Biden is using the 'are you better off today' question to contrast himself with Trump
3 years ago by Rapidcreek to c/politics
So you're better off and still feel like you're on a treadmill. That makes sense.
And yeah, I wouldn't pose the question like that either. Not enough has been done. The minimum wage is the same. I don't fault him for that but it would be huge for those who struggle the most.
It has to be a comparison with what the other side has to offer.
My wealth grew less than inflation so theres that too. In absolute terms im better off but factoring in everything I don't think anything changed really, credit score did but thats hardly as much Biden, or any president, as it is some contested school debt notes falling off the reportable period because its been to long.
Four years ago there were refrigerator trucks full of corpses and a mob was storming the capitol to overthrow the government on behalf of a would-be dictator.
Nothing resembling either of those things has happened yet this year, so I think in a lot of ways we're all better off regardless of our individual circumstances. Only the second one has much to do with who's president though.
Fully agree with you on the second one, but I will say that the first one very much has to do with who's president, too. Remember when Trump was insisting to everyone who wanted to obey him that they shouldn't wear masks, and should go to work / school while they're sick? And those people started affirmatively attacking people who were doing nothing but try to protect themselves and others? Remember when Anthony Fauci had to have a security detail from the US Marshals?
Trump disbanded the american pandemic response team
Well Donald isn't better off and that's what's important...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Well Donald, I’m glad you asked that question man because I hope everyone in the country takes a moment to think back when it was like in March of 2020,” Biden said.
The Democratic president reminded the audience that the coronavirus had reached America, hospital emergency rooms were overcrowded, first responders were risking their lives to care for the sick and some nurses wore trash bags due to the scarcity of personal protective equipment.
Morgues were being set up outside of hospitals because so many people were dying, unemployment shot up, the stock market crashed and grocery store shelves were bare, Biden said.
“Donald Trump is no longer president, that’s the first thing,” Biden said, adding that COVID is under control, 15 million jobs returned and the stock market rebounded.
There’s also a view that the public largely has forgotten the turbulence of Trump’s presidency and that, to win reelection, Biden needs to remind them of what it was like as he presents himself as the more stable alternative.
“You gotta elect Colin as your next senator so Ted Cruz joins another loser, Donald Trump,” Biden said.
The original article contains 531 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
things being very bad in different ways under two different presidents does not make one a better candidate over the other nor does it make either a good choice
where are they hiding the better candidates?
I regret that I have but one upvote to give. Keep fighting the good fight against misinformation.
Biden has been a remarkably good president under incredibly challenging legislative and judicial circumstances. He didn't do everything he promised? It's a miracle he was able to do anything at all!
Give the man a blue Congress and watch.
him and prosecutor Harris fired staffers over cannabis and after making promises failed to do anything but pardon a very small portion of convicted cannabis users and without police reform like he also promised the divided states have gone as far as border like patrol on their borders and all the cannabis policies he could be seen as having a helping hand in have only helped corporate cannabis and the militarized police who he refuses to reign in
he never fulfilled the upping the minimum to $15 and places like Wally's Hell have lowered the start pay to below precovid levels lower than $15 an hour and that is just one business and corporations have been using free slave mean correctional institution residents for free labor
consistently shat all over workers just like threating the rail workers if they kept up the protest for better work conditions
Roe v. Wade fell on his watch and his solution? give him more funding and sign an executive order for researching women's health or some less than quarter assed pile of manure
what makes that man worth a vote?
make it make sense
consistently shat all over workers just like threating the rail workers if they kept up the protest for better work conditions
Oh, good point, I forgot one:
- There were 458,900 workers involved in work stoppages in 2023, notably including the even-more-unprecedented-than-the-rail-strike motion picture strike and the autoworkers strike. You can believe, if you want to, that Biden is anti-union and he just pure overlooked his responsibility to shut down the 458,900 people who did work stoppages in 2023. Personally my feeling is that he shut down the rail strike because it would have a big impact on the rest of the economy, then his labor department kept working the issue and got the workers the sick days they were fighting for in the first place by having the strike.
I see that I have 3 options for voting.
Vote for Biden, the candidate that's closest to my politics. Result: I help the government move closer to my values.
Vote for Trump, the candidate that is farthest from my politics. Result: I help the government move farther away from my values.
Vote 3rd party or don't vote. Result: I have a slight sense of moral superiority because I voted my conscience but didn't actually help the government move in the direction I wanted, and may have helped it move in a direction I didn't want.
