Let them eat cake.
It is not "mishandling" the affordability crisis - it created it and actively maintains it. Most recently and least subtly by bombing and blockading all the places that we get oil from, in an economy that was deliberately designed so it can't do anything without oil.
I think this misses the psychology of inflation.
If wages go up 20%, and prices go up 15%, everyone is better off and got a 5% raise, right?
Go poll people that experienced that and they won't tell you they're celebrating being 5% richer, they'll tell you they're outraged about the 15% inflation.
Psychologically they'll believe they earned that 20% raise through hard work. Putting in extra hours to get that promotion. But then the inflation robbed them of their 20% raise, and turned it into a measly 5% raise. They'll be outraged.
Politicians get this. No one will credit politicians for raising average wages, people will believe they earned their raise themselves. But there's lots of votes available for lowering prices.
But like you said politicians get less credit for the the former than they do the latter, and thus we have the current situation of continued bad policy decisions.
The article isn't denying that lowering prices is politically effective--I think that's undeniable at this point--just that doing so is probably the wrong call.
Inflation affects everyone rapidly. But to get the claimed wage increase people have to do work to find new jobs.
and so really the solution is to reduce spending. which, to some extent, is so obvious it kind of hurts.
Most of the people responsible for Government decisions are fairly well insulated from most crises, hence the crises will continue and grow.
A lot of the time it is actually even worse than this in that they are often in a position to benefit from the crises.
The real major economic problem of our day is the extent to which labor's share of productivity gains have plummeted and continue to plummet.
If your wealth comes from capital everything is going gangbusters and nothing needs to be fixed. Just listen to Trump talk about the economy and how blind he is to how normal people experience it.
And AI is just going to supercharge this problem.
As it is we have to live with it. Enduring the barbarians.
New York City is one of the most expensive places in the world. Housing is more expensive than SF.
No cars needed in NYC, yet expensive as hell.
I think you're being overly critical here.
politicians can't really affect wages the same way they can temporarily and artificially lower prices. but they also understand they need inflation to get elected, since you generally win elections by what you promise, not what you don't promise.
Avicebron•1h ago
WarOnPrivacy•9m ago