I think Heebie's second question is at the core of what I'm asking-- what measures correlate with the median American's perception of economic well being? Is it just gas prices?

Poor and middle class people borrow money. That's who interest rates effect most.

Almost certainly it's still real counting 2. Contrary to what you hear on twitter by most measurements the poorest people are doing the best in the current economy. You hear a lot of highly educated lefties pretending that their concern is about the poor, but it's just in their heads.

I agree that 3 is driving most of it. It just takes time for people to adjust to the new price level. Obviously 1 is a factor, but I don't think it's the main factor, by all polls Biden is struggling with Trump/Biden voters.

2: Poor and middle class people borrow money, but they're usually mid-loan payback. How many of them initiated college loans or house buying or car-buying in 2023 specifically? Some of them, sure, but it's not a yearly thing for most people.

Maybe it's just me. We still have a flexible rate mortgage from decades ago.

The thing about "economic measures that correlate with the median American's lived experience" is that the median American's lived experience is actually pretty good, and he is optimistic about it getting even better in the near future. There are surveys!

http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/

https://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/news/research/2024/20240212

"Perceptions about households' current financial situations improved in January with more respondents reporting being better off than a year ago and fewer respondents reporting being worse off. Year-ahead expectations also improved with a smaller share of respondents expecting to be worse off and a larger share of respondents expecting to be better off a year from now. The percentage of respondents expecting to be financially the same or better off 12 months from now is 76.5%, its highest level since September 2021."

So the puzzle is not "the economy is good, why are Americans so gloomy?" The puzzle, right now, is "the economy is good, Americans are optimistic, why aren't news outlets reflecting this?"

And part of the answer is that Republicans have very different beliefs about the economy from Democrats , especially since Biden took office. http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/partisaneconomy202402.pdf

Poor and middle class people borrow money. That's who interest rates effect most.

But "poor and middle-class people" is the American way of saying "essentially everyone", isn't it?

Yes. I'm always middle class regardless of how much or how little I earn.

Someone has decided that I'm in the market for Medicare supplements, so maybe I'm no longer middle aged.

But, with higher rates, the monthly cost of living in that house with a mortgage might go up 300 percent.

Only for the very small fraction of homeowners who bought after interest rates went up! That would affect CPI very little if incorporated.

I think there is some truth to the proposition that Americans feel richer when they feel able to trade up to a bigger home, or refinance theirs, even in theory, and so the broad homeowning class is looking at higher interest rates and grumping at what might have been. But that's not CPI, it's just vibes.

I checked if he was right about owner's equivalent rent, and he was, although the BLS has up a working paper from 2009 arguing for the validity of its estimation methodology. (They actually ask owners what they think they could rent their own unit for.)

Old people, maybe just the white ones, are basically broken. I wonder how many of the people with negative views of the economy aren't retired and judging from simple resentment of those working now getting better wages (at least at the bottom of the income scale).

I think this phenomenon of grumping about interest rates extends well beyond the Republicans whose assessments of the economy depend almost 100% on who's president.

I remember a tweet of someone's extended family all getting together and agreeing how much the economy sucked even as they were all making more money than they had in their lives, some employed full-time when they had not been before, taking more lavish vacations, etc.

I think there is some truth to the proposition that Americans feel richer when they feel able to trade up to a bigger home, or refinance theirs, even in theory, and so the broad homeowning class is looking at higher interest rates and grumping at what might have been. But that's not CPI, it's just vibes.

This is fairly well established, isn't it? The wealth effect? Even if you have no mortgage and no intention of selling your house, you feel wealthier and more optimistic if someone tells you it's worth more.

You could get a home equity loan. Or you used to be able to. I think you still can, but I don't know.

A few additional thoughts.

Currently the inflation rate is used for both policy analysis and political purposes (in terms of both news coverage and the various models that attempt to forecast elections based on economic indicators). I think the use of owner equivalent rent makes sense for policy purposes but the last couple of years have shown that having an accurate measure of what drives people's political sentiments matters, and I would be interested in knowing if it's possible to improve on that.