Given these 3 options, Project 2025 and Trump's stance on abortion make Biden worth a vote.
Sure Biden's policies aren't exactly what I want, but they're a lot closer to mine than Trump's are. And since either one of Trump or Biden is going to be the next president (unless something unexpected happens), I'm going to vote for Biden.
You are right. With our first-past-the-post system and our electoral college, we only have two possibilities: Trump or Biden winning. You get to help decide which is the best (or the least worst).
I see 4 possibilities, depending on your political leaning.
- Liberal voting for Biden. Helps Biden.
- Conservative voting for Trump. Helps Trump.
- Liberal not voting for Biden. Helps Trump.
- Conservative not voting for Trump. Helps Biden.
If you don't like these choices, work to get rid of the Electoral College. Work to support ranked-choice voting or some other alternative to first-past-the-post. But sitting this out will hurt one candidate while helping the other to win. If you don't like either candidate, vote for the least worst of the top two - the one closest to you.
no
income is a fourth what made four years ago, inflation is continuing to rise, everyone around me is complaining about struggling, none of the issues from four years ago were fixed such as health care and minimum wage and everything else even personal freedoms are way down and the police are more militarized
what the fuck and where the fuck and when the fuck is this doddering old fool?
still not allowed to vote too
shit with smell good products sprayed all over is being advertised as better than shit without smell good stuff on it
I won't say that's not true for you and your friends, because I have no idea. But for the country as a whole, particularly for people struggling, it is mostly exactly the opposite of what you're saying. I.e. not only are they not still having to go into their housekeeping jobs even though they might catch a disease that might kill them or their family, but they're mostly making more than they were, even adjusted for the (quite high although lower than pretty much every other country post-Covid) inflation.
I certainly don't blame the president for inflation, because I can see how all the corporations just decided to raise their prices because everybody else was raising their prices. It kinda seems like a rush to take all the profits they can like it's their last chance to make money, which is quite disturbing to reflect on.
Personally I've only become more prosperous throughout the terms of the last 3 presidents. Biden's presidency has been mostly positive improvement over Trump's time in office. I'd never vote for Trump, and have voted against him 3 times already. My main problem with Biden is his repeated calls to ban guns, because individual liberty is the most important issue of all and gun bans are authoritarian garbage.
I certainly don't blame the president for inflation, because I can see how all the corporations just decided to raise their prices because everybody else was raising their prices.
That's actually an excellent point. Since it's been shown that a lot of the price increases actually have nothing to do with economic conditions the companies are facing, but are just them raising their prices because they can get away with it and keeping the extra money because they want to, it seems a little extra silly to blame Biden for that (even above the silliness of blaming him for inflation at all, if you're not going to credit him for wage growth.)
That's not true at all.
Adjusted with inflation, assuming all people hired got salary bumps to offset inflation, you're looking at 3% to 4% of the population. That is not most. That is not even many. That is a few.
A few people are better off today adjusted for inflation. The majority of people are not.
If you did not get a 20% to 25% bump during the past couple years you are worse off. If you got a 20%-25% pay bump, you're pretty much where you were before except major life goals are more expensive so you're also worse off. If you got 30%+ bump, which some definitely did, then they're better off. It is NOT most.
What is your citation for saying this? Mine is here. The yellow bar at the very top, +5.7%, represents the poorest segment of workers making wage gains that outpaced inflation. Where are you getting your 3% or 4% numbers?
I'm starting to suspect that a lot of the Lemmy population may be in the tech-savvy early adopter white-collar-job segment up in the top 10% (the brown bar showing -5%, wages dropping compared to inflation for the very top earners as tech jobs slow down and the wage gap shrinks). I'm not saying that wage drop at the top is a good thing necessarily, but it's very different from everyone being worse off.
Here's a breakdown of the average wages overall; that black line at the top shows a year-on-year compounding growth in wages adjusted for inflation in 2020, 2021, and 2022, even facing the difficult conditions that kept almost every other first-world country down in the bottom half of the graph, where wages are actually dropping.
Those are my sources. What are yours for the specific claims you're making?
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I have more money and better credit than four years ago, yet im further away from buying a house or even a new car than I was 4 years ago, so honestly nothing really changed in the personal quality of life category. My salary went up, and so did the carrot on the stick they've been dangling out of my reach for decades. I feel like this question isn't a great measure for Bidens campaign.
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