A survey has found that abortion has passed inflation to become the top issue in the presidential election for women younger than 30. That’s a key finding of a KFF survey of female voters with results released Friday.
Quick reminder that the current inflation rate is at 2.04% (https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/federal-reserve-may-pretty-much-just-hit-2-inflation-target-rcna175099). It goes to show how well the media does with propaganda on how bad inflation is right now. Inflation isn’t even in the top ten of my election concerns.
Price increases seem to take long residence in people’s minds. Prices are noticeably way higher than in 2019. Whether wage increases make up for that is kind of beside the point, psychologically. Collectively, big price hikes are traumatic.
Economists correctly talk about inflation as a rate of price increase, and they correctly consider real wages as a useful metric of well-being. But economists are academics and we use the word “inflation” in a colloquial sense, in a politicized real world, where it means “I have noticed that prices rose is recent memory and every time I go to the store I feel cheated.”
But to be clear, it’s not in my top 10 either (mine starts with climate, democracy, and freedom). Just sharing how I see the disconnect on inflation as a hot topic.
I agree. I think people are rightfully frustrated with the price of goods and services right now. But it’s really not in control of the government. It should be, but regulation is highly unlikely in our late stage capitalistic world. So I feel the media is portraying inflation as something that should be of concern this election. But it really isn’t. As you mentioned, freedom, the climate, project 2025 and others should be most important.
Well minimum wage should be keeping up with inflation. If everything gets more expensive and then suddenly isn’t, it doesn’t really help anyone until everyone also get paid more.
But that’s more of a local government thing. I think we’re getting something like that on the ballot in California, but poor red states probably don’t have a chance in hell of passing stuff like that for themselves.
Absolutely true. Minimum wage is in governmental control and needs to go up with the increased costs of goods and services. But as you mentioned, probably not happening in the states that need it most.
Minimum wage is in governmental control and needs to go up with the increased costs of goods and services
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t minimum wage a state law, not a federal one?
Absolutely be angry at the government for not increasing it, but target that anger at the appropriate level of government.
There are both federal and state minimum. Federal is $7.25 since 2009
I think people are rightfully frustrated with the price of goods and services right now. But it’s really not in control of the government. It should be
Hard disagree. Capitalism isnt just “rich old white guys getting richer” - it’s a way of letting markets flex and adjust on the fly. Supply chains and markets are way too complex for the government to simply control.
Sure, we might have record unemployment, inflation can be low, and by most metrics the American economy is doing well. However people are feeling squeezed. They’re spending more on rent, groceries, health insurance, other necessities than they have in their entire lives. Most people don’t have the vocabulary to describe that economically so they use words they’ve heard. In most people’s heads inflation=things are more expensive. So they complain about inflation even if that’s inaccurate
I agree. But it is misplaced as you allude to. It isn’t inflation that the government can fix as much as it’s price gouging from unchecked corporations. But I totally agree with people feeling this way. I just wish the media portrayed inflation properly and just admit it’s not really in control of politicians as much as we would like it to be. Especially with lobbying and the massive lack of regulation.
It feels to me like inflation has improved now, but inflation (and accompanying gouging by companies due to having a nice clean alibi) was high for a while, we never saw wages really adjust enough to offset that much, and then things stopped getting more expensive.
So, cool, it’s not getting worse at the moment. It got bad enough to fuck us and didn’t really improve after that, but sure we can be glad we’re not still sliding down hill. Yay.
To be clear, not one lick of that point of view is based on evidence, just my personal experience and the general observations I’ve made both in terms of reporting and in reality. I’d update my point of view if presented convincing evidence, but this sure seems to be the situation to me.
ETA: You did say “current” and “right now” and my comment turned out longer than yours lol, so maybe this is me barking up the wrong tree anyway
I don’t disagree. People are definitely hurting right now. But inflation is a general terms for the costs of goods and services. Much of the increase we saw from Covid was unchecked price gouging from corporations. It is not realistically in control of the president. Of course the government could regulate, and while they should, we all know that won’t happen on any scale that is needed. Therefore, believing that inflation is an important aspect to this election is misdirected anger over something that is in control of billionaires and massive corporations. I understand this misdirected aggression, but it’s a shame that people are focusing on that being the most important thing this November. To me, it’s avoiding fascism and project 2025.
It doesn’t help that so many economists, the tech priests of capitalism, didn’t believe that it could be a thing that companies were gouging people. They were blaming it on workers, high employment and high wages for the longest time and not the true culprits. I still feel like the media hasn’t caught up with the cause, except for maybe Jon Stewart if you count him as part of that.