I've seen the polling that shows that Democrats, in general, think the economy is doing well, but that doesn't completely resolve the puzzle for me -- I still want to know why the political forecasting looks so different than the models based on economic indicators would suggest. As I've said to a couple of people, "I was expecting to spend all of 2024 worrying about Senate races; now it looks like I'll be freaking out about the presidential race all year. That is not an improvement."

It's possible the factors driving presidential polling aren't related to economics but I'm not sure of that.

The wealth effect? Even if you have no mortgage and no intention of selling your house, you feel wealthier and more optimistic if someone tells you it's worth more.

Home prices were higher when interest rates were lower; now sales and inventories are down as most everyone is trying to delay selling or buying, and prices are flat or even dropping. So I think in this case it's more liquidity than wealth - the ability to realize your wealth, either in cash or with a trade-up. Which of course is an important part of how real wealth feels to people.

Okay, it might be my region that's flat/dropping. Nationwide, it's just appreciation rates are way down.

18: yes, and presumably high interest rates also mean that if you get a HELOC the repayments will be higher?

17: it might just be as simple as "early polls are not very good"?

20: Yes, a HELOC is a loan and interest rates affect it like they affect mortgages. I can see why you might not be confident in this as so much of our system is so perverse (the 30-year fixed as norm).

Thanks. I thought that was probably the case but wasn't sure if maybe you could lock the rates in before you drew it down or something weird.

Well, fixed-rate HELOCs are available too. Just the standard tradeoff there though, I think.

Grocery prices are still very inflated. I think this is a key piece. I'm middle class in a VHCOL place and it makes me feel poor when I see that beer is $18/6 pack, family size box of Cheerios is $11, and ice cream is $9 a pint in my (decidedly unfancy) local grocery store. I am more price sensitive than most and I no longer feel like I can indulge in small impulse purchases without seeking out discount grocery stores that are a bus ride away.

Also, eating out is up about 40% from pre-pandemic costs. We used to get takeout 1-2x a week and go out to the local pub for dinner ~1 a month. Now that burgers are $18-20 instead of $13 we no longer go to the pub and we get takeout closer to 1-2x a month.

Feeling like I can only afford to regularly buy granola or beer if I take a bus for half an hour with my metal cart or having to throw together a crappy meal because takeout is too expensive certainly does not make me feel like I'm living a middle class lifestyle.

My theory is that if you are in the 75%-90% income percentiles, you've lost a bit of ground (so the data says), and you're noticing it, because your hobbies and activities and food are more expensive. You're also more likely to be college educated and at least elder millennial, so wage gains were flat most of your life and while the wage gains for the lower quartiles are great, they don't mean more money for you.

Food is more expensive and I think the quality is down too. At least lettuce goes bad so much faster now and the lemon we got two days ago is now moldy.

24: right, and you see that grocery bill every week, and not going out to eat as often is a loss.

I get a family-sized box of Aldis brand Honey Nut Oats for $3. It tastes fine to me.

All-deez nutz.

25: Exactly.
26: Definitely. There's been skimpflation along with shrinkflation.

I can take skimpflation in the sense of getting less. I don't want something shittier.

One thing we did was finally get a Costco membership. It's been good.

25 rings true bit that's still only a small percentage of the population. Though I guess disproportionately influential?

My income has gone up around 33% since 2020. I ate out much more last year (to the point that I needed to get it under control). But I am under no illusions that I'm representative.

31
It's part of the general process of enshittification more generally.

I think Biden is a great president but I get why people are depressed. Everything feels like it's getting worse and it feels like ordinary people are very powerless to stop it. Corporate consolidation/greed, a government owned by the billionaire class, and of course rising fascism. Obviously Biden if anything is one of the few forces acting to make things better but if asked about how I feel about the economy I wouldn't have a great answer either.

