This is mainly for us jellies, isn't the economy in the states doing very well right now?

I don’t think you’re missing a thing!!! The right can’t admit it without making themselves look bad & they are NOT going to tell their base to vote Left or they will ALL lose their jobs!!! Although 45 refuses to admit it, gas prices have come down. Somewhere in the country you might find $8/gal prices, but where I live it’s $2.57/gal. Eggs are NO longer $6/doz. Honestly, I’d prefer to pay $8/gal for gas than have 45 back in office!!!

Things seem much better here to me but there is a pervasive crankiness and unhappiness – at least in online fora. And I do have an overwhelming sense of dread about the Mid-East War and the prospect of a Trumpian take-over next year.

At least Biden is working toward some type of middle ground in the Middle-East in place of calling Netanyahu names. I’m scared to death of another 45 reign, but all I can do is VOTE & pray for the best outcome!!! I don’t think I can take another 4 years from 45. Until we know the outcome, I’m going to ENJOY the hell out of this little bit of peace that we’ve had!!!

Oh, I think calling Netanyahu names is what’s needed but I agree with the rest of what you said

And in addition to voting personally, I will be writing letters and working for the election to go our way.

Yes, things are exceedingly improved from 2–3 years ago (COVID) and all the ruckus that called. I was looking at my brokerage account yesterday and it has recovered fully from all the bad stuff COVID caused, and the various inflationary stuff.

So objectively it is much, much better than it was several years ago.

BUT that doesn’t match the republican narrative (the sky is falling!) so they will never admit it. They will lie repeatedly for political reasons.

Perception is key. If you are objective, things are good. If you’re a republican, things are awful.

Yes.
I was just asking my wife this morning, “So what’ll it be today, canoe paddling, canasta or profit taking?” HA!

The Biden campaign hasn’t been pushing the success yet. Once he gears up, people will see it.

There aren’t really any other entities on this site other than Jellies, right?
Or?

It’s pretty good for those of us already established. If you need a home, an education, possibly a car and a job that can help you pay for all this, well, good luck. I don’t think it has been this hard for young people in the last 40 years or so. I still find the cost of necessities higher than they should be. Certainly my retirement accounts have recovered numerically though.

@rebbel I just figured out that he must have meant “US” Jellies, not us jellies.

Police shootings have nothing to do with the economic indicators.

No it isn’t doing very well right now. Housing prices are getting up in price and rental prices are at an all time high. New adults are finding it difficult to move into their own place because of this. Cost of groceries is still up and increasing. Simple things like butter at $8/lb, bread at $4—$5/loaf, chicken running at $3/lb, etc. Electricity is high, water is high, and taxes are high. The only thing that hasn’t gone up with the prices is the wages.

I will say that gasoline prices have started going down a little, though they are still about $1.20 over what Biden inherited. Even the claim that unemployment is down is a sham. This trend shows that the number of working people has pretty much leveled out for the past 6 years, while the number of people in the country has gone up at a much higher rate. Population goes up and number of working people does not means unemployment is going down? Kinda hard to believe.

The thing about claims of improving economy is the timeframe of what they are looking at. Biden started “improving” the economy after he tanked it. If you drive up costs of everything in life by 40% and the manage to get it to come down by 2%, that isn’t an improvement. It’s less of a screw job.

“Inflation coming down” just means that prices aren’t rising at such an alarming rate as they were recently, but they are still rising steadily. “Unemployment is low” doesn’t say anything about the quality of the jobs or whether they pay a living wage. There’s more to economic prosperity that a few charted trends.

Two bags of groceries shouldn’t cost $20—$30 more than they did just a few years ago. Prices of many items, as well as rent and the cost to own a home, are still sky high, yet wages largely remain unchanged (and meanwhile we continue to give billions to Israel and Ukraine). People are feeling it, and being told “everything’s fine” by the mainstream media doesn’t alleviate that.

