TIL- The idea of how much you can afford to buy with your income is called “real income.” And if real income falls, that’s called a recession.
booly @ booly @sh.itjust.works Posts 2Comments 487Joined 2 yr. ago
booly @ booly @sh.itjust.works
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Housing, education, and healthcare costs have grown much faster than inflation.
Food, energy, cars, appliances and home goods, furniture, apparel, and other durable goods have generally grown slower than inflation, at least between 1980 and 2020. Much of the last 5 years of inflation, though have eaten away at some of those gains of the previous 30-40 years in those categories.
Electronics, technology, entertainment, most services have generally gone down in price.
So the basket of what we buy is different, with different ratios. A time traveler from the 80's would be shocked to learn just how many ready made rotisserie chickens or pizzas you could buy for the wage equivalent to one hour of warehouse work, or how many big screen TVs you'd need to pay the average monthly rent for a 1-bedroom apartment. Plane tickets between New York and LA are basically cheaper than one month's rent in the cheapest possible home you can find in either of those cities. The ratios are all different than before.
But with housing costs high, it kind of puts all of the effort into that single basket. When it used to be that 1/3 your income could comfortably go into housing costs, now in many cities it's closer to half, even for people up the income scale, because the rest of life beyond having a roof over your head is just cheaper in comparison to that very basic need for shelter.
GDI is supposed to be basically equivalent to GDP, so it's not a better number to use. Sometimes the numbers diverge (see here for a discussion of this issue in 2022) because they use different methodologies to determine the number, but that's usually a sign that some kind of measurement is off, not that there's some kind of actual divergence in the true numbers of what they purport to measure.
And we moved away from Gross National Product/Income to Gross Domestic Product/Income because it was a better look at the domestic economy. We care more about the production/income within national borders rather than the production/income of a particular nation's residents.
Seriously. It's like looking at a map of a battle and assuming the arrows are actual terrain features.
The poverty line was historically measured simply by multiplying the USDA's cheapest food plan for a household to buy groceries with adequate nutrition, and multiplying by 3.
Then, in the intervening 6 decades or so, food inflation has gone up significantly slower than housing inflation, to where that simple assumption of "barely enough to eat, times 3" began systematically understating actual poverty.
Today, feeding the reference family of 4 (2 adults 20-50, 1 kid aged 6-8, 1 aged 9-11) costs $996.20 per month (as of March 2025). That's basically $12,000 per year, so the poverty line for a family of 4 is $32,150 (updated every January with September data).
Their tattoos?
They also know hurting themselves.
General Milley was his first term appointee for Chair of the Joint Chiefs, and one of the first things Trump did in his second term was to strip Milley of his security clearance, security detail, and even his placement of his portrait with the other former chairs.
Jerome Powell was Trump's pick for Chair of the Federal Reserve, replacing Yellen (the first time that a Fed chair had not gotten a second term, and Trump has been clamoring for the power to fire him.
Jan. 6 "rally"? Uhhhh
He's fired a bunch of lower level officials.
His pick for acting US Attorney for SDNY (basically Manhattan) was fired a few weeks later for refusing to drop charges against Eric Adams.
The acting IRS commissioner has changed over 5 times in the 90 days of this current presidency, including the most recent firing of a guy that was too close to Elon (in some kind of Bessent-Musk feud), just a few days after his appointment. The previous acting commissioner was fired for refusing to illegally share IRS data with DHS to help with immigration enforcement.
And the current turmoil in the Pentagon is the firings of people he appointed to these positions. It's a mess.
This is how politics works under an authoritarian: senior officials throwing other officials under the bus by appeal to the authoritarian's ego.
It's good to remember that Trump's entire MO is to never concede.
It's also true that there are internal factions fighting for power and influence, that often results in incoherent flip flopping. Constant external pressure on the administration intensifies the internet discord, and is also worth doing for that reason.
The biggest news out of this meeting is that Sen. Van Hollen reports that Abrego Garcia was transferred out of CECOT to another prison last week:
Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia said he had been “traumatized” by being at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, and fearful of detainees in other cell blocks “who called out to him and taunted him in various ways.”
Abrego Garcia said he was transferred last week to a different detention center with better conditions, but still had no ability to communicate with anyone outside the facility, the senator said.
The public pressure on this is working. The mere fact that Bukele felt the need to try to stage a photo op by the swimming pool of a luxury hotel means that he cares about appearances. Let's keep the pressure on.
In today's statements, Sen. Van Hollen said that Abrego Garcia said he was transferred out of CECOT last week, to another prison. The Senator believes that the public pressure is influencing the actions of the Salvadorean government. The attention on this case is working, and is making a difference.
In the courtroom where his case is being heard in Maryland, protesters from the street can be heard. This shit makes a difference.
Let's keep it up.
shows how you know this,
Ok, where to begin. I'm a lawyer with decades of experience, including with the occasional case that involves the government. I know how to read a case and follow the news from an informed perspective, and I recognize the individual traits/characteristics/background of the judges involved. There's not one place to read it, but let's try.