Inflation is explicitly not:
a general terms for the costs of goods and services
It’s a general term for the change in the costs of goods and services. It’s not a merely technical distinction and I think it explains the difference between your take and mine above.
Otherwise I mostly agree. I do think the president has a bit more indirect influence on inflation in particular than you’re allowing, but otherwise I think we’re basically on the same page anyway.
You mean how not bad your inflation is right?
I meant how bad the media claims it is. Thus people are treating it as a major concern of this election.
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Hopefully that demographic heads out to the polling stations in very large numbers.
Young women?
You bet your ass they will. They literally had old white guys tell them their only worth is making babies, and if some die, who cares?
Get out and vote, sane people! The crazy fucks make up 33-35% of any given population. Your job is to keep them from the levers of power!
That sounds amazing, really it does. But is there any, you know, evidence to suggest it’s even slightly based in reality? It just seems like a fun fantasy to circlejerk to at this point tbh
They’re likely less now, closer to 25-30% now in the US. About 1/3 of the voting population voted for the orange dumpster turd in the last election. There are more factions than ever realizing that he does not represent their ideals. Nobody that previously didn’t vote for him is suddenly going, “you know, he did a real shit job last time and almost destroyed the country, but you know what they say about broken clocks!”
They’ll lose and go back into the fascist hole they came from.
I’m hoping 2022 is an indicator of what is to come.
Women need to learn to mind their own business. Sheesh! \s
Is there any consensus withing the ‘pro-choice’ people about where the line is drawn? I haven’t followed this debate much, but from my perspective it seems like people are just put into two groups as if the answer is either yes or no, but surely no-one is advocating for abortion rights at 8 months unless the mom’s life is on the line, right?
No one is advocating for abortions at 8 months unless the women’s (or fetus’) life is in some kind of danger.
Why on earth would a woman put up with the absolute hell that is pregnancy for 8 months, and then just wake up one day and decide “Meh, nvm, Im not actually all that into it” completely unprompted?
It makes no sense and it doesn’t happen. At 8 months, numerous appointments have happened, a nursery of some kind has been put together, baby showers have been had, names have been picked out, vices of all kinds have been foregone (not just alcohol/smoking, modern women give up stuff like lunchmeats/fish/coffee) etc.
If a woman is getting an abortion at 8 months, something went very fucking wrong, and it’s a tragedy all around, so we shouldn’t add the stress of navigating legislation on top of all that.
But my question was about wether there was a consensus about where the line is drawn. This doesn’t really answer that.
There isnt a line at this time, nor should there be, for the reasons that Ive stated.
Its absolutely inhumane to expect a woman to navigate an arbitrary line when they have to make one of the worlds most difficult decisions, just because it makes some other people feel better.
Allowing abortion at 8 months for other than medical reasons is just as insane policy as to not allow it at all.
You’re telling on yourself rn. You obviously have zero empathy for couples/women in an intensely tragic situation.
Oh now I’m the enemy for daring to ask a difficult question to which you failed to give coherent answer to?
Life is not binary. This is not a yes or no question.
Bro, you asked a “difficult question”, and I gave an IRL answer.
You said “Is there a line drawn for abortion?”
I said “No, nor should there be, this is why.”
I expounded on why there shouldnt be a line. Im not sure what youre failing to grasp here.
Yes: fetal viability, and that’s been the standard for a long, long time
From a legal standpoint I would argue for fetal viability without medical intervention, because with advances in medicine, we might soon be capable of keeping a fetus alive in artificial wombs throughout the development cycle, which could effectively erase our right to an abortion.
I am unsure what the current US laws are regarding this though.
I think the stated position is that it’s tough to legislate a line there because it should be a decision that is made between the woman and her doctor.
It might be possible to have legislation that draws a reasonable line while still largely recognizing a woman’s right to choose… The problem is trust. We’ve seen that conservatives have repeatedly tried to use this line as a way to effectively ban abortions. For example, by setting a ban on abortions after 6 weeks, they effectively ban abortion because a woman might not even know they are pregnant by that time.
It’s the same thing with Voter ID. We’ve seen Republicans attempt to use that as a tool for voter suppression, even claiming in public to their supporters that Voter ID would swing the election to the Republican. Does anyone actually support the right of undocumented immigrants to vote? Of course not. We know it’s a bad faith position because if they really wanted to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting, they could just implement automatic voter registration and send people a free Voter ID. They won’t do that because their goal is voter suppression.
Unfortunately this works the same with gun laws, conservatives are suspicious of any gun regulations, even the sensible ones that have majority support, because they’ve been told that Democrats want to take their guns and every regulation is a step down the slippery slope that ends with the feds going door-to-door to take their guns. So they don’t want any line to be drawn.
There is no consensus. Some want no line drawn.
