{"id":58426,"date":"2025-02-16T12:44:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T17:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=58426"},"modified":"2025-02-16T12:44:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T17:44:37","slug":"american-voters-are-smarter-than-some-people-think-they-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=58426","title":{"rendered":"American Voters Are Smarter Than Some People Think They Are"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politico just lost a lost of money it was getting from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID<\/b>)<\/span>. Is it possible that now their reporting will be more balanced? The article below might be an indication of that!<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Politico<\/a> posted an article about the gap between the numbers the government was posting about the economy and the public’s perception of the economy during the run-up to the 2024 election.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Before the presidential election, many Democrats were puzzled by the seeming disconnect between \u201ceconomic reality\u201d as reflected in various government statistics and the public\u2019s perceptions of the economy on the ground. Many in Washington bristled at the public\u2019s failure to register how strong the economy really<\/i> was. They charged that right-wing echo chambers were conning voters into believing entirely preposterous narratives about America\u2019s decline.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What they rarely considered was whether something else might be responsible for the disconnect \u2014 whether, for instance, government statistics were fundamentally flawed. What if the numbers supporting the case for broad-based prosperity were themselves misrepresentations? What if, in fact, darker assessments of the economy were more authentically tethered to reality?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The discrepancy between what Americans were dealing with economically and what the government was telling them may not have been intentional, but it was hidden in the way the government statistics were calculated.<\/p>\n

The article explains:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures \u2014 the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November \u2014 counted homeless people doing occasional work as \u201cemployed.\u201d But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can\u2019t 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<\/i> unemployed in America today \u2014 hardly something to celebrate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article also notes the problem with the way the inflation numbers were calculated:<\/p>\n

But the CPI also perceives reality through a very rosy looking glass. Those with modest incomes purchase only a fraction of the 80,000 goods the CPI tracks, spending a much greater share of their earnings on basics like groceries, health care and rent. And that, of course, affects the overall figure: If prices for eggs, insurance premiums and studio apartment leases rise at a faster clip than those of luxury goods and second homes, the CPI underestimates the impact of inflation on the bulk of Americans. That, of course, is exactly what has happened.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My colleagues and I have modeled an alternative indicator, one that excludes many of the items that only the well-off tend to purchase \u2014 and tend to have more stable prices over time \u2014 and focuses on the measurements of prices charged for basic necessities, the goods and services that lower- and middle-income families typically can\u2019t avoid. Here again, the results reveal how the challenges facing those with more modest incomes are obscured by the numbers. Our alternative indicator reveals that, since 2001, the cost of living for Americans with modest incomes has risen 35 percent faster than the CPI. Put another way: The resources required simply to maintain the same working-class lifestyle over the last two decades have risen much more dramatically than we\u2019ve been led to believe.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A good statistician can get statistics to say anything he wants them to say, but Americans are smart enough to look at how far their paychecks are going rather than believing all of the statistics.<\/p>\n