Grocery prices are still very inflated

Hello nextdoor, but I have thoughts. The safeway and other stores that want rich people to come in and overpay for their buffet are noticeably higher agreed. But the very same food at stores with less aspirational algorithms is not up by much. good frozen blueberries were 18/3lb at safeway, now 16, but 12 at food lion, tolerable granola 7/24oz safeway, 5.7 food lion. Green coffee beans and bulk dry beans up by less than 10% from 2020 at ethnic grocers. Slab of ribs from Aldi up by 10%, similarly more expensive farmers market meat. VHCOL does not make me feel welcome-- it's not whether I can swing it, but I feel like I'm being taken advantage of at "upmarket" places. Where I live, it's basically a choice which direction to walk whether I pay more or pay less. Possibly a holdover from growing up low-rent; to me a market is a battered storefront where some dude decides what gets sold and for how much, slick places leave me immediately wondering who pays for the decor.

Grocery prices are still very inflated.

But this is exactly what economists are being dimwits about. Grocery prices are not going to come back down, but eventually we'll update our baselines according to the post-inflation spike. Clearly the collective group of Americans hasn't yet done this, and so inflation is still salient.

Squirrel Cage used to have cheeseburgers for like $5. Now it's like $8. Which is a big percentage increase but not a big impact on my budget.

36

I'm in a decidedly unfancy neighborhood--my local grocery store is no where near as bougie as a Safeway. In an actually nice neighborhood grocery prices would be significantly higher. My whole city is VHCOL, even though my neighborhood is working-to-middle class.

37
My guess is most economists aren't actually doing their own grocery shopping. And are in an income bracket where a 30% increase in food costs could go unnoticed.

You can get cans of Hamm's for something like $3. The downside is that if you do that, you have a can of Hamm's.

There was a TV game show where contestants guessed the prices of things, from groceries to household goods and I guess cars for the grand prize, I don't remember exactly. I've been meaning to find old episodes on youtube....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcyk7jQqqhw

Going to enjoy later. Lead-in commercial was for adult diapers for me.

Which is still better than PBR.

The thing that I find astonishing is that everyone is so good at remembering these prices, ever. I'm like Lucille Bluth, "How much could one banana cost? $10?" I buy stuff and can't retain any of the prices for more than a moment.

42: I didn't know The Price Is Right wasn't still on.

44: I bought many cheeseburgers.

42: Here's a shocker for you! The Price is Right is still on the air! Priceisright.com

I love that 42 is posted with the same aura of obscurity as all the other nutty links that smart people post.

I spent plenty of time watching it as a kid.

Me too.

There is a grocery store that I prefer that is generally cheaper for the items I like to buy and has good sales. But it's a third of a mile uphill and recently it's been smelling like sewage when I shop there. A week ago I couldn't buy the bread I wanted because while I was shopping the ceiling fell down right in front of the bread aisle leaving a large pile of tile/insulation in a puddle of fetid water. Also often the berries and the bread have visible mold on them. Even given these drawbacks they're still by far the best grocery store in my neighborhood.

44 is probably the rational attitude to take. Granola in particular verges on unhealthy neurosis for me-- spending three minutes squinting at the prices and sizes and choosing carefully for a net price difference of less than a dollar is more than minimum wage here, but barely. It's the feeling of being taken advantage of and the need for vigilance that's behind it, partly driven by cheap granola being oversweetened and the WTF realization that just grabbing an OK packet of it without checking leads to paying more for oats than for an equivalent weight of meat. We all have feelings about our food, and who to say what the right balance points are. Yes, procrastinating, why?

That's how I feel about my lifetime mpg on my minivan. It's a bit unhealthy the extent to which I obsess over it.

49, 50, me too, which is probably behind the adult diaper ad. As I get older, the odds of a shared background about basically any cultural object with other people decline, and I never know how much to say or how to say it to set context. Solution: avoid converstaion. The past is another country.

