from Hacker News

Voters were right about the economy

by cwwc on 2/11/25, 7:54 PM with 89 comments

  • by jhp123 on 2/11/25, 8:21 PM

    > I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

    But U6 unemployment is also near a 20-year low[0], as is the poverty rate[1].

    [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPAAUS00000A156NCEN

  • by BoiledCabbage on 2/12/25, 2:40 AM

    The article is pretty clearly politically motivated. Thr argument is XYZ number doesn't capture everything and the absolute number is higher. Which may be true, but for U3 unemployment that has always been true!

    The fact is every unemplpyment metric you look at is at a historical low. So regardless of what they are or aren't capturing they are all better than they've been in decades. In relative terms the economy has been doing well.

    The difference is two thing. In 2020 half the world shut down and it caused inflation. Our inflation was also much better handled than most of the developed world. And number two, there is a very strong echo chamber that wanted to convince they country the economy was bad, and they were successful.

    I'll have to find the link, but there was a reputable poll right around the election that asked people in all the swing states how the economy was doing. They all rated it poorly. They then asked how the economy was doing in their state, they all rated it well.

    Voters in every swing state saw up front with their own eyes the economy was doing well in their states and said so in the poll, but were sure the economy was doing poorly because of what they heard about all the other states. Mission accomplished for the echo-chamber.

  • by TMWNN on 2/11/25, 10:56 PM

    "The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it"

    —Jeff Bezos <https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>

  • by thinkingtoilet on 2/11/25, 8:30 PM

  • by gigatexal on 2/11/25, 8:28 PM

    So be it. But electing Trump to fix the economy is like opting to have the Joker operate on you instead of a competent doctor because you’re sick of incumbent doctors and their shit…

  • by more_corn on 2/11/25, 8:39 PM

    There are two economies. The one inhabited by wealthy owner class (they own homes, stock, have paid off cars and disposable income) their economy is great.

    For everyone else it sucked. The metrics tend to focus on the former and ignore the “outlier data” caused by the latter.

  • by trod1234 on 2/12/25, 2:52 AM

    Didn't they just fail payroll because of the frozen payments from USAID which they said they weren't receiving?

  • by nuancebydefault on 2/11/25, 8:30 PM

    The statements in the article are as good as impossible to verify, no clear metrics, no formulas, no charts.

    Also the pretext that 'voters' vote around 'the economy' is hard to qualify nor quantify.

    What's clear to me is that a lot of voters believed someone who repeats things over and over and promises to 'fix' things with zero evidence to show for. It tells us more about effectiveness of repeating, fear mongering and blaming 'the others' than about economics.

  • by bell-cot on 2/11/25, 8:33 PM

    Sounds right. I'm in a major university town in SE Michigan. In recent years, apartment rents rose by ~4X the "official" gov't rate of inflation.

    Supposedly, the townies and students are diehard Democratic liberals. But especially around campus, voting statistics show Trump getting many more votes last November (and Harris many fewer) than the stereotypes would suggest.

  • by k310 on 2/11/25, 11:52 PM

    I'm not believing one iota of info from the current government, especially as much of existing data is disappearing. The Ministry of Truth (social) is here.

    So science has to go underground, reminiscent of the dark ages.

  • by tensor on 2/11/25, 8:39 PM

    This is wildly misleading. You can argue that we should use a different metric, sure, but then you must look at all of history using that metric to compare "the economy now, to the economy before."

    The data was not wrong just because you choose to use a new metric. The data would be "wrong" if it was collected in a way that introduced errors.

  • by anonymousiam on 2/11/25, 9:02 PM

  • by from-nibly on 2/12/25, 1:40 AM

    The government reporting on economic prosperity is a conflict of interest. They print money that the economy sits on. It's their dollar that suffers when people don't believe in it.

    This is just the government proclaiming how many boots we've made while everyone walks barefoot.