Empathy For The Bedeviled
Economists and policymakers have the luxury of spending their days debating the meaning of the word "transitory" and the extent to which it's applicable to readily observable evidence of inflation manifesting across the global economy.
Analysts and money managers enjoy similarly fortuitous circumstances. That is, by virtue of being secure in their employment, already rich or some combination of the two, they have the luxury of observing the situation from afar (or maybe "from above" is better).
I forget (or choose to ignore) this from time to time. Thanks (again) for reminding me.
“ The memory of a toothache, is of course not the same as having a toothache. The person who has never had a toothache cannot empathize with someone who is having a toothache. One that has had a toothache can empathize but knows that the memory of pain is not the same as having the pain.” Sartre
Yes Mr. H, even if one was poor it matters little now.
That middle stratum H speaks of, and the strata below it, despite being more bedeviled by inflation and every other economic ill, are more likely to vote against the parties and policies that would improve their lot, than are the strata above.
I refer, of course, to the yawning gap between the party and ideological affiliations of the more-educated and the less-educated.
Shall we call them the bedeviled, or the bedazzled?
good comment
Made, hopefully, with sympathy, courtesy, and taste.
jyl: your well-learned politeness is appreciated.
Thinking of the hoops that need to be jumped through to vet any politicians (PAC, special interest, or even friends/neighbors) words is exhausting. Most people, myself included, don’t have the time, energy, or intellectual rigor to sift through increasingly efficient and effective misinformation campaigns.
As the wealth divide grows the powerful have increasing incentive and resources to “shape” the public’s perceptions to their own.
The “average” person has less time and ability to sift through the web of increasingly legal dark money misinformation campaigns.
Big tobacco was incredibly successful decades ago and things have only gotten worse and will continue to get worse.
IDK. It’s not that complicated. Rs want to cut benefits/social spending and cut taxes on the rich. Ds want mostly the reverse. From an economic pov, this is not exactly complex.
What is complex is the social/value stuff. Ds are ‘liberal’/progressive or even woke. Rs aren’t. And, truth be told, most people are small c conservative.
As someone was saying of liberal educated wealthy elites voting D, we’re voting our values against our economic interests too.
So is that bedeviled, bedazzled or simply voting your values? After all, as soon as someone promised conservative value + social spending on them, lots of the lower classes voted for him… Yep, fascism is a real response to a real preference by a huge chunk of the electorate.
So you can get social spending voted for, you just have to promise it won’t benefit the wrong ‘uns.
Perhaps what the transitory to permanent shift lays bare is the inability of private enterprise to adapt to a global crises when it cannot enrich itself in the process. If these megacorps were really worried about their supply chains and lack of employment they could easily throw gigantic wads of cash at the problem. Onshore production, pay people 25 dollars an hour, and take a hit on the bottom line for the “greater good”. Corporate America is incapable of sacrifice because the executives are literally compensated to improve profits.
You know what giant organization IS designed to take a hit to improve quality of life? GOVERNMENT, yes that’s right the big bad government has at its disposal all the money you could possibly imagine, land everywhere, people working in all different types of organizational structures who can be repurposed to solve these problems. But government is bad you say? Reagan told me that the scariest thing he’s ever heard is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”! Well, guess what, perhaps we all should reconsider what government is supposed to be for. It’s not designed to protect the interests of insecure white men who feel entitled and afraid. It’s designed to take care of and protect the national interests, including dealing with crises of food and housing. Vote your conscious not your feelings.
” It’s not designed to protect the interests of insecure white men who feel entitled and afraid. It’s designed to take care of and protect the national interests, including dealing with crises of food and housing.” Actually, it is in fact designed to protect the interests of insecure white men who feel entitled. I think that quite accurately describes the founding of the United States of America.
For decades I have been trying to persuade my economist friends that inflation is not a problem that is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, but rather is a problem better defined as an aggregated psychological response to rising prices and costs. I’m glad to encounter another voice with consonant views.
Empirically speaking, YTD my revenues have been moving in inverse lockstep with the increase in gasoline prices.While that might be viewed as confirmation bias, it’s no less real. Pus, it has the benefit of being related to the price of an ongoing consumer purchase that is deemed too volatile to be part of official inflation measures.
And yet people get pricing information from the food and energy markets every day.
I received a letter from my ACA Health insurance provider recently that said they have applied to raise my premiums by 35% for 2022. For my wife an I, that’s raising our insurance by ~$5,000 for 2022. While we are not poor, this puts an enormous strain on any discretionary purchases we may have been thinking of. Plane tickets. Books. Christmas gifts. Just adding to pressure from other inflationary prices.
In August, the Treasury sent a letter demanding we repay the COVID relief money we received. We qualified at our 2019 income level, but due to my “trading success” in 2020 and our need to spend realized gains, I had an unexpected tax bill as well failing to qualify for the relief. So that was another $30k or so out the damn window. Then the IRS sends a letter demanding repayment of the SS and Medicare deferrals. So, things are going great in this middle-American’s world. We are tightening up our budget to only essential purchases for the foreseeable future. And we have a low 6 figure income… Heisenberg Report is more important than Netflix, so no cost cutting there. Canceling Heisenberg would be like going blind…
Good luck everyone.
Ouch. I sold a non-homestead house this year. Can’t wait to see my tax bill for next year
H: Now I know I love you. “I can’t pay …” Right on the nose. By the way that $12 corn isn’t far off. Canners can only do what they do once a year. Once the crop is in the cans there is no more so availability runs low and prices go the other way. Last year was harsh for those guys.
CBOE MAR2022 down
stabilized chart from huge rise
There’s your future price of – well – everything.
Let the strikes begin! Wait, they already have. Funny how the world freaked out over losing eyeball distractions and not Deere’s food producing machinery.