51. My sympathies, I've got a dozen ethnic markets with idiosyncratic choices and good prices near me. Can't do one-stop shopping is the biggest disadvantage, adapting to shopping being more like grazing is now what I do. Are you west coast? I'm suburban DC.

53.1: Except if I'm getting paid, I always assume that if people don't understand me, they should just deal with it.

I believe that every statement in 51 is correct, and it almost sounds like it could be someone doing a bit.

Dakota Johnson is inviting me to share her files on Box. I'm pretty sure it's a scam though.

Now there's a OneSpan thing from her. So that's probably where the scam is.

Never mind. In addition to the actress one, there's one that does the bean payments.

The Wikipedia entry for The Price Is Right is currently over 17,000 words, including references.

I would not have guessed that, without going over.

Homemade granola is superior to all but a tiny handful of store-bought varieties, and even so, I've given up routinely making it because keeping all the ingredients on hand is weirdly difficult, and why should I have anything nice etc.

56 is correct.

How can you go over "over 17,000"??

17,000+1.

I'm not representative, because I used to go to Wegmans and now go to Market Basket. Market Basket was so much cheaper that many of their prices were so much lower that even with inflation the prices are less than what I paid at Wegmans. I've also started buying meat from a small slaughter house with a retail shop, and that's cheaper too.

But I also think that some people are worse off because there is less government assistance. People who were getting the refundable child tax credit each month lost something valuable and their lives are harder because of that. Also, people lost food stamps.

Wait. I didn't understand the question. Over 17,000 + 1.

63. Grothendieck gestures at the beginning of not an explanation, but of a framework for asking the question:

4 Naturally, the framework of D-modules, together with the fact that
D itself is a coherent sheaf of rings, highlights a more hidden notion of "coherence" for crystals of modules than the one which I am used to working with, and
which makes sense for possibly singular (analytic or scheme-theoretic) spaces.
It would only be fair to call this notion "M-coherence" (M as in Mebkhout).
It then becomes relatively clear, for somebody in the know (in full possession of

Moves - I've actually started buying slightly more expensive baby leaf lettuce. Prices are about the same but the packages are smaller. It's grown hydroponically nearby, and it lasts a lot longer. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/10/business/little-leaf-farms-technology-agriculture-startup-lettuce/

Clearly, Apple wants Mobey to move or turn into money.

I don't like to eat lettuce. It's just thatI feel I'm supposed to eat lettuce.

I live too far from a big Chinese grocery to go there often, but back when I lived closer to Chinese groceries (6 months ago) it seemed like price increases were slower there than at places like Safeway, resulting in an increasing differential between the two places on my weekly grocery shopping trips.

I'm not far from two big Asian grocery stores, but I go to Safeway because it's two blocks away.

I just checked and one of them may be connected to me most of the way by a concrete-protected bike lane in just a few years!

There's a Panda Supermarket by me. I've never been inside because I don't want to do a cultural appropriation.

Also, there's not good parking.

There was actually someone who tried to do a "look at this white guy in an Asian grocery" takedown a couple years ago. The dunker got more flak in the end than the dunkee though.

There are more Asian people in the bar now. There's always been South Asian men. But now there are East Asian men and women. Maybe it's because the grocery store is on the same block?

||
For everyone breathlessly awaiting the author's response to that scathing Qing dynasty book review, it's here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-chinese-history/article/response-to-george-qiaos-review-of-uncertainty-in-the-empire-of-routine-the-administrative-revolution-of-the-eighteenthcentury-qing-state/94C301F9EEE0DF4DBBDCE5A66EC7CAA5

I have absolutely no way of judging who's correct in this fracas.
|>

Some prices at Costco did deflate, or at least went back to previous inflation trend. Milk was 2.29 per-pandemic, spiked to as high as 3.49, and is now back to 2.69. The rotisserie chicken and snack bar hot dogs of course never changed.
Down the street there's a Trader Joe's across from a Whole Foods. The Whole Foods gets a lot more business and I don't know why, other than the parking lot is bigger.