This economy is deeper than who is in office. A lot has transpired to get us here. There is no shortage of jobs to be had, which is good because you may need more than one to make ends meet. Your retirement accounts have bounced back. Yay! They have lost 20–25% of their buying power since the pandemic. Most of us have not made that back in returns. Again, those of us who were already in a house, have not made any big purchases in the last five years and don’t have a bunch of kids likely don’t understand just how hard it is for a good portion of the population. TVs are cheap though. yay! Honestly, things kinda suck right now if you’re college-aged, raising a new family, or are a blue collar worker without any special skillset. but I’m not blaming any political party on this. Both fucked us pretty bad when you’re objective about it.

I like how Biden gets blamed for tanking the economy, which happened when Trump’s best friend Putin invaded Ukraine that got Putin’s oil sanctioned and started driving up fuel prices, thus inflating the price of all goods.
How do you blame Government ANY government for the price of housing?
If the demand for housing is there of course it’s going to go up, the only thing government can do is increase interest rates to slow it down. and that will hurt joe working slob just trying to get in the market.

@SQUEEKY2 I’m not so sure Ukraine would have been invaded with Trump in office. Trump is that loose canon who is unpredictable, so you don’t mess around with them. This Israel thing may not have happened without things going on in Ukraine. Now we are in two proxy wars.
I can blame gov’t for the housing crisis to a degree. We allowed corporate investment in the housing market. Dirty, manipulative investment that should not be tolerated. Much of the housing cost increase is artificial, and we may see a correction when they pull out of it.

@Blackwater_Park Trump was Putin’s puppy. If Putin wanted to invade Ukraine, which he did, Trump would not have stopped him. And IMHO, the war in Israel had nothing to do with the war in Ukraine.

I’m with @janbb on that.

@janbb I could not disagree more. I think Russia has been meddling with our politics for quite some time. Trump did not follow the anticipated path, and that confused them. Put someone completely predictable in, like Biden, and they’re back on the path they were taking.

I don’t think the economy is very good. It’s not as bad as the Republicans say, but it’s not as good as you say. IMHO, you’re both starting with the conclusion you want and cherry picking the data you need to support the conclusion. That is the way this always goes. Everyone badmouths the economy when the other team is in power, and vice versa.

The economy is improving from ‘quite poor’ to ‘meh’ on my very arbitrary rating system. The big problem is we just had 3 year of substantially declining wages after adjusting for inflation. This is the most important economic statistic, and while I am not a Trumpette, real wages GREW during Trump’s first few years in office after having stagnated before that. It’s like the ONE half-decent argument for Trump.

I say half-decent, because I think that even if covid hadn’t happened, Trump’s trade wars would have reversed that trend. Further, Biden’s inflation is at least half owned by Trump as far as i’m concerned for a number of reasons.

IMHO, arguing “the economy is fine” to people who have seen their buying power decline sharply the last three years makes Biden supporters sounds tone deaf politically. I think the less said about the economy the better for the purposes of defeating Trump. He’s MUCH more vulnerable on the grounds of democracy issues. Biden needs to make sure everyone remembers that this man tried to overturn an election via extralegal means. Fortunately, the trials will do that to some extent, even if Biden can’t.

IMO I think if Trump was still in when Putin invaded Ukraine Trump would go out of his mind trying to convince the Americans they should Help Putin succeed at it.

@SQUEEKY2 “I like how Biden gets blamed for tanking the economy, which happened when Trump’s best friend Putin invaded Ukraine that got Putin’s oil sanctioned and started driving up fuel prices, thus inflating the price of all goods.”

