Oh no…the Leopards ate my face thread

TBH, though, I think that's also an issue if you're, (like most of us here), at least comfortably off. I don't mean rich, necessarily... I just mean that we have to think about whether something has gone up or not because, in truth, most of us don't have to deny ourselves anything, (in terms of basic necessities I mean), because of cost.

We won't stop buying stuff like milk and lfour if it goes up, say, 10 cents or 10 eruros so it's more of an intellectual pursuit.

I think people on lower incomes notice that stuff more.

A friend of mine remembers his wife counting out the coppers before deciding whether to buy a packet of biscuits one time.

But you're right to say that if the meeja are reporting on something, people will pay attention regardless of whether it's connected to any identifiable reality.

 

Agreed. People got used to somehow low prices during COVID, plus they got the stimulus checks, so we felt like we had money and we could buy a lot of things, only that some of the stuff was not available or made no sense to get, so some prices actually went down. Fast forward a couple of years, and while earnings went up, we no longer receive money we weren't expecting, and many things have gone up in price for multiple reasons, and at least one of them (we may argue what percentage of it) is because corporations wised up and raised prices to grab the extra cash we had.

So, if your baseline is 2020, 2024 feels very expensive, and it will take a few more years before we make 2024 our new baseline. As many of you note, most people will base judgement on a few reports that could be very inaccurate, like that of the family of 10 complaining about milk being $3.99/gallon, or the lady posting her Whole Foods receipt for gourmet food.

 

Addendum: Same with crime. People are terrible at judging how bad things are, and they base their decisions on a few pieces they see on TV, or pop up on their social media, or are relayed by acquaintances. Very few people know that crime went up under Trump and reached historical lows under Biden. Voters are stoopid.

 

Rattled off all manner of things he and his spawn should feel entitled, nay, required to possess IIRC.

 

I remember recently someone who would say we can't call someone who would fall for this dumb. Can we call them "special"?

 

I'm sorry. You never had a chance.

 

Got married in '64...groceries were about $25 Mo.

 

I'm coming out of it. Just took a while.

 

Congrats to you. Seriously, I couldn't imagine what it is like to have family like that.

 

I've already provided the data and the relative figures for different parts of the income distribution. TL/DR - people on very low incomes HAVE been hit by rising food prices. They don't have to 'imagine' it and they don't think it's happening because they're necessarily watching fox news.

IMO it would have been better to have accepted that and promised to do more, (or even more if you prefer), to help those people rather than try and tell them they were simply imagining it or, (even worse), tell them about how well your 401k was doing or that the dow was up 'X' percent.

 

But that's the thing: Harris did promise to do a lot of things to ease down on prices, from prosecuting speculators, to raising wages and investing in infrastructure to make things cheaper. But a portion of voters listened to Trump talk about how drilling for oil in Alaska and having more and cheaper gas would end up in lower prices, and they thought that was the way to go. Furthermore, he promised to implement tariffs on imported goods which will actually make things more expensive.

Some voters are not very brilliant.

 

How can they? The right wing media ecosystem. And the Press going all in on Trump.

It was really down to the late night shows.

 

I think that's more to the point. It's OK saying we DID say this or we DIDN'T say that but if nobody hears about either of them, does it matter much in political terms? Probably not.

As I've said before, though, I thought the rallies with multi-millionaire sports and pop stars seemed pretty cloth-eared, as did saying that she couldn't think of anything she'd have done different.

That's not a great message but, frankly, I don't think any of that matters... she was seen as an incumbent. That was all people needed to know

 

I think the problem is that politicians in her position are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If she says 'we're gonna do this or that', it's tacitly admitting that something hasn't gone right, (also, why haven't you done it before?), and if you say 'What are you complaining about... everything's fine', you're screwed the other way.

I can't help thinking that the length of US campaigns is also a factor. They go on for so long that people forget what the message was at the start by the time they get to the end.

We had a similar thing over here with brexit which went on and on, (in our terms, anyway). By the time they got to the end people had forgotten half the stuff, (or more), that both sides had said so things got lost in the wash.

 

The amount of people I know complaining about gas prices while they drove SUVs or pick-up trucks they rarely/never use for their intended purpose is staggering. Will never forget my dad's "Oh" moment when I pointed this out to him because he was complaining about gas prices.

Same with a friend, who is a season ticket holder for the Lions. That is not cheap, even when the Lions were one of the more inexpensive teams to have season tickets for.

 

Er... what?

You made the same point that's I'd made earlier, that people who were on the bottom of the income scale were adversely impacted by rising food prices. I was agreeing with you or, more accurately, you were agreeing with me

It's not complicated.

You made one point. I then made another on a related but distinctly different matter.

 

I feel like I am still coming out of it, and I’m 20years on, nearly half my life, and was always a bleeding heart on social issues.

I got a Bill OReilly book for my birthday when I was 18 or 19. And I was stoked!