The Costco hotdog isn't very good. I've never been able to buy a chicken. They are always out.

77: Thanks. I was awaiting and I was not disappointed.

I wonder if Costco used to be one of the many using milk as a loss leader, though.

I mostly put it on cereal or in coffee.

It seems weird to me that I used to drink milk. My son quit drinking milk at about age 5 or so.

78: The Fresh Pond Trader Joe's parking lot is kind of scary. The one in Memorial Drive (first in MA) is much easier to get in and out of.

Nobody is watching the State of the Union?

It's a good combination of mockery and folksy but he has stuttered a couple times so I'm sure the headline will be about how he's older than he was yesterday.

I think he just had a brief unscripted policy debate with a heckler (MTG). I don't think I've ever seen that in a SOTU.

Biden is really good off the cuff.

I love him throwing shade to the sitters.

Someone pointed out that he stutters when reading but as soon as he's mocking or putting down hecklers he's clear as day.

My brother-in-law and nephew stutter (the nephew is getting speech therapy) and it seems to vary with concentration. Ordinary speech is hard; songs are fine. I will have to test if the 10yo is good at mocking. For science, bruh.

(It's also been really important to him that the goddamned President also stutters. So the hell with anyone mocking Biden over it.)

I found him convincing. He's got my vote.

I should send him some more money for an attack-y speech but groceries are so expensive. And college tuition is starting soon.

I guess our grocery bill will drop in the fall since he eats most of the food around here.

Can we push 77 to a FPP? It could be fun to play with. I can write something by tomorrow morningish.

He being Biden.

The particular Acme near my new house has insanely high prices, but as best I can tell from the neighbors it's always been that way. (Stacy's Pita Chips, $11.29 for family-sized bag.) Giant, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's still have notably higher-than-"normal" prices, enough that I flinch at way more items than I used to just a couple of years ago.

The one-location independent grocer is more affordable (Grape-Nuts for $4.79 instead of $5.09-5.79 like elsewhere). The three-location coop is more affordable than the big chains on mainstream brands (which make up maybe 30% of its stock) and the prices on its artisanal organic yadda-yadda items (the other 70% of its stock) have risen more slowly, so the price difference between them and the Acme/Giant version of the same product is smaller (eg sprouted-corn tortillas with four ingredients vs cheapie mass-market corn tortillas with 8+ ingredients).

Based on my own experience and family/friends, groceries are something we have to buy all the time, and they continue to feel expensive, so it's an unrelenting reminder that Things Just Cost More Now.

I got a very nice raise on Jan 1 that was eaten up by insurance and other costs of daily living, so anything "more" I have to spend on groceries does genuinely feel like more.

It could be fun to play with.

Why does this sound so purely feline?

The internet is full of cat pictures.

I don't even like cats very much, but I like the cat pictures.

I think we have a mouse again, so maybe a cat would be useful.

99-100

https://x.com/barryfreednyc/status/1763871650922057963?s=46&t=nbIfRG4OrIZbaPkDOwkgxQ

I've always been a renter: never had a mortgage, suspect I never will. Never owned property (obvs). But I know people who do, and they tell me that the amount of house you can get today, compared to 2021(-ish) is .... vastly less, b/c interest rates went up. People decide how much house to buy based on the mortgage payment, and interest rates rising made those payments rise for the same house price. So effectively, it made housing more expensive. Around here, where basically any house starts at $1m, that's a big deal.

Again, I'm not in that market, just relaying what I've read and been told. E.g. by someone who bought a house a few months before interest rates spiked, and who tells me that she cannot sell, b/c if she did and bought another place, she'd get something vastly smaller for the same payment.

103: eventually, presumably, prices will come down to compensate. This hasn't happened yet - prices are flat but not falling. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USSTHPI

The alternative is that the market will simply freeze up because no seller wants to take the loss. This has been happening a bit https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_existing_home_sales but not very much.

