really fucking high, like historic, which makes sense because they were digging out from Covid. So yeah that’s gonna hurt a lot. Let’s see now, cumulative wage growth at the 10th percentile is 32%, unadjusted, so… fuck me, yeah, they’re gonna be behind by negative 12%. That’s behind AND negative, it’s like a double whammy. That’s super fuckin rough yeah.
(Edit: inb4, He’s either going to pretend not to understand that the 32% at the 10th percentile is a real number that actually happened, or more likely he’s going to pretend that “inflation” doesn’t include food and housing by misleadingly presenting certain metrics that exclude those factors and pretending that if they were included, the number would be different, even though it wouldn’t)
stop here and have no further plans
So this is actually a really good point. Having accomplished these aforementioned economic results after coming in literally mid COVID apocalypse with a big fraction still depending on Covid assistance to live and massive unemployment, Biden’s economic platform for his next term is literally just these 7 words and then 200 blank pages. I’m surprised people don’t talk about it more often because it definitely seems like he should have done something different.
Do you know the difference between wealth and income?
Do you know the difference between the types of candidates the media likes, and the types that are good for the American people? What kind of correlation do you think exists there?
(I do know the difference between wealth and income, and I’m even happy to explain some other time why wealth inequality is still going up even in the face of these gains for working people. It’s still weird to me that wages for working people are a metric you are so hostile to, apparently.)
Do you understand that an individual with $150 billion dollars net worth (a measure of wealth) can have zero or even negative income? And that same individual can be funding election campaigns and revolving door opportunities for house reps and for senators? And give gratuities to Clarence Thomas? This could even be the reason for negative income.
At the same time a poor working stiff could have her income doubled and still NOT be able to SAVE anything?
And how all this is a GIANT structural political problem, and indeed a THREAT to democracy itself?
Yeah, I think you’re gonna have to teach me all this stuff from square 1 again. I thought that increasing wages for working people was a good thing, and the guy who wants to be king and kill his political opponents and has an organized plan for how to make it all happen was the giant threat to democracy, and Clarence Thomas was being funded by people who didn’t like Biden, but it sounds like I’ve got it all tremendously mixed up somehow.
Also, you didn’t answer my question, even though I answered yours. You just pretended that my answer was “no I don’t understand wealth inequality, can you please explain it to me in the style of a half-drunk sophomore business major whose dad paid for his college and car, proving why Ron DeSantis is a genius to someone he is convinced he is smarter than”
(You do not need to answer; I am asking these things rhetorically but I think the productive part of this conversation has run its course and then some.)
Imagine you have a patient with body temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The environment is at -20F. You increase the heat around the hypothermic patient by a massive amount to +50F. Is that good enough? If you stop here and have no further plans, is that good or bad if saving a life is your goal? But it’s a massive movement in the right direction!
Now imagine that all the workers got a 20% raise. All the landlords read the same news as everyone else and raise their rents by 30%. Your wages increased massively but your ability to gain wealth is as bad as it ever was.
In other words, Biden must improve people’s ability to accumulate wealth at the lowest quintile and THEN brag.
Wait so the ability to bring in more money per week doesn’t help people to accumulate more wealth in the bank over time?
Dude I had it so wrong, you got teach me more
Yeah, I get what you’re saying here. I think I’m starting to understand. Let’s plug in the actual numbers. So let’s see, cumulative inflation since 2019 is 20% which is really fucking high, like historic, which makes sense because they were digging out from Covid. So yeah that’s gonna hurt a lot. Let’s see now, cumulative wage growth at the 10th percentile is 32%, unadjusted, so… fuck me, yeah, they’re gonna be behind by negative 12%. That’s behind AND negative, it’s like a double whammy. That’s super fuckin rough yeah.
(Edit: inb4, He’s either going to pretend not to understand that the 32% at the 10th percentile is a real number that actually happened, or more likely he’s going to pretend that “inflation” doesn’t include food and housing by misleadingly presenting certain metrics that exclude those factors and pretending that if they were included, the number would be different, even though it wouldn’t)
So this is actually a really good point. Having accomplished these aforementioned economic results after coming in literally mid COVID apocalypse with a big fraction still depending on Covid assistance to live and massive unemployment, Biden’s economic platform for his next term is literally just these 7 words and then 200 blank pages. I’m surprised people don’t talk about it more often because it definitely seems like he should have done something different.