Here's a litigation tracker that updates on all the big lawsuits trying to rein in Trump's lawlessness:
https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
CTRL+F "Abrego Garcia" for the rundown of Kilmar's case. "Update 5" describes the appellate court's decision not to stay the district court's order to "facilitate and effectuate," and contains a link to the opinion, which includes Judge Wilkinson's concurrence that "facilitate" is a legal order but "effectuate" might exceed the court's power to order the government to do specific things in foreign policy matters. The Supreme Court agreed that "facilitate" was a lawful order, but told the district court to make sure it doesn't overstep by ordering "effectuation" in a way that infringes on the President's constitutional powers.
Judge Wilkinson is a Reagan appointee who is widely regarded as a superstar in the Republican party, in Federalist Society circles. He was an influential thinker and jurist on conservative causes, and clerking for him as a first job out of law school is a marker of an up and coming conservative lawyer superstar. Many of those clerks went on to clerk for Scalia, Roberts, etc. Clerking for him remains a fairly prominent part of the pipeline for future Republican judges and politicians.
Yesterday, he wrote the majority opinion for the Fourth Circuit that makes very clear that the government's position is "shocking" and a threat to "the foundation of our constitutional order."
The work continues. This is just one case. All the other cases will have different results, but Trump isn't going to win all of them, and each Trump loss draws blood, while his lack of focus means that he'll continue to make unforced errors while opening new fronts to fight on: Gulf of Mexico, Greenland, Tariffs, picking a fight with the chair of the Federal Reserve, flip flopping on which federal programs or contracts to cut, all the different mistakes in administration, etc.
I'm not on board with doomerism or even accelerationism. I think there's still a fight to be had in the legal arena, and I still think our side can win there. Watching how the cases are playing out confirms that the other side believes it, too. Otherwise, why would they be fighting this hard?
Alaska is just weird, and I wouldn't attribute too much in national electoral trends to that specific state. It now has an instant runoff general election after a top-4 jungle primary, which makes the craziest candidates less viable. Sarah Palin is very much a Trumpist, but couldn't win a statewide election in 2022 (enough Republicans in the state hate her that they voted for Begich first, then flipped to the Democrat or didn't vote once Begich dropped out in the instant runoff).
It'd be hard to properly analyze a hypothetical about Murkowski running for reelection amidst a Trump attack campaign and an endorsement of a more Trumpist opponent, but I wouldn't discount her chances even in that environment. Especially if she does succeed in forming a mini caucus with other Republican Senators that fight to preserve legislative power to check the Presidency.
It's not just free weather reports, either. It's weather reports at all! The paid services all rely on the public data with their own layers of analysis built on that foundation. If the foundation crumbles, the expensive stuff built on top of that will break, too.
Update: Sen Van Hollen stuck around and fought for it, and in the end was able to meet with him:
That's why I'm in these threads saying it's worth it to fight this out in every avenue. In the courts, in the legislatures, in the media, on social media, in the streets.
Trump claimed to be able to deport people without courts being able to review. The Supreme Court rejected that view, and now the Trump administration has to spend the effort defending its actions in court.
Under tough questioning by a judge in a case aggressively litigated by Kilmar's family, Trump's lawyers then acknowledged an administrative error was made and that Kilmar shouldn't have been deported. They fired the first lawyer to concede it, but the Solicitor General conceded it, too, and the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Trump has to help get him back.
Sen. Van Hollen went to El Salvador to meet with him. Many comments online, especially here on Lemmy, openly commented that it was futile and that Kilmar was dead. But Sen Van Hollen doesn't give up that easily, showed up in country and was turned away. Then he stayed and fought for access, and was able to meet with him and ensure that he was healthy and safe.
Meanwhile, the Reagan appointee on the appellate court, Judge Wilkinson, has published a scathing ruling that the Trump administration owes the courts and Kilmar Abrego Garcia much more. Note that his concurring opinion last time around essentially became adopted as the 9-0 Supreme Court opinion.
There's cynicism all around, but most of what has already happened is the type of stuff that the cynical pessimists would've never expected to happen in this case.
The brazen lawlessness of the Trump administration is currently backfiring, and now things are escalating into full blown discovery into the ICE/DHS deportation decisions,
The message is that this fight is still worth fighting. Every little step matters.
And when we force these issues into the court for plainclothes arrests, arbitrary revocation of student visas or other authorizations to be in the country, we force the Trump administration to actually say what they're doing, to be scrutinized and analyzed.
The lawsuits are bringing transparency and may still bring results, so quit with the doomerism. Even if we don't win every fight, the struggle continues, and we force the other side to expend their resources and effort in a way that makes it harder for them to accomplish their agenda.
Donate to the nonprofits fighting for this stuff. Volunteer your time. This fight is worth fighting.
Beef is a bad example. It used to be cheaper than chicken and similar to pork, but the real cost of that land use policy that would allow such grazing in the west, and then the subsidies that make factory farm feedlots possible, wasn't properly borne by the ranchers themselves. Today's cost of beef is a better reflection of the true cost of raising that meat, that inefficiently.
If you do the same analysis with chicken or pork, you'll find that we can and do afford to eat a lot more of those particular meats than we used to.
I fully expect beef to go like tuna, and slowly become a luxury item only for the rich within my lifetime. That is more of a trend with beef itself than broader trends in inflation generally.