Today’s $64,000 question - It’s the economy stupid!

Because people don’t “see” all those point you mentioned. What they see are the prices in the grocery store, the cost of housing, the cost of college, etc. If you don’t have money in the stock market, it doesn’t matter if stocks are at an all-time high. If you can’t get a job, it doesn’t matter if unemployment is at a low. People are still struggling even if the overall economy is good.

none of them remember the inflation of the 1970's!!!! prices will never go much back down.. they have just stopped rising so fast.

our economy is the envy of the world.. according to the Economist magazine... my dd in new zealand wishes their economy was like ours..

This. Plus for many people (my Trumper sister included), when you ask them if THEY are personally hurting, well…no…, but THEY KNOW some people who are. 🙄 I know some people who are hurting too and for some of them, their pain is the direct result of either poor choices or just plain bad luck. A few months back, I had a conversation with my sister. She was telling me about all these sad sacks who can’t afford to buy a house (she lives in a wealthy suburb on acreage), or who were living paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford groceries.

Hmm. Could that be because they live in a red state with minimal union jobs and poverty level pay? I told her up here everyplace is hiring and even the lowly retail and fast food jobs are advertising $15-16+ an hour for part time help. Unemployment is low. Stock market is up. Inflation is coming down. The high prices that remain are due to corporate greed and really not much else at this point.

Meanwhile, and speaking of housing, this same sister has bought and flipped three or four houses in the last 20 years, selling each one for considerably more than what they paid. So explain to me how people like her aren’t part of the reason why there is less affordable housing in her area now?

This is one of the things that I wish I could explain better or at least know if my theory is accurate. For a long time, homes were primary residences, plus some number that were rental properties, vacation homes, businesses who intended to be larger rental brokers. That was their schtick. And there was a stable, turnover, expectations.  Then sometime along the way, the number of people who had "a little money to invest" started increasing, and the recommendations are always "get into real estate!"

In 2003, my Grandma had bypass surgery and my my Mom and I went to aid in her recovery. This is family I don't see, as they lived 2500 miles away. Several people would call my cousin's husband a slumlord. What we learned is that he had been buying depressed properties, fixing them up, renting them out as Section 8 housing, using his profit to buy more homes, rinse and repeat. He had something like 18 properties. I have no idea how many they own now. Note: he's not actually a slumlord, just took advantage of a way to be a small business owner by providing homes for people that qualified for Section 8.

The financial crisis hit, and people blamed selling houses to unqualified people. I would really like to know if that had an impact on entry level housing new builds, and if that was the start of the shift to building bigger, more expensive homes because they were more profitable. I know there is a lot of talk about zoning, etc. but that wasn't a problem every place. Low interest rates, got a lot of regular folks into flipping. And then when the pandemic hit, and maybe even before, corporate, wealthy, and even upper middle class people were told to park their money into real estate to diversify, and protect their nest eggs. The pandemic through everything up in the air, and now it's stuff like finding out Boomers are keeping their primary homes even when they buy a second home for retirement, to be closer to family etc, disrupting the whole turnover process, in addition to the people who are stuck in their current homes due to interest rates. We are one those people. We bought our starter home in 2009, and are 3ish years from paying it off. I want desperately to buy something else, but I don't want a mortgage payment, looking at the future we're looking at, more.

The point being there were multiple factors that led to significantly increased demand without home builders responding with more supply at the price point that was needed vs maximized their profits, and existing supply got suctioned up by corporate, wealthy and a whole lot of regular folks that aren't aware of their cumulative impact on the supply situation.

And that's enough of my tangent on housing.

And which of Biden’s policies do you think caused higher prices? Are you confident that tariffs will help? Or will corporations just naturally lower prices now because Trump was elected and they can no longer blame Biden? Some already started to go down in the last few months because they finally saw their profits going down. People were still buying, going on vacation, going out to eat, so why should they lower the prices?

Exactly. I’m not saying that I don’t notice higher prices. I’m saying that looking at the big picture, things are better here than in many other countries following the same pandemic. Overall, the economy is not bad, despite higher prices. I personally don’t think that the president can do much to influence prices, though. But maybe Trump will trade tax cuts for ten cents less on cereal. We will see I guess.

TFG is likely to hit the unions..

New Trump admin to deliver 'body blow' to unions after courting union workers: report
Brad Reed
November 8, 2024 1:57PM ET

President-elect Donald Trump courted union voters during his successful 2024 presidential bid, and now Bloomberg reports that his incoming administration is poised to deliver a "body blow" to organized labor that has enjoyed a significant renaissance under President Joe Biden's administration.

While Biden's administration has helped multiple unions score big new contracts and organizing victories, as well as eliminating noncompete clauses that hold workers back, Trump's last National Labor Relations Board was far more hostile to organized labor and his next one could be even more so.

"The last time Trump ran the government, however, he filled key enforcement roles with management-side attorneys who pushed for companies to have more control over workers’ tips, more time to run anti-union campaigns and more discretion over who gets paid overtime," writes Bloomberg, before adding, "Now that he’s had some practice, he’s likely to do more, faster."

ALSO READ: 'Heads to explode': Ex-lawmaker 'stirs up everything' with controversial Biden scheme

What's more, Bloomberg notes that the GOP blueprint Project 2025 "calls for the loosening of laws governing safety, nondiscrimination and child labor, and floats eliminating public-sector unions" all together.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells Bloomberg that he expects a second Trump administration will deliver "a warrant for employers to do whatever they want."

But Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel for Biden's NLRB, warns that Trump could be playing with fire if he undercuts the work she and her colleagues have done in making life easier for unions.

"I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands," she said.

www.rawstory.com/trump-unions-body-blow/


Random comment..

What does Trump want?
1. Revenge
2. Loyalty, fealty, reverence, obsequiousness
3. The Money

DOJ will be filled with yes men
IRS will be filled with yes men
He will sell Public Lands and take a commission
He will command yes men to raid the Thrift Savings Plan and Fed pension funds
He will do the same in privatizing SS, Medicare, Medicaid, VA, HUD, and other agencies, building in commissions for himself
He will shakedown banks, investment firms, corporations, media, judges, and governors etc
He will decommission the Consumer Protection Agency and EPA.
If he has any inspectors general, he will use them to STASI employees trying to follow the constitution

Take a close look at your investments, Ira’s, 401k’s, pensions, to see what the fund managers are moving your money into. Beware crypto and $DJT and other crap his family has invented. Kushner might create a huge win for that Saudi fund.

We need to be prepared to fund and protect whistle blowers and independent investigative reporters.

Your property tax is state control. What state do you live in? I live in a very red state that promises property tax relief. We are completely Republican controlled and our property taxes increase every year. This is not from Biden.

Which of Trump's policies do you hope will help with that?

Regrettably, a lot of people don’t understand that presidents only have a minimal impact on inflation and gas prices. I understand that people are struggling financially, they’re paying more for groceries, constantly worried about money etc. I understand voting for a change and voting because you want things to be better financially. But, there’s a disconnect and ignorance if they think Trump will improve their financial situation. Just like in 2017, the only people that will benefit from Trump’s tax cuts are the top 1%, the billionaires like Musk and Bezos. Why do you think Musk threw so much money at Trump, especially in PA? It wasn’t philanthropy or altruism. Trump and Musk are not looking out for working class Americans. A lesson we are all about to learn. Maybe this time it will stick.