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Joe Biden 2023: The Dark Brandon Rises


StassneyHorn

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To me, it appears that Biden is toeing the line between support of an ally and not-alienating the groups that sympathize with their adversary quite well, but then I log onto Twitter and you'd think he was donning an IDF uniform and personally murdering Palestinians. 

I know I am not an unbiased when it comes to this issue, so I genuinely ask: what the hell am I missing?

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30 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

To me, it appears that Biden is toeing the line between support of an ally and not-alienating the groups that sympathize with their adversary quite well, but then I log onto Twitter and you'd think he was donning an IDF uniform and personally murdering Palestinians. 

I know I am not an unbiased when it comes to this issue, so I genuinely ask: what the hell am I missing?

You're actually trying to be unbiased and use critical thinking, as opposed to just letting your emotional biases run through you like chicken wings through a Ketchum. That makes you about, uh, in the 10% minority in this country.  And I'm being generous with the 10%. 

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55 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

To me, it appears that Biden is toeing the line between support of an ally and not-alienating the groups that sympathize with their adversary quite well, but then I log onto Twitter and you'd think he was donning an IDF uniform and personally murdering Palestinians. 

I know I am not an unbiased when it comes to this issue, so I genuinely ask: what the hell am I missing?

I don't think you are missing anything and I'm just as confused.

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3 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

sure, but the tail wags the dog somewhat here. perception is a huge factor in the health of the "the economy"

This is true except the public gets the perception from the doomsday news and Facebook memes. 95% of the voting public doesn’t know what GDP is 

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17 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

let me guess: no one wants to actually admit we're doing pretty well so they'll just have middling predictions which will get blown out of the water with the actual data. close? it'd be fun if they swung the other way and gave Joe a challenge. but then they would have to admit they were wrong. nope, just keep up the bullshit rhetoric. pride is a motherfucker

 

7 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

Markets don’t care about politics 

Forecast is 4.3%, but many are betting it comes in higher 

 

6 hours ago, G650 said:

4.9%

Well would you look at that. Who woulda thunk it?!

If I were 10%+ off in my job, buildings would fall down and people would die and I would be in jail. Why do these jackholes get away with it?

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17 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

The highest GDP under Trump was 4.6%.  During the Biden administration, the two highest quarters have been +7.0% and +4.9% (current).

Hmmm.

Yeah but remember, the numbers were fudged and fake under Obama and now Biden.  The real numbers were under Trump. 

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Hey guys, I'm very particular about misinformation being posted in my thread.

Donald Trump, in Q2 2020, presided over the single largest decline in GDP the history of mankind has ever seen at -31.7% after he allowed businesses to shut down all over the united states, ruined everyone's paychecks and actual livelihoods, and deferred leadership to others.

BUT, he did oversee in Q3 2020, THE SINGLE HUGEST GAIN IN GDP THE HISTORY OF MANKIND HAS EVER SEEN AT 33.1%. He was able to accomplish this by taking from our hardworking, conservative taxpayer's money and handing it out to every American regardless of work ethic. He then established a PPP print button that gave out more money than college grads with loans have seen and got rid of the oversight on his way out of office. CHESS mf'ers not checkers.

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Joe Biden has narrowed wealth inequality while increasing amount of millionaires by 60%, per librul rag The Wall Street Journal. 

2022 Fed data reveals that real average wealth was up 23% over the preceding three years and median wealth jumped 37% during that time. These so-called "mini-millionaires" are considered members of a growing upper middle class — college-educated homeowners who have been strategic (and fortunate) about building their wealth.

16 million Americans are now considered "true millionaires," compared to just under 10 million in 2019, per the Fed

Source data: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/never-mind-the-1-mini-millionaires-are-where-wealth-is-growing-fastest-b1dd2ee7?mod=wknd_pos1

Spoiler
Last week the Federal Reserve revealed that last year the average net worth of American families topped $1 million for the first time, surging 42% from $749,000 in 2019. 
 
Of course, that average is skewed by a small number of billionaires and multimillionaires. Inflation meant real wealth didn’t increase as much. And pandemic-era stimulus boosted asset values, perhaps beyond their fundamental values.
Yet it would be a mistake to therefore conclude that wealth gains are purely a phenomenon of the top 1% and flattered by inflation and asset bubbles.
 