Your claims don’t fit the facts. This chart shows the overall cost for a gallon of gasoline in the US over time. You see the price was effectively level for the last 6 months of 2020 (Trump as POTUS). When Big Joe took over, prices immediately jumped $0.20 per gallon and continued up. By the end of 2021, the price of a gallon of gasoline had gone up $1.20/gal from the end of 2020. By March of 2022, when Biden put sanctions on Russian oil, the price of a gallon of gas was already up another $0.20/gal over that and his sanctions drove it up another $0.70/gal. It peaked in July of that year at over $5.00/gal. More than a 100% increase over what he inherited. It should be noted also that in response to his own idiocy he drained 40% of our strategic reserves.

Another thing to consider is why the prices were going up. Trump had us effectively energy independent. We had the ability to provide for ourselves without depending on foreign oil. Biden, upon taking office, immediately got rid of all the initiatives Trump had put into place and drove us immediately back to being dependent on foreign oil. In other words, his policies undid policies that were working, creating a problem that he then made worse with other actions. This falls 100% on Biden.

As for Putin being Trump’s buddy, you and @janbb have some weird views. You claim Putin could have invaded Ukraine when Trump was in office and he would have let it happen. Yet you ignore the question “Why didn’t he then?”. You want to make Biden out to be some sort of strong leader that is standing up to a tyrant. If that was true, then why wouldn’t Putin have invaded when he had the support of his buddy (as you claim)? He could have invaded and faced basically no blow back, right? Please. I know you hate Trump and can’t say anything bad about a Democrat, but open your eyes, at least for yourself.

Putin did not invade Ukraine because Trump wanted to weaken NATO. Trump was doing Putin’s work for him.

As for the number of workers, it has been rising fairly steadily for a while. There was a dip due to Covid, but the numbers are back. Link

No, not for working class Americans. Some companies are just now giving cost of living increases needed all year, insurance went up 19% raising mortgage payments and vehi le insurance, and groceries are still high.

I help with clothing and food in my community and need hasnt been this high in a long time.

@LostInParadise Just as a side note, getting rid of NATO is probably the right thing, at least for us. NATO was created to protect Eastern Europe and Europe against the USSR following WWII and during the cold war. Since the USSR no longer exists and the cold war ended when it crumbled in 1991.

Right now it is effectively duplicating what the UN is supposed to be doing.

I believe oil/gas prices are controlled by OPEC.

Trump wanted to drill, baby, drill, in national parks, which Trump lovers would say is not a problem but environmentalists say is terrible for the flora and fauna in the area.

There may be less people working now due to attrition. After the pandemic, lots of people reassessed their lives and their values and their priorities, (me included) and said “stop the world, I want to get off.”

@jca2 Gas/Oil prices are currently controlled by OPEC. That’s why Trump got us energy independent. And looking at the trends, it worked. Stopping his policies is what returned us to being at the mercy of the OPEC nations and foreign oil.

Wulfie you keep going on that under your hero the states were dependent on their own oil, and under evil joe your not so does that mean the states are now exporting oil?
And if you take Canadian oil out of your fantasy,the states were never self dependant on oil.

@SQUEEKY2 No. When Trump opened up production in the US it opened up the idea that we were not required to import to keep up. It was pointed out that he opened up drilling in various federal lands. We could buy foreign oil if it was cheap enough, but we weren’t required to. Biden put a hold on a lot of the production in this country and definitely spike the XL pipeline which not only got rid of a potential oil source going forward but tanked about 6000 jobs. We suddenly did not have enough production in this country for our needs so we suddenly became dependent on foreign oil (again). And since he campaigned on cutting our oil production, as soon as he took office the market responded. And it didn’t take long (less than a month) to start undoing what Trump did. He brought on the entire mess. Yes, he is to blame for all his problems. No, the economy isn’t getting better. It is still far worse than when he took office. If I drive up your cost of living by 50% and then, 3 years later, show the economy is only 45% higher than when I took office, that isn’t really improving the economy. I might be classified as a minute drop in the suckage of my policies.

Federal lands?? Say it what it really is pristine wilderness and park lands, where the industrialized impact of oil drilling would seriously damage them forever, not to mention the impact of water ways ,and wildlife .
Your right Biden is a evil dude.

