“Wage growth has caught up with inflation on average. But wage gains haven’t been uniform: The lowest-paid workers saw some of the biggest gains, particularly in the leisure and hospitality sectors, but other industries, from advertising to chemical manufacturing, saw their wages decline relative to inflation.”
…
“Even if workers received raises that outpaced inflation, that doesn’t help with sticker shock. Research has shown that consumers have an internalized “reference price” — a conception of what constitutes a fair price for a good they routinely purchase. If that imagined price doesn’t match up with reality, consumers feel short-changed.”
…
“Consumers also often misunderstand how inflation works. The important thing to know is that it only goes one way: When inflation decreases, that just means that prices are increasing less quickly, not that they are going down. (That can happen, though rarely.)
Prices going down, a phenomenon known as deflation, would be a potentially worrying signal about the health of the economy. If consumers pay less for a good, that can translate to less money to pay the workers who produce and distribute it, leading to less consumer spending overall and slower economic growth.”
…
“people are staying unemployed for longer: 1.6 million Americans were unemployed for a period of at least 27 weeks in October, compared to just 1.3 million the same month last year.”
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“After a brief spike in savings rates during the pandemic due to a series of stimulus checks, Americans are now saving less than they were pre-pandemic. This creates a cycle where Americans have less money, so they borrow more. Because interest rates have been high, borrowing has become more expensive, leaving them with even less money.”
“Vance repeatedly downplayed the radicalism of Trump’s agenda by saying things that were not strictly untrue but which conveyed a (beneficially) false impression of the ticket’s positions.
He used this gambit most shamelessly when defending Trump’s commitment to democracy. Confronted with his running mate’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — in part, by fomenting an insurrectionary riot at the US Capitol — Vance declared that Trump told the protesters on January 6 to protest “peacefully,” and that he “peacefully gave over power on January 20th as we have done for 250 years in this country.”
On January 6, 2021, Trump did call on his supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol. But also told them to “fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” And while the former president did eventually leave office of his own volition, he first attempted to coerce election officials in multiple states to help him retain power by nullifying results.
Similarly, in defending Trump’s proposal to put a 10 percent tariff on all foreign imports, Vance suggested that the policy was bipartisan common sense, observing that Joe Biden himself had preserved some of “the Trump tariffs that protected American manufacturing jobs.” But this was virtually a non sequitur: Imposing tariffs on a select number of goods that one deems to be of strategic importance and imposing a 10 percent duty on all imports, including agricultural products that the United States cannot possibly produce domestically — are dramatically different propositions. Vance’s line is a bit like suggesting that it isn’t controversial for the government to nationalize all industries because both parties support the existence of public schools and veterans hospitals.
Finally, and most subtly, Vance muddied the waters on abortion by expressing empathy for his adversaries on the issue. The GOP vice presidential candidate said that a dear friend of his told him that she felt that she needed to have an abortion because carrying the pregnancy to term would have locked her into an abusive relationship. Vance said that he took from that conversation that Republicans needed to earn “the American people’s trust back on this issue where they frankly just don’t trust us. That’s one of the things Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do.”
To an inattentive voter, this could make it sound as though Vance was calling for the party to regain the public’s trust by rethinking its opposition to abortion rights when, in actuality, Vance was merely saying that Republicans should make life easier for the women whom they force to give birth — such as through public spending on child care, a policy Vance endorsed during the debate but which has scant support among other Republicans.”
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“Vance also utilized the more straightforward and time-tested technique of making stuff up.”
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“Finally, Vance attempted to steer the conversation away from policy proposals and toward various good things that happened while Trump was president and bad things that happened with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in power. Voters may be lukewarm on Trump’s economic proposals, such as cutting corporate taxes, but many do remember his tenure nostalgically, due to the fact that his first three years in office saw relatively low unemployment and low inflation.