First, even after inflation, real average wealth was up 23%, according to the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances, conducted every three years. Second, while the level of median wealth was much lower than the average, it actually rose more than the average between 2019 and 2022—by 37%, adjusted for inflation—to $193,000. That means wealth inequality actually narrowed.
Third, and perhaps most noteworthy, there really are a lot of true millionaires. About 16 million American families—just over 12%—have wealth exceeding $1 million, up from 9.8 million families in 2019. Nearly eight million families are multimillionaires, i.e., their wealth exceeds $2 million, up from 4.7 million.
 

A portrait of mini-millionaires

Who are these mini-millionaires? They generally earn between $150,000 and $250,000 a year. They wouldn’t typically be considered rich, but upper middle class. (This depends to some extent on where they live: The same house is worth more in some parts of the country.)
Rather than being left behind as all the gains in the economy accrue to billionaires, they have in fact seen bigger wealth gains over the past three years than the top 10% of families. Indeed, the biggest wealth gains between 2019 and 2022 were among the approximately 13 million families in the 80th to 90th percentile of the income distribution. Their median wealth jumped 69% from 2019, adjusted for inflation, to $747,000 in 2022.
To be sure, for many American families the surge in prices since the onset of the pandemic means that wealth doesn’t feel as good as it sounds. Nonetheless, as these figures show, the increase in net worth for these families has far outpaced inflation.
 
Over 90% of these families report owning stocks, either directly or through retirement accounts, and 87% own their home. They benefited extraordinarily from low interest rates, cutting debt payments as a share of their incomes to 19% in 2007 to 12.9% in 2022.
 
The Survey of Consumer Finances is the most detailed data set collected on household wealth. For the survey, 4,602 households completed detailed questionnaires, enumerating all assets, including real estate, stocks, bonds, bank accounts, retirement accounts, cryptocurrencies and so on, and all liabilities, such as mortgages, auto loans, credit-card debt and student loans. Net worth is defined as all assets minus all liabilities.
 
These insights have important implications, both for our national narrative and where the economy is headed. 

College, savings and timing

Rather than being swallowed by the 1%, the economy, according to these numbers, is creating a growing upper middle class. Many people got there by pursuing college degrees, steadily building retirement accounts and purchasing homes. For the most part, they became wealthy slowly, and were well-positioned when pandemic-era stimulus programs boosted asset values. 
Economists have often attributed the strength of consumer spending, which propelled economic growth to a sizable 4.9% annualized rate in the third quarter, to “excess household savings” amassed since 2019.
 
That might be the wrong way of thinking about it. Nancy Vanden Houten, U.S. lead economist for Oxford Economics, recently asked: Do households “have more excess savings, or is it just wealth now?” The implication of her question is that as people come to regard the excess cash in their checking accounts as wealth, they might be less likely to spend it. The rise of millionaires, in other words, might not be transitory.
Though stock indexes and measures of home prices, such as the median home price from the National Association of Realtors, are down from earlier this year as interest rates have climbed, their valuations are mostly higher than they were when the survey was conducted, from May to December of last year. Higher interest rates might eventually knock some people off their millionaire status, but likely haven’t yet.

‘Temporarily embarrassed’ millionaires

John Steinbeck once said the U.S. “didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.” Steinbeck meant their dreams of prosperity were delusional. And yet there’s a grain of truth to it. It is true that there are gaping disparities of wealth in the U.S. today. Nonetheless, many people whose wealth would define them as poor expect one day to be rich—and many, in fact, will be. For example, only 1% of families under 35 are millionaires, but that rises with age. By ages 55-64, 21% of families are millionaires.
This trend is particularly pronounced among college graduates, of whom 45% were millionaires between ages 55-64. That includes 26% of families who become multimillionaires and 11% with a net worth over $5 million. The average college graduate’s net worth is over $2 million now, though as usual this is skewed by those at the very top.
Make no mistake, there is still poverty and economic struggle in the U.S. Many families have little or no wealth, and limited prospect of accumulating any. And yet the idea that only the 1% are getting richer is at odds with the numbers.

