Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong
50 comments
·February 11, 2025jhp123
vaidhy
It is even worse if you consider the actual reality. US poverty measures OPM and SPM both underestimates the actual poverty. OPM is set to 3x USDA "low cost" food plan and was created in 1960s. It has only been adjusted for inflation. SPM is better, but is not official.
If you tie poverty as the bottom quartile (adjusted per person + addl. impact of children), you are likely to have a poverty wage of around $32,000 (a bit higher than SPM and much higher than OPM). That makes the functionally unemployed much higher. Add to the fact that your benefits like SNAP have a steep drop-off.. you earn $5 more per hour and suddenly, you lose all the benefits and you can see this in the making.
lapcat
Given the discrepancy in measures—24% vs. 7%—I'm guessing that the "poverty wage" factor is the crucial difference?
The official US poverty definition is about $13k for a 1 person household and $26k for a 4 person household. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-01-17/pdf/2020-0...
bryanlarsen
And poverty levels are essentially at record low levels:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/200463/us-poverty-rate-s...
bryanlarsen
Yeah, let's call their number U7. It seems like it's U6 + those on a poverty wage.
It's a fairly reasonable argument that U6 is a better measure of unemployment than U3. And I'd accept a similar argument for their U7, or the other U7's out there that add people like the discouraged.
But I suspect that their U7 is likely at a 20 year low, just like U3 and U6 are. Which would invalidate their argument, in my opinion.
lapcat
I think it's extremely unlikely that this team, led by a U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, just messed up something obvious:
bryanlarsen
It's likely the problems are all in the politico framing of it.
U7 seems useful. U7 being 24% feels right-ish. That's on Ludwig.
Implying that 24% is worse than normal when it's likely one of the best values we've had in decades? That's on Politico.
tensor
The "data" either supports their claim or it doesn't. They've defined a new metric, now they can back up their claim by showing how this metric has changed over the last 20 years.
thinkingtoilet
I think this applies here:
smitty1e
Rule of seven also would seem applicable: https://www.brainbok.com/guide/pm-study-notes/rule-of-seven-...
Look at which way the numbers went under the previous regime.
k310
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.
tensor
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.
null
kazinator
Story says that the data gathering is good, but interpretations are flawed and have been consistently so for decades.
taylodl
Goes back to the Reagan era. They needed to hide the data in order to hide the fact their policies were decimating America's manufacturing base. That's when America transitioned to a so-called "service economy." We've been getting poorer ever since.
anonymousiam
And then there's this to consider too: https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/behind-todays-stunning-j...
gigatexal
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…
golemiprague
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theandrewbailey
I'd like to point out that 2019 was a very good year for the economy. It worked well the first time, so why not again?
aweiland
2019 things started slowing down followed by a brief pre-lock down recession in 2020. I don't think things were as good as you remember.
atmavatar
Even if they were, I find it interesting that Trump gets a total pass on COVID, while Biden's held to a standard as if he didn't have to deal with COVID's aftermath.
In some cases, it's actually worse: I've had to listen to some people complain about price increases, citing artificially low prices deep in the heart of the COVID lockdowns as if they were the benchmark for a great days' past economy they wish we could return to.
null
8note
it wasnt particularly different from 2015, but also, the things being done are very different now from in 2019
nuancebydefault
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.
ThrowawayR2
> "Also the pretext that 'voters' vote around 'the economy' is hard to qualify nor quantify."
It's not that difficult to Google for poll results:
Pre-election: "As concerns around the state of the economy and inflation continue, about eight-in-ten registered voters (81%) say the economy will be very important to their vote in the 2024 presidential election." (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issues-and-t...)
Post-election: "Among 2024 voters, the state of the national economy and the level of inflation were seen as reasons to support Trump by double digits." (https://navigatorresearch.org/2024-post-election-survey-the-...)
There's plenty of other polling data from the November 2024 election. What is it that people are finding it difficult to quantify or qualify?
nuancebydefault
I did not search for such polls, thanks for that. If it is true, what I still find hard to believe is that there is a link between yelling 'I fix it' and the effect on the economy. Economic history teaches that starting a trade war on terms of 'they are treating us badly' or not, has consequences that are bad for the economy. One of the Bushes has tried the same thing and had to roll it back because the heavy backfiring. Yelling 'I will stop this and that war using my charms' doesn't appear to have successful precedent either.
ThrowawayR2
Oh, believe me, I agree with you that the voters have made a spectacularly poor choice if they were hoping to get the economy improved. But that's not the topic; the question is how the Democrats failed to understand the economic hardship of the voting public when it's literally their job to be in tune with voters and why there's still some level of denialism hanging around with Democratic leaning voters about the state of the economy.
lapcat
> The statements in the article are as good as impossible to verify, no clear metrics, no formulas, no charts.
The author's bio links to https://www.gene-ludwig.com/ which has a number of whitepapers.
bdangubic
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TMWNN
"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...>
more_corn
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.
toomuchtodo
The problem is the electorate is angry and impatient. The only way for wages to go up is organizing, unionizing, and to further take advantage of structural demographics compressing the working age population cohort. The only way for prices to go down is a deep recession.
Instead, they believed what someone told them (“I will make prices go down”). And when they get the obvious outcome (price levels remain where they are at, or more inflation with tariffs), they are still going to be mad. Facts and data are no anecdote for bitterness and anger, which has been decades in the making (since Ronald Reagan).
jsbisviewtiful
> they are still going to be mad.
Historically it seems like they will be happier despite no change or worse change as long as their "team" won.
toomuchtodo
Yeah, fair. Tribalism and all that.
bell-cot
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.
johnmaguire
So, having grown up in Ann Arbor, it's pretty clear that's the city you're talking about. Ann Arbor has had a big issue with NIMBY-ism preventing new developments for decades, and that's nothing new. Additionally, the entire city council and mayor are registered "Democrats" but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are progressive - or even if they are, that they care about housing as a primary issue.
70% of voters in Washtenaw County voted for Harris: https://electionresults.ewashtenaw.org/electionreporting/nov...
Compare that to 72% of voters who voted for Biden in 2020. I don't see much of a discrepancy: https://electionresults.ewashtenaw.org/electionreporting/nov...
bell-cot
Un-rounded, county-wide, it was a ~1.5% drop in votes for the Dem presidential candidate (from 2020 to 2024).
Along with that, the voter turn-out dropped by ~2.2%, in a heavily Democratic County.
Nationally, the Dem's went from Biden's 2020 51.3% of the popular vote, to Harris' 2024 48.3%. Darn close to what you'd get by extrapolating the county numbers.
(I agree with your comments on A2's local issues - but from coverage of the RealPage scandal, NIMBY-ism elsewhere, etc., I suspect we're not too unusual that way. And rather large quantities of high-rise rental housing have been going up around campus and downtown A2 in the past decade.)
decremental
[dead]
> 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