Vance sought to spotlight this fact by saying that “Donald Trump delivered for the American people: rising wages, rising take-home pay, an economy that worked for normal Americans.” And he asked rhetorically, “When was the last time an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out” on their watch, before answering, “The four years Donald Trump was president.”
In reality, unemployment was already trending lower and wages were trending higher for years before Trump took office, and they did not dramatically accelerate upon his election. Meanwhile, Trump ordered the assassination of a top Iranian official, thereby nearly triggering another Middle Eastern conflict.
It is unclear why Kamala Harris bears responsibility for, say, the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine but Donald Trump does not bear any responsibility for the Covid-19 pandemic. Neither had direct agency over either of those events, and Harris was not even president when the former occurred.”
Vance won the debate on sounding better despite his lies and his evasion of questions. However, he couldn’t say that he would accept an election that Trump lost. Democracy doesn’t work if our leaders can’t accept lost elections.
“For Tim Walz, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a deeply personal issue—or at least he made it seem that way. In several recent interviews, the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate implied or outright suggested that his own two children were conceived using IVF.
One problem: It’s not true. Walz’s children were conceived using intrauterine insemination (IUI), not IVF. These are two very different things, and the policy conversations about them are fundamentally distinct; many religious conservatives want to prohibit IVF—which can result in the destruction of unused fertilized embryos outside the womb—but not IUI.
Yet Walz tried to link his own personal experience with potential efforts by Republicans to ban IVF. This is misleading, since he and his wife used IUI, not IVF.
It was an oft-repeated error. On Facebook, Walz wrote that his family had taken advantage of reproductive health care options like IVF, which is true enough. But then he told the Pod Save America podcast that his two kids were born “that way,” in reference to IVF. Worse still, on MSNBC, he flatly stated: “Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children.”
It makes sense that some people who have little familiarity with either procedure use IVF as shorthand for both. But Walz should have a more granular understanding of what they involve. Moreover, he has accused his opponents of wanting to ban IVF. Walz attacked his rival, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, saying: “If it were up to him, I wouldn’t have a family, because of IVF, and the things that we need to do reproductively.””
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“The best major media exposé on Walz’s incautious truth telling came from CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, who revealed that Walz repeatedly lied about his 1995 arrest for drunk driving when he ran for Congress a decade later.
Walz was stopped for driving 96 mph in a 55 mph zone and admitted to police that he had been drinking. His blood alcohol level was .128.
“But in 2006, his campaign repeatedly told the press that he had not been drinking that night, claiming that his failed field sobriety test was due to a misunderstanding related to hearing loss from his time in the National Guard,” wrote Kaczynski. “The campaign also claimed that Walz was allowed to drive himself to jail that night. None of that was true.”
These were direct lies, and there’s no excuse for them.”
“Harris is proposing policies like raising taxes on corporations and creating new tax credits, while Trump promises to institute new tariffs and to cut taxes on certain businesses. There’s not a lot the two agree on, other than a proposal to eliminate federal taxes on tips.
As president, both candidates would struggle to make their promised changes unilaterally as taxation is controlled by Congress, not the executive branch. Neither party seems on track to make the type of huge House or Senate gains a president would need to ram their agenda through Congress, and it’s possible control continues to be split between parties, a recipe for gridlock.
That makes these plans more about demonstrating an economic philosophy to voters than anything else.”
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“Harris has said she wants to:
Set the capital gains tax rate at 28 percent
Set the corporate tax rate at 28 percent
Give new small businesses a tax break of up to $50,000
Create a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers
Increase the child tax credit for all parents, including giving new parents a $6,000 credit
Eliminate certain taxes on tips
Ensure no tax hikes on individuals making less than $400,000”
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“Trump says he plans to:
Slash some corporate taxes to 15 percent
Institute a tariff of up to 20 percent on all imports (except those from China, which would have a 60 percent tariff)
Renew the individual tax cuts from 2017, keeping even the highest income tax brackets where they are
Get rid of taxes on Social Security benefits
End taxes on tips”