 

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Let’s talk about Bidenomics. Shall we?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-economic-growth-accelerates-third-quarter-2023-10-26/

  • Third-quarter GDP increases at 4.9% rate
  • Consumer spending accelerates; business investment soft
  • Inventory accumulation, government spending offer boost

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew almost 5% in the third quarter, again defying dire warnings of a recession, as higher wages from a tight labor market helped to fuel consumer spending and businesses restocked at a brisk clip to meet the strong demand.

The fastest growth pace in nearly two years reported by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday in its advance estimate of third-quarter gross domestic product was also spurred by a rebound in residential investment after contracting for nine straight quarters.

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On 10/26/2023 at 11:09 AM, Js1 said:

This is true except the public gets the perception from the doomsday news and Facebook memes. 95% of the voting public doesn’t know what GDP is 

I've asked some MAGA relatives to explain the GDP when they were bitching about Biden, and most couldn't or it was inflation.  Most of them even mangled what GDP stood for.  "General something Productivity" seemed to be the main guess.

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If we compare the current growth rate in a historical context, we discover that GDP Growth Rate in the United States averaged 3.19 percent from 1947 until 2023, reaching an all time high of 34.80 percent in the third quarter of 2020 and a record low of -28.00 percent in the second quarter of 2020.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth#:~:text=GDP Growth Rate in the,the second quarter of 2020.

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23 hours ago, StassneyHorn said:

Joe Biden has narrowed wealth inequality while increasing amount of millionaires by 60%, per librul rag The Wall Street Journal. 

2022 Fed data reveals that real average wealth was up 23% over the preceding three years and median wealth jumped 37% during that time. These so-called "mini-millionaires" are considered members of a growing upper middle class — college-educated homeowners who have been strategic (and fortunate) about building their wealth.

16 million Americans are now considered "true millionaires," compared to just under 10 million in 2019, per the Fed

Source data: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/never-mind-the-1-mini-millionaires-are-where-wealth-is-growing-fastest-b1dd2ee7?mod=wknd_pos1

  Reveal hidden contents
Last week the Federal Reserve revealed that last year the average net worth of American families topped $1 million for the first time, surging 42% from $749,000 in 2019. 
 
Of course, that average is skewed by a small number of billionaires and multimillionaires. Inflation meant real wealth didn’t increase as much. And pandemic-era stimulus boosted asset values, perhaps beyond their fundamental values.
Yet it would be a mistake to therefore conclude that wealth gains are purely a phenomenon of the top 1% and flattered by inflation and asset bubbles.
 
First, even after inflation, real average wealth was up 23%, according to the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances, conducted every three years. Second, while the level of median wealth was much lower than the average, it actually rose more than the average between 2019 and 2022—by 37%, adjusted for inflation—to $193,000. That means wealth inequality actually narrowed.
Third, and perhaps most noteworthy, there really are a lot of true millionaires. About 16 million American families—just over 12%—have wealth exceeding $1 million, up from 9.8 million families in 2019. Nearly eight million families are multimillionaires, i.e., their wealth exceeds $2 million, up from 4.7 million.
 

A portrait of mini-millionaires

Who are these mini-millionaires? They generally earn between $150,000 and $250,000 a year. They wouldn’t typically be considered rich, but upper middle class. (This depends to some extent on where they live: The same house is worth more in some parts of the country.)
Rather than being left behind as all the gains in the economy accrue to billionaires, they have in fact seen bigger wealth gains over the past three years than the top 10% of families. Indeed, the biggest wealth gains between 2019 and 2022 were among the approximately 13 million families in the 80th to 90th percentile of the income distribution. Their median wealth jumped 69% from 2019, adjusted for inflation, to $747,000 in 2022.
To be sure, for many American families the surge in prices since the onset of the pandemic means that wealth doesn’t feel as good as it sounds. Nonetheless, as these figures show, the increase in net worth for these families has far outpaced inflation.
 
Over 90% of these families report owning stocks, either directly or through retirement accounts, and 87% own their home. They benefited extraordinarily from low interest rates, cutting debt payments as a share of their incomes to 19% in 2007 to 12.9% in 2022.
 
The Survey of Consumer Finances is the most detailed data set collected on household wealth. For the survey, 4,602 households completed detailed questionnaires, enumerating all assets, including real estate, stocks, bonds, bank accounts, retirement accounts, cryptocurrencies and so on, and all liabilities, such as mortgages, auto loans, credit-card debt and student loans. Net worth is defined as all assets minus all liabilities.
 
