What you misperceive as deflection is what others recognize as a specific response. You asked about my particular situation, then when I answered, you insisted you don't care about my situation. Do you see how that might come across as, well, a bit unhinged?
It looks like it's up from 8.3% when I last checked, but not a whole lot:
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
Click on "food" in the chart, then hover over "food at home." It's been 10.8% in the last 12 months. Click on that and you'll see components vary quite a bit. Fruits and vegetables are up 7.8% in that time, while meat is up 14.3%
Which indicator, specifically, are you referring to?
Some will get passed through to the consumer. Some could come out of executive pay, dividends, or capital gains. But this goes to the point I was making. How much that bargaining power is worth to you depends a lot on your position. When you work for a living, like I do, that's one of the most important considerations in your prosperity level. If, on the other hand, you're an elderly person living off Social Security, or anyone else who lives on welfare, then the bargaining power has no value to you, since you're not actually bargaining for your services, and all that matters is the price of what you buy with those government checks.
From when, exactly? See here:
https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/
Using a pretty generic S&P 500 index fund as a proxy, if you bought in January 2021 (the month Biden took office), and dividends were reinvested (as they are in a 401k), then you'd be up 10.055% right now. Factoring in inflation, you'd still be positive right now, but not by a lot.
One of the great things about the Biden era has been the huge improvement in America's image under his leadership. Trump was seen around the world as a clown. Biden is respected. Now of course, the wingnut provincials out in the American sticks assume that foreigners laugh at Biden, since that's what they do, and that's what Fox News assures them others do. But there are actual polls that track this stuff. We know that the percentage of people abroad who have confidence in the US president doing the right thing regarding world affairs has soared from just 17%, under Trump, to 75%, under Biden, while those with no confidence fell from 83% to 22%:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2...rump-to-biden/
Fox News won't tell you about those things, nor will you learn about them sitting around griping with other rubes at the local diner, which is why it's important to break out of the echo chamber to get some fresh air, from time to time.
What makes you think that? The NBER declares recessions and hasn't done so, yet. Possibly they will in the future and will back-date it, but with sub-4% unemployment, right now, it sure doesn't look like anything else they've ever called a recession in American history.
The old-fashioned definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of GDP shrinkage. It remains to be seen whether the economy will be down in second quarter, but the latest estimate is 2.4% up, by the Fed, and a little more bullish than that using the Blue Chip consensus:
https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
As a reminder, our last president inherited a strong and growing economy and left a nation in absolute free-fall, despite being handed huge interest rate cuts by the Fed, to try to stimulate the economy, and despite Congress trying to stimulate growth with massive increases in the budget deficit. By comparison, since Biden took office the Fed has raised interest rates and the deficit is down, too, yet we had the strongest year of GDP growth in almost 40 years in 2021, and after a slightly weak first quarter in 2022, it looks like things are growing again. What kind of idiot WOULDN'T think the current president is doing a better job?
Bookmarks