The 30-year fixed is an issue here. Your friend can continue to make her pre-hike payments on a 30 year fixed but if she sold she would have to get a new mortgage and couldn't afford it. If she had a floating-rate, she'd be looking at a spike in payments either way, so there's less of a disincentive to sell.

OT but I am both surprised and impressed that Biden apparently announced that the US was going to build, apparently, a Mulberry harbour in Gaza and bring food in that way. Particularly impressive that he's doing the right thing even though it won't earn him any votes in November.

Chances that Israel bombs it? I mean they're nominally our ally, you'd think we could just ask them to open the existing roads instead of having to build a new piece of infrastructure.

Israel is already on side - they'll be inspecting the imports in Cyprus before they land. It would be odd for them to bomb the pier if they've agreed to allow its use for aid.

I'd be more worried about Hamas bombing it during construction - even if there won't be US troops operating it, they'll be there building it, and Hamas might not be able to resist the target.

"Oh but surely Hamas wouldn't do something massively stupid like that! It would be guaranteed to antagonise the people they desperately need on side, and would be hugely harmful to the population of Gaza!"

(gestures at last five months)

Well that's promising at least, I didn't know if Israel's position was ignoring it or actively participating. Hopefully there are no "accidents".

Someone's been bombing a lot of aid convoys and it hasn't been Hamas.

Just the fact that this has to be done is a sick farce, there are what, 6 or 7 land crossings from our ostensible ally Israel but aid is being blocked by the moral equivalent of picnickers at lynchings.

97: I got in to sampling different regional mayonnaises at one point. We really liked McCormick Mayonessa with lime and Blue Plate. I've been buying Blue Plate online, and for a while it was $3.50 on Amazon when everybody else had gone up to $5 or $6. But it has since gone up too. Tim doesn't like Hellman's and Costco sells a ginormous container that doesn't really fit in our fridge.

Basically this looks like it's the US contribution to the EU Project Amalthea aid plan that's been in the works since November. Von der Leyen made a speech about it in Cyprus today. The lack of port infrastructure was the big stumbling block until this point, and that's now been solved - first ship sailed from Larnaca today.

Oh hey, looks like this has hatched a FPP.

I was debating grumbling at you to take it elsewhere!

It was past the forty-comment mark! It was fair game!

I tried a cosmopolitan mayonnaise, there was a guy with a monocle on the label, but it was awful. I went pack to Hellman's.

Or course, I was raised with imitation mayo.

I tried a cosmopolitan mayonnaise

No horseradish, because, of course, cosmopolitans are rootless.

The speech was great and appropriately aggressive, and Biden was clearly more than ready for the heckling. But I was more fascinated by the train wreck GOP response. I'd never heard Katie Britt speak before, but her entire speech was delivered in a Sally Struthers "children are starving please call the number in your screen now" voice, regardless of the topic. Sometimes with a concerned look, sometimes with a creepy smile. The response always falls flat, of course, but this made it also bewilderingly weird, like they haven't quite got the settings right on the humansuit yet.

Like I always say, white people are broken.

I can say that because some of my best friends are white.

119: And yet she's still the "better" Senator from Alabama.

What he said...

Evolution of the Times reaction:
Last night (Possibly written before they actually saw the speech?) Katie Britt criticized President Biden as ill-equipped to lead the country in a speech on Thursday that served as both a rebuke to his State of the Union address and an introduction to the nation by a politician many Republicans have seen as a rising star..

This AM: The Alabama senator, 42, who has been floated as a possible running mate for Donald Trump, gave a tonally jarring speech that toggled between strained cheerfulness and a fierce glare.

I suspect so many R operatives criticizing/distancing themselves from the speech gave them the permission structure to characterize it as such.

Evolution of the Times reaction:
Last night (Possibly written before they actually saw the speech?) Katie Britt criticized President Biden as ill-equipped to lead the country in a speech on Thursday that served as both a rebuke to his State of the Union address and an introduction to the nation by a politician many Republicans have seen as a rising star..