These insights have important implications, both for our national narrative and where the economy is headed. 

College, savings and timing

Rather than being swallowed by the 1%, the economy, according to these numbers, is creating a growing upper middle class. Many people got there by pursuing college degrees, steadily building retirement accounts and purchasing homes. For the most part, they became wealthy slowly, and were well-positioned when pandemic-era stimulus programs boosted asset values. 
Economists have often attributed the strength of consumer spending, which propelled economic growth to a sizable 4.9% annualized rate in the third quarter, to “excess household savings” amassed since 2019.
 
That might be the wrong way of thinking about it. Nancy Vanden Houten, U.S. lead economist for Oxford Economics, recently asked: Do households “have more excess savings, or is it just wealth now?” The implication of her question is that as people come to regard the excess cash in their checking accounts as wealth, they might be less likely to spend it. The rise of millionaires, in other words, might not be transitory.
Though stock indexes and measures of home prices, such as the median home price from the National Association of Realtors, are down from earlier this year as interest rates have climbed, their valuations are mostly higher than they were when the survey was conducted, from May to December of last year. Higher interest rates might eventually knock some people off their millionaire status, but likely haven’t yet.

‘Temporarily embarrassed’ millionaires

John Steinbeck once said the U.S. “didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.” Steinbeck meant their dreams of prosperity were delusional. And yet there’s a grain of truth to it. It is true that there are gaping disparities of wealth in the U.S. today. Nonetheless, many people whose wealth would define them as poor expect one day to be rich—and many, in fact, will be. For example, only 1% of families under 35 are millionaires, but that rises with age. By ages 55-64, 21% of families are millionaires.
This trend is particularly pronounced among college graduates, of whom 45% were millionaires between ages 55-64. That includes 26% of families who become multimillionaires and 11% with a net worth over $5 million. The average college graduate’s net worth is over $2 million now, though as usual this is skewed by those at the very top.
Make no mistake, there is still poverty and economic struggle in the U.S. Many families have little or no wealth, and limited prospect of accumulating any. And yet the idea that only the 1% are getting richer is at odds with the numbers.

 

The fact this was a Friday afternoon news dump pisses me off. So im doubling down. Read this shit.

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14 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

The fact this was a Friday afternoon news dump pisses me off. So im doubling down. Read this shit.

I read this the first time and I'll actually push back against it a bit.

14 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

 

Rather than being swallowed by the 1%, the economy, according to these numbers, is creating a growing upper middle class. Many people got there by pursuing college degrees, steadily building retirement accounts and purchasing homes

Ok, so the purchasing homes part is facilitated by wealthy or rich boomer parents helping their kids pay for those homes, the down payment at the very least.  I know that was my experience for sure.  

 

This part is HUGE

Quote

Who are these mini-millionaires? They generally earn between $150,000 and $250,000 a year. They wouldn’t typically be considered rich, but upper middle class. (This depends to some extent on where they live: The same house is worth more in some parts of the country.)

Um, 150-250k is not shit in Austin and most major cities.  

 

I'm not saying the economy isn't doing well, in general.  What I am saying is that a lot of this is being propped up by boomers who were able to actually do well in their 20s-30s with relatively few skills and low cost of everything.  Corporations are banking on this idea that they can continue to pay pennies to most employees as long as they don't figure out they are being fucked.  

/end drunken post game rant

Edited by Biff Tannen
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An anecdotal statement about paying for what I'm assuming is a 20% down payment as a wedding gift is not indicative of the data. $150k -250k is more than a comfortable enough salary in every city in the united States, including San Francisco and New York unless you hang out on r/Millenials. 

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23 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

An anecdotal statement about paying for what I'm assuming is a 20% down payment as a wedding gift is not indicative of the data. $150k -250k is more than a comfortable enough salary in every city in the united States, including San Francisco and New York unless you hang out on r/Millenials. 

It's enough to live, but to call those people "wealthy" or "millionaires" is a fucking joke.

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2 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

It's enough to live, but to call those people "wealthy" or "millionaires" is a fucking joke.