Let’s drill for oil in the Grand Canyon (with friends of the Tangerine Turd running the drilling companies) !

Profit before people a famous line in Trump’s company platform (remember Trump University ???)! ! !

Exactly !!^
Who the hell cares about the environment ,keep the cost of fuel down and company profits high.
Heck children of tomorrow can always go see a bear, wolf,or a mountain lion in a museum.

You’re right. What was I thinking? All that land was pristine wilderness and park lands. It had to be because it was federal land, right? It’s much better to screw the entire country than to possible mar that pristine wilderness.

Well ^ That comment does show me that Rep/cons could give a shit about the environment .
Thanks for clearing that up.

@SQUEEKY2 I think you need to do a little research on “federal land”. Most of what is owned by the Federal Government is not the idyllic land you would believe. Not to mention federal lands constitute about 29% of our entire country. I is owned by the feds for a variety of reasons including control of natural resources. If the government decides to allow removal of oil from these lands, that is a natural resource. Nowhere in our rules does it say the Feds can only keep land for parks and that it must be kept in a natural state.

Allowing people to drill for oil on a little of this land (little in reference to the entirety of what is owned) would be a good investment in the country (the people) and a good use of that land.

@seawulf575 According to the Wall Street Journal, we should drill in Yellowstone National Park. Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/drilling-yellowstone-energy-caldera-eruption-geothermal-super-volcano-renewable-11635449956

As far as what is a “good use of this land” that’s a matter of opinion.

I think it’s one of those things, one of many things, which both sides (Democrats and Republicans) will never agree on. Republicans feel that any place (including a pristine wilderness such as Yellowstone) should be up for corporations to pillage and plunder by drilling, and Democrats feel that those places should be off limits and if there is going to be any drilling going on, it should be elsewhere.

I know that Biden did agree in 2022 to open up some lands for drilling that were not previously agreed on, and it did upset Democrats, so I think he was trying to make concessions about it.

@jca2 I couldn’t read all of that article as I haven’t subscribed to WSJ. But what I could read was interesting. It wasn’t about drilling for oil, it was about drilling to use the caldera in Yellowstone as a geothermal energy source. I think it was trying to say that this could help stave off the eruption that seems to be due relatively soon as well as providing a whole lot of carbon free energy. Not a bad thought though drilling into a volcano seems an awfully dangerous thing.

So that brings up the question: is giving up a little of Yellowstone’s pristine wilderness to be able to produce zero carbon energy that could provide power for a whole lot of people as well as possibly staving off a major environmental event that could damage the whole world a good use of that land? Is it a fair trade off?

@seawulf575 I don’t think it’s a good tradeoff and it’s a matter of opinion, as I said above, I think it’s something Republicans and Democrats may not ever agree on. To me, Yellowstone is too pristine of a wilderness. To have oil rigs and pipelines and trucks going in and out is not what I would like to see

I was just in Yellowstone in 2022 and it was pristine, serene and incredibly gorgeous. On the same trip, I was also in Montana and Wyoming and in some of the beautiful places I visited (for example, Bighorn National Forest), I can’t imagine seeing oil drilling there.

Others may feel differently and that’s ok.

@jca2 I understand entirely. When I was in the service I was stationed in Idaho Falls for 9 months. I love that area and have been to Yellowstone numerous times. But the article you supplied wasn’t talking about drilling for oil in Yellowstone, they were talking about setting up geothermal energy production that would provide carbon free energy as well as potentially easing the pressure building up under the caldera.

Here’s a thought for all of you environmentally conscious SJWs (and this goes well beyond just @jca2): Why should it be okay for Los Angeles to basically reroute the water from the Colorado River to supply water for their city? That drains down the river and adversely impacts the environment all along the river. Does that usage tap into your outrage for impacting pristine lands? Should that usage be outlawed? Or is it being viewed as an effort for a large number of people?