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Is There Hope?
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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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politics
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And how do you explain to someone that how they "feel" about the economy is factually wrong? That all indicators show a healthy economy that has mostly recovered to pre-COVID levels of production, inflation is a global (not US localized) event, and even accounting for greedflation wages and purchasing power were up compared to the last 20 years?
You can't. The same way you can't tell them that the government isn't doing free sex change operations on prisoners or that children aren't pissing in litter boxes in school- they want to believe those things are true, because their authority figures have told them those things are true. The second you point out that the US has had significantly less inflation than other countries because of what the Fed did, or that the record-high stock market and low unemployment rates indicate an economy that is expanding, or that there's been a severe bird-flu outbreak that has impacted chicken and egg stocks which in turn has increased their prices, you get called a "liberal elite" who doesn't care about how Joe Q. Flyover feels about his grocery bill.
So the Joe Q. Flyover votes to give power to the asshole oligarchs who caused this whole mess in the first place, because he "feels" that they do better on the nebulous "economy".
There is no such thing as a factually wrong feeling. This is everything that's wrong with the liberal elites. The people say they don't feel great about things and the elites simply look down their nose at them and say, "you're factually wrong."
Fuck.Your.Indicators.
If a majority of people don't FEEL like the economy is doing well, then it's not doing well. Period.
This is mental.
There is empirical reality. If its raining your feelings that it's sunny are just fucking wrong.
The root problem is people being isolated within media and social bubbles where they are not being told the truth. Being barraged by “your feelings are knowledge”. They're not.
Did the Democrats reach those voters? Clearly not. But the fact remains the economy is not a legitimate reason to opt for policies that are all but certain to make it worse. Quantifiably so.
To wit - I feel like there's no rational basis for the outfome of the election. Does that change the fact? Is embracing my feelings going to make them real? How then to refute aside from “no, that's wrong?”
We are not dealing with an electorate that believes in empirical reality. Anyone who runs a campaign expecting people to believe statistics over their own lived experiences is bound to lose. As we saw on Tuesday.
Agreed - but how then do you reach someone not acknowledging the reality of their world?
If Timmy believes with all his heart there's a monster under his bed is the answer to agree with him or show him time and again that, no there isn't until he realizes it to be true?
Are we supposed to embrace it's now a post-factual world?
Apparently we do if we want to win elections.
As for Timmy: I'd find a shiny rock and have him participate in a ceremony to make it monster repellent. Then when he's scared he can rub the rock and the monster will go away.
If you want someone's support you need to meet them where they're at, not where you'd like them to be.
I sadly think that's an excellent point. I truly believed a message of hope and compassion woukd resonate far more than grievance and retribution. I believed most of my fellow citizens want optimism in leadership.
I think they want optimism, but they're also demanding change. There's a broad feeling that the situation we're in is untenable, and liberal parties around the world are losing to right-wing populists because they don't seem to get it.
But what represents that change when things are quantifiably pretty good? Opting for chaos? Change for the sole sake of change?
If he was an unknown quantity sure - but there's recent experience of his first term and it was a shit show. Embracing authoritarianism because…grocery prices? There's something more afoot. The logic doesn't hold and there must be a shred of logic in there somewhere.
I disagree that things are pretty good, and so did most of the country. Grocery prices are up. Housing and child care prices are insane. A significant injury or illness can still send you into bankruptcy. Income and wealth equality are still worse than before the French Revolution.
And I also disagree that people embraced authoritarianism. Trump won by default because the message the Harris campaign was sending didn't motivate people to get to the polls to support her.
But they did because his first administration did nothing to address any of those issues and in fact made them worse. Based on his record their choice (deliberate or no) was to choose demonstrated incompetence and malfeasance instead of moderate change.
The chicken is too meh so order the shit sandwich?
Look at the vote totals. Trump got about the same as he did the last two times. Democrats dramatically underperformed compared to 2020. The people who want to embrace authoritarianism did so like they always do, but the loss was from people who couldn't be bothered to go vote for continuing the status quo
Yeah, discussing that in another thread. People just blowing off voting….insane.
It's insane to us, but unless we can figure out how to get them to do it we're never going to have a Democrat in charge again.
But a person's feelings about their economic and financial situation is not something that can be proven "wrong" empirically. If a person feels stressed about making rent, or frustrated about higher grocery prices, or pessimistic about their job prospects, there is no study or experiment you can conduct that can empirically prove those feelings or anxieties are "wrong."
It's not so much that people are claiming that the economic indicators are false or incorrect, because that is something that can be definitely disproven, it's that they don't feel great about the economy DESPITE the indicators being good, which means the economic indicators might not be very good at actually indicating how people are going to feel about the economy.
Sure and I get it. I'm not on a yacht to be sure.
But how do you respond to a nebulous feeling? Biden took millions of loans off people's shoulders. Kamala was specifically citing lower tax bills and home loan support. The GOP will deliver no such relief.
I heard time and again the economy is stable - AND people are still struggling. Hell she pointed out high prices and corporate profiteering. It wasn't ignored.
That's where I slam into a wall. Opting for “likely way worse” when “ok but could be better” was on the table.
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
I don't know what messaging would have worked better, and I don't know why people chose Trump over Kamala. I don't believe Trump will make their situations better, in fact I think he likely will make them worse, but a majority of voters didn't see it that way. Again, I don't know why that is, other than at some point it became a popular idea that Trump was simply "better on the economy."
What I really, really want people to understand is that while I don't understand why people chose Trump that doesn't mean the economic anxieties that drove them to do it are not real. They are real, and their feelings about the economy should not be dismissed because they don't necessarily align with what the economic indicators seem to be telling us.
Yeah man agreed.
So if I feel that 2+2=5, or the earth is flat, I'm not factually wrong?
That's not a feeling, that's a claim or an hypothesis. Such claims can be based on feelings, but the claims themselves can be empirically tested. What can't be empirically proven or disproven, however, is whether or not someone's subjective feelings about something are "right" or "wrong." So, if you ask someone how they feel about the economy, and they say, "I don't feel good about it," there is no way to prove that feeling is factually "wrong."
Thank you for proving my point better than I ever could.
As a famous right-wing grifter said, "Facts don't care about your feelings."
Is there a fediverse version of /r/confidentlyincorrect?
You've proven nothing. Feelings are not hypotheses that can be tested through experimentation or research. There is no objectively right or correct emotional reaction to a situation or experience. If someone feels anxiety or stress about their economic situation, there is no objective, verifiable way of proving that feeling is "factually wrong."
You're conflating how someone feels about a situation, with whether that feeling is rational, then screaming about the "lIBeral ELiteS!" when that is pointed out to you.
People can feel whatever they want about the economy. The question is, should they feel that way? And by literally any possible way to measure that, the answer is no.
Or to put it another way, if I asked you why you feel the economy is bad, and you can't point to anything to explain that it is (or flatly refuse to accept any explanation) that I give, then you should rightly be told you're wrong, because you are.
Yes, that's true.
You're making a normative claim. It's the is/ought distinction. There is no objectively true way to determine how someone ought to feel. You think they shouldn't feel that way. Yet, they feel that way regardless. It's not up to you, you are not an all powerful god who gets to decide how people should feel.
I'm sure if you asked them they would give you a number of reasons for why they feel the economy isn't doing well. They might say they feel housing prices are too high, or that they're struggling to pay their bills, or that they feel pessimistic about their employment prospects, or that they're worried they won't be able to save enough for retirement, or that healthcare costs are too high, etc, etc.