Did you read the article? Now, before you reflexively downvote me for saying something you didn’t want to hear, hear me out.
Whether an economy is “good” or “bad” is measured through several metrics. These are—
Stock index performance
Unemployment rate
Inflation rate
Wage growth
People’s personal financial situation
Now, stock index performance generally benefits the wealthy more than it benefits the average American, however, the article does note that the number of Americans who own 401(K) investments, which benefit from better stock index performance, has increased significantly in recent years.
The unemployment rate is definitely tied to middle-class wealth. It means that everyone who is looking for a job is eventually able to find a job. Unemployment is low, and this is good for the middle and lower class.
The inflation rate is currently just north of 3%. This is above the target 2% rate but not by much, and certainly less than the 7-9% inflation experienced immediately post-pandemic, and the US cooled inflation down to that level far faster than other Western economies (e.g. the UK and Eurozone). The inflation rate measures the price change of a basket of household goods, and the burden of high inflation is basically borne by the entire middle class. Low inflation is good for the middle and lower class.
I don’t believe the article discussed wage growth, but wage growth has actually outpaced inflation in recent years due to a surge in worker power. This requires little introduction. The problem is that when people’s wages rise, they give all the credit to themselves and think “Well, I’m just one of the hardworking and lucky ones.” This is not true. A lot of people are getting pay raises, and employers are more willing to be generous with pay raises when the economy is good. In short, people credit increases in wages to their own hard work but blame inflation on the Government.
As stated in the article, most of the people surveyed reported that their personal financial situation improved, but they still think the overall US economy is bad. If this isn’t definitive proof of what I’ve said earlier (that the economy is good and people just don’t know it), I don’t know what is
Economists are not stupid. They know that economic growth is driven by the everyday consumer and that a good economy is one that benefits the average American, not just billionaires. Understand that people on the news fixate on stock indexes because it’s a single number that requires little explanation and leaves no room for nuance. When people with decades of education and experience in economics say the economy is good, we’d best listen. Rejecting this conclusion is the same Dunning-Kreuger-laced thinking that causes climate change deniers to deny the existence of that phenomenon.
The article states that most people surveyed said their personal financial situation improved but they still think the economy is bad.
Let that sink in. Most people say they are better off, but most of them still think the economy is bad. They know that they themselves are doing good but think it sucks for everyone else.
It seems like you read but didn’t understand what I said.
When you say that the US “didn’t experience the same economic effects as the UK”, I respond with “it doesn’t matter”. It doesn’t matter why the US didn’t experience a worse economy, just that it didn’t. When you say that wages lagged behind inflation for the 50 years prior, I absolutely dispute that conclusion. It seems like you saw someone else talk about it, thought “this sounds true”, and then didn’t look at the data, which is much more mixed:
You think that the “consumer price index” is different from inflation. The consumer price index is a method for measuring inflation, and you being confused by this honestly makes me want to dismiss all remaining credibility you held. This is like if I said “temperature scales measure how hot or cold something is” and you replied, “no, that’s a thermometer”.
I never claimed that wages increase because employers are “nice”. I assert that employers are more willing to give higher wage increases in good economic conditions, because such conditions give workers more bargaining power. Employers in better economic conditions have more money to give to wage increases, so workers are more able to extract that money through wage negotiations. Compare this to bad economic conditions when employers are going to be much less able to give raises or when the labour force is shrinking, causing supply in the labour market to outpace demand (driving down wages). If the economy is growing, there is more demand for labour, and thus suppliers of labour (workers) are able to demand higher prices (wages). Is this really so hard to grasp?
There is such a business structure. It’s called a worker co-operative. They’re pretty common in some areas (e.g. grocery) where they are able to compete with and even win against traditionally-owned grocery store chains. For example, one of the largest grocery co-operatives in the US, WinCo foods, competes with and actually beats the likes of Walmart and Kroger (called Fred Meyer here) in the price department. They do have some outside investment (IIRC), but the stores are mostly owned by the employees that work there.
I think we ought to encourage these types of businesses through extremely favourable tax treatment. I’m talking a 0% tax rate on dividends paid by co-operatives to workers. At the same time, it’s understandable that most people start businesses for personal profit, which drives the creation of most businesses, so I think a hybrid system wherein the owner starts with a maximum of 50% equity in the company is fair, and the rest is owned by the workers. Imposing an expiration on the owner’s shares (say, 50 years?) would mean that after the founders die, the entire company will be owned by the workers, while not extinguishing the motivation for people to establish businesses in the first place.
A lot of folks suggest getting your own domain name for having control over your online presence but the question that I have always had is what would happen to them when I die?...
You are correct. Once a domain registration expires, anyone will be able to register that domain again. If they set up a mail server, they’ll be able to make email inboxes to receive emails sent to that domain.
If you have a website or blog that you’re hosting on the domain, once the resignation expires, the server might still be up but nobody will be able to access that site via its domain name from the public Internet using that domain name any more, as the A/AAAA records pointing to that server will be erased. If there is nobody to pay the hosting bills, then the server will eventually be taken offline and all the data will be deleted. If you self-host, the data will stay on that server’s disk(s) until your heirs sell or recycle it.