This AM: The Alabama senator, 42, who has been floated as a possible running mate for Donald Trump, gave a tonally jarring speech that toggled between strained cheerfulness and a fierce glare.

I suspect so many R operatives criticizing/distancing themselves from the speech gave them the permission structure to characterize it as such.

Fuck and double fuck.

My phone hates me.

Everything about 124-126 is perfect.

I saw Milo Minderbender having a Piña Colada at Trader Vic's, His posts were perfect.

Aa-oooooo.

On the OP, I have many thoughts but am way late.

But:
1) Building on ajay at 6 et al, issue polling is at best problematic and becomes increasing ludicrous the more abstractly political (vs. personal experience) and the closer to a presidential election you get. This is something that Nate "the lesser asshole Nate" Cohen seems to refuse to address (that I know of) and Nate 'the greater asshole Nate" Silver seems to regard as a feature as he pushes his revenge narratives at the libs.

2) You know, there was this big fucking bad thing that happened which disrupted the fuck out of the world economy. When bad things happen things get worse for a while for most people . That US has done relatively well afterwards is of course a bit abstract, but you would think actual journalism would incorporate it a bit more. Don't take over in the middle of a big crisis I guess (see Obama 2008 as well of course). And I think Biden erred on the much better side of things than Obama, but you can't really win either way. In both instances the standard economics discourse and journalism after the really acute crisis had passed were dreadful. In 2009-11 every economic article had to include handwringing about the deficit. (An asshole boss opined during that time that a largish but wholly internal project we were proposing would probably get turned down because of the board's supposed concern about the freaking US deficit (in the end it got approved).) And for the past 4 years if you were writing an actual political story about inflation (rather than just perception) a minimum level of journalistic competence would include the economic impact of the recent shock (often mentioned in the first year or so, not so much after), how the US was doing in relation to the world (almost never mentioned), the actual political alternative being offered by the opposition (almost never mentioned), and maybe even some thoughts on the likely outcomes of alternative approaches (see political impact of 2008 slow gradual recovery*).

*Which of course not only was a big factor in T's election but was a significant factor in giving him a good pre-Covid economic story.

129: Republican senator lady got humiliated last night.

Interesting list of SOTU responses. It seems the "live broadcast by one or two people" model only became ritualized in the late 80's; before that, there were many kinds of responses. And until 1985, it looks like there was a tradition to not respond to a President who had just been inaugurated.

Times change. It used to be that you could go whole years without a political commentator using the word "cuckold".

At least "merkin" hasn't entered the political lexicon, but I guess it's just a matter of time.

133: Did "cuckold" come up in an SOTU context? I did a search and found the thing from last year's SOTU where the First Lady and Second Gentleman probably accidentally did a full-mouth kiss in front of their spouses.

135: Not there, no.

I just got an ad in gmail for The Bradford Exchange. That really takes me back. On topic because economics.

128/129: Alas, no more. Never got around to it.

They're friends so I'd call that swinging not cuckolding.

130: Speaking of Assholica Natei they are coming through like troopers. The Lesser informs that since "elite discourse" has been so toxic on Biden's age even "a typical performance" could be "unusually helpful." While the Greater after an unusually long time (for him) without comment is out with a take that he Biden needs to address people's concerns not just pundits'. And for support he relies on CNN snap polls that were in his opinion lukewarm. So yes, lame issue poll in a prez election year. "You keep talking about the good life Elton Nate, 'cuz it makes me want puke."

139: Cuckolding can be consensual/friendly.

I learned that from The Glass Onion.

141: See 'wittol.' I believe discussed here before.

I did not know the Dave Bautista was was a former wrestler when I saw that. I just figured he was an actor I never heard of.

To the OP, there's also the Will Stancil view that the media, and most leftist bubbles have convinced people that the economy is terrible for others.