What do you think the definition of "millionaire" is?  

I would say if your income covers your obligations, and your assets exceeds your debt by $1M, you're a millionaire.

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6 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

It's enough to live, but to call those people "wealthy" or "millionaires" is a fucking joke.

"millionaire" as in net worth of $1,000,000.00. apparently that's now 16 million people. 

(note this is from before this new update and is based on survey data rather than the fed's likely-better figures):

https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/605075/are-you-rich

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6 hours ago, elfenix said:

"millionaire" as in net worth of $1,000,000.00. apparently that's now 16 million people. 

(note this is from before this new update and is based on survey data rather than the fed's likely-better figures):

https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/605075/are-you-rich

I know what net worth is. I’m somewhere close to a “millionaire” in net worth, but my drunken point was that doesn’t necessarily mean much in terms of wealth. To me anyway. 
 

Maybe I just have a different definition of what it means to be “comfortable” especially in a big city. 

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29 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

You have to grind for that bag, bros. I've been making cold calls since i finished my second cold plunge session this morning. 

Counterpoint:

let the asset bubble triple the value of my primary residence.  Millionaire cheat code unlocked.  
 

Home prices in 20 years have gone from elevated to shocking to completely absurd.  

 

In all seriousness the reality of being a millionaire vs. the perception of the word in society at the moment is completely disconnected.  The Biden billionaire wealth tax proposal that kicked in at 100 million is of the same disconnect.
 

TLDR your money isn’t worth what it used to.

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3 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

It’s amazing to me how many people don’t understand how poor most people are

 

There was a great thread in DT or 6SJ where Chrispy and Poe were arguing that $250k household income was "squarely middle class" lol. Just fucking looney tunes 

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59 minutes ago, Captainant said:

There was a great thread in DT or 6SJ where Chrispy and Poe were arguing that $250k household income was "squarely middle class" lol. Just fucking looney tunes 

It's not even hard to look up.  The top 11.9% of American households have income of $200K or higher.  2022 data:

image.png.e53b4aed2d39bae65eef0e34c583e9c9.png

 

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16 hours ago, elfenix said:

"millionaire" as in net worth of $1,000,000.00. apparently that's now 16 million people. 

(note this is from before this new update and is based on survey data rather than the fed's likely-better figures):

https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/605075/are-you-rich

Holy wealth gap Batman.  In 2019, the average net worth in the US was $748,800, but the median was only $121,700?

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9 hours ago, Captainant said:

There was a great thread in DT or 6SJ where Chrispy and Poe were arguing that $250k household income was "squarely middle class" lol. Just fucking looney tunes 

Mid to upper middle class. People need to divorce themselves from the idea that middle income equals middle class. You are confusing two very different distributions. The American middle class has been defined by a few different aspects of lifestyle: 1) Attainable home ownership; 2) Security in the basic necessities of life; 3) Educational opportunity; 4) Leisure time; 5) Retirement security. There are some other aspects for sure, but I think those are pretty core. The reality is that middle income is not able to support those aspects in the US. It use to be, and not too long ago. But the disconnect between the income distributions and "class" segmentation is apparent at this point and only growing. But we can fix this. We just need more aircraft carrier groups on deployment. 

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9 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

People need to divorce themselves from the idea that middle income equals middle class. You are confusing two very different distributions. The American middle class has been defined by a few different aspects of lifestyle: 1) Attainable home ownership; 2) Security in the basic necessities of life; 3) Educational opportunity; 4) Leisure time; 5) Retirement security. There are some other aspects for sure, but I think those are pretty core.

Except those aren’t middle class anymore. Middle income IS middle class. We’ve just destroyed the lifestyle we once associated with the middle class to fund asset bubbles. 

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Just now, Bozo_Casanova said:

Except those aren’t middle class anymore. Middle income IS middle class. We’ve just destroyed the lifestyle we once associated with the middle class to fund asset bubbles. 

You are confusing two very different dimensions, muddling class and income distributions. I understand why the politicians do it. Not sure why you echo it. 

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He’s not. You’re not willing to change the definition of middle class. Middle class no longer means you can afford a home in a nice area, etc. upper income is still upper class - just what we can afford comfortably has changed. I’m not dropping $200k on a 911 turbo. The middle is still middle.

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