If you want someone to continue running your server and keeping up your domain registrations, you will need to arrange that before you die. Otherwise, it will all likely be whisked away into the ether.
How much appetite does Microsoft have for litigation? The Linux community is nothing if not stubborn, and they won’t take this lying down. You’ll definitely have the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation involved and they’ll fight it all the way to the Supreme Court.
Speaking as a university student, this aligns with what I’ve experienced in an American university. Most classes, however, are about technical subjects completely unrelated to the social concepts in question.
However, I believe part of the reason people think universities are “woke” (and I use this term in its original meaning of “aware of social problems affecting others”) is because a greater proportion of the classes that everyone is required to take will mention and discuss those concepts. Where I’m studying, this is known as the baccalaureate core and everyone must take courses with certain attributes to graduate, which includes a large number of classes discussing systemic racism, difference, power and discrimination, and other similar topics.
It’s not a large percentage of the total number of classes offered by the university, but they are much more likely to be attended by students.
This is probably one of the easiest things to come up with competitors for. You literally just display text. That’s something the Internet has been doing since its inception. The engineering is not hard. It’s time for a library consortium to design a competing platform.
They could probably hire a team of software engineers to make it in six months at a cost of less than a million dollars. Definitely doable for any large library system willing to invest the money. They can then sell the software to other library systems or give it away/release it as free software if they are generous
Google isn’t just a search engine any more and hasn’t been for nearly a decade. Over the years it has slowly become humanity’s general-purpose information indexer. That includes the Web but it’s restricted to it. Add in some advertising and that’s Google.
A 21-year-old Florida man was sentenced Monday to three and a half years in prison for firebombing a Southern California Planned Parenthood clinic in 2022, federal prosecutors said....
I was thinking about how I missed having an indoor thermometer that measures humidity. It’s such a small specific thing, one I’d never think of getting unless pushed to it (which I was by one particularly dry winter). But I like having one now....
I’m an American, so I can’t say how they’re cooked in Belgium, but I can say that boiling them in water for ten minutes before frying reduces the workload significantly and produces similar results.
What do you guys think about Walmart+? Service has good value, or just another way a company can suck more money out of consumers while providing the bare minimum of service and quality?...
Those workers are paid the same whether they’re helping customers or cleaning sunflower butter off the counter. Sunflower butter isn’t particularly disgusting or difficult to clean. Every minute a worker spends cleaning it up is a minute not spent doing things that would actually earn money for the company.
I’m saying that just because there will be “thousands of jobless factory workers” doesn’t mean the situation is, overall, bad.
Yes, that particular outcome is bad, but it’s not the only thing that will happen. And I argue that the benefits gained by other sectors of the economy outweigh the negative effects suffered by them.
This argument is like saying that transitioning to renewable energy will put thousands of Appalachian coal miners out of work. That’s true, it will, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.
There will be winners and losers in every economic decision. The important thing is to consider whether there are more winners than losers, not whether there are any losers at all. Economics is cold, calculating, and unforgiving. If you want to argue, you’ll need to come up with actual arguments and not just snappy two-liners that sound nice when typed into a Lemmy comment.
It’s a completely valid concern that you’ve brought up regarding dependence on China.
I don’t believe there will be a point where that happens. That’s pretty much the reasoning behind why I don’t agree with the tariffs. Automakers aren’t stupid. I truly believe that they can compete, but just don’t want to because it’s more profitable to get the Government to levy tariffs against electric cars than to make them instead of gasoline cars. Americans can run their own subsidy regime to flip this maths. I’m pretty sure that automakers would rather make electric cars than no cars.
Yes, it might result in layoffs along the way. I regard that as the cost of progress.
The economy is thriving under Biden. So why don’t Americans believe it? (www.dailykos.com)
What happens to my domain, website and email when I die?
A lot of folks suggest getting your own domain name for having control over your online presence but the question that I have always had is what would happen to them when I die?...
Reddit’s Goon Cave Community Has Been Banned (www.404media.co)
Does Microsoft have the power to pull the plug on Linux gaming?
So I’m talking about playing previously Windows-only games on Linux, e.g. via proton....
Different takes I've seen on sex work (lemmy.world)
Study casts doubt on ‘wokeness’ of US university courses (www.ft.com)
Paywall free version...
Google now offers ‘web’ search — and an AI opt-out button (www.theverge.com)
Plan to ban sex education for children under nine (www.bbc.co.uk)
Florida man sentenced to 3 years in prison for firebombing California Planned Parenthood clinic (apnews.com)
A 21-year-old Florida man was sentenced Monday to three and a half years in prison for firebombing a Southern California Planned Parenthood clinic in 2022, federal prosecutors said....
Are there any household gadgets you found unexpectedly useful after you'd gotten them?
I was thinking about how I missed having an indoor thermometer that measures humidity. It’s such a small specific thing, one I’d never think of getting unless pushed to it (which I was by one particularly dry winter). But I like having one now....
My experience with Walmart+ (lemmy.world)
What do you guys think about Walmart+? Service has good value, or just another way a company can suck more money out of consumers while providing the bare minimum of service and quality?...
Tariffs on China aren't the way to win the EV arms race – getting serious on EVs is (electrek.co)