Is Bidenomics working for you?

@Jiminy posts that, "The U.S. GDP grew at 5% last quarter and President Joe Biden said it was evidence that his economic policies are working but the radical right hallucinates that the economy is crashing." That sounds very encouraging and skepticism is a hallucination.

So what are your observations of the economy and Bidenomics?

In my own life, I am poorer relative to inflation. My retirement accounts have not fully recovered and I'm told to expect another major catastrophe/downturn any time now. My wages far below cost of living increases. The Climate Crisis appears to be a hoax that could destroy our prosperity and team Biden is all on board for it. If Biden emptied our strategic oil reserves around 2021, have we refilled them? My house is worth a lot now. Can't sell it as I still need to live somewhere but my property tax can skyrocket while my kids are unable to buy homes themselves. There's no inventory so prices go up even though fixed mortgage rates are around 8.2% for a 30 year. Adding 10s of millions of illegal aliens to the population can't be helping this. Why isn't there a housing building boom going on?

How is this possible? Great growth reportedly, yet I'm individually poorer for it.
Is Bidenomics working for you?

 

I have a relative who's mortgage is growing like a mushroom cloud and another, further down the economy
who's rent is obscene, so Bidenomics may work for the rich but not so well for younger poorer people.

 

I’ve spent over $50 before I get out of the fruit and vegetable aisle at the super market. I have more than $5 per gallon for gas at times over the last 12 months. My retirement funds have lost money. So no, “Brendonnomis” has not worked for me.

 

I found an article on that 5%.

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

They concede it is unlikely to be sustainable. They write of growing wages. Last I heard, and maybe this has changed for people not named Gorfias, while wages may actually be up, they are down relative to inflation. I am poorer.

 

For the most part I am in a good place right now but it has little to do with Biden. My student loan payments just restarted which is going to get some time to get get used to again. That $600.00 extra month for three years helped me pay off a lot of other things, increase my 401K contribution, and build my nest egg. I will still have money left over every month, just not as much.

The reason you are not seeing a massive boom in new housing largely has to do with the cost of labor and materials. They are still quite high. In addition, there is a labor shortage in the industry, at least locally.

Anyway, most of this, good or bad, is because of the Federal Reserve, not Biden. Biden signed one bipartisan infrastructure bill but that was about the only thing lasting he has done on the economic front.

 

Policy has, I think, more to do with the lack of new building. Those sky high housing costs should be attracting new labor at higher wages. You can start out in things like HVAC construction with virtually no training or credentials. One gets OJT, though, there are a ton of training options that are terrific. My point is, rising costs lead to higher wages then met by a ready populace.

And how much of the materials costing a lot is caused by inflation? People who predicted climbing interest rates invested in commodities knowing it to be a curb on inflation. The cost of housing has gone up like crazy. Those increased costs should easily be covering the additional materials costs.

One can impact an economy in many ways outside of passing spending bills. Biden ran on the promise that regarding Covid he would not shut down the country but the virus. Under Trump, we got the clot shot but he did not call an end to the "emergency". Had he done so, the MSM would have likened him to a mass murderer so he had to wait post re-election if that happened. But Biden could have done it. Once the shot was available, the "emergency" should have ended and the MSM would have hailed Biden as a lion of liberty! Instead, Biden kept it going for 2-3 more years. I have to think we are still experiencing a financial hang-over caused by this betrayal of his campaign promise.

 

My insurance sent me a thing that broke it down to explain why my premium went up significantly. It was because of all the costs since 2020 going way up and insurance being based on replacement cost of the structures. Wish I had kept it to share with you. It was like average cost of bricks $X up 14%; average cost lumber $X, up 19%, etc. There is only so much you can pass on in your asking price, especially when mortgages are 7-8%.

There are lots of microdynamic I suppose. Sure the rent moratorium was extended way too long, which caused landlords to either not want to be renters or jack up their rents to recoup their 18 month losses on some tenants. There were people who stayed out of work way too long thanks to their kids getting them extra monthly stimulus, etc etc. I think generally there is still a psychological shadow over most people that may manifest itself in different ways. I used to be somewhat a money in-money out spender. I have now become a cheapskate hoarder because of COVID. I was already antisocial, but I am ubber anti-social in the sense I just don't want to be out in restaurants, bars, theaters etc any more. Unless I have to go to the store or work etc, I am perfectly content to stay home with my family nearby and occasional visitors. It still puts me a little off-guard when someone wants to shake hands or hug at work when those used to be things I did regularly. In turn, I don't feel like I care that much about strangers lot in life. Their issues to deal with. Just leave me out of it.

 

Nothing Biden related is working, absolutely nothing.

DJT helped reach a peaceful situation in the middle east with the Abrahamic Accords.
Those made sense, I'm not sure how he did it but a few years later with Biden, it has come apart.

Biden gave permission back in 2013 to do regime change in Ukraine. That wasn't a good idea
but Crimea promptly ceded and there were some break away republics, but things didn't get
too bad until Biden and the Democrats arrived and sent 300 million dollars of weapons for Kyiv
forces to play with.

Bidenomics which includes paying people more money if they quit work than if they do work,
isn't even socialism, it's just utter stupidity.

 

Regarding landlords, there's a lot of strange cultural problems out there too. And politics is down stream from culture. A lot of people roll their eyes if I bring up fantasy topics, movies etc. But it says something to me when Spiderman tells new landlord Steve Rogers (Captain America) that he cannot be both a landlord and a good person. Who the heck came up with that!?!? That does bleed into the real world. In another forum I'm speaking of why economics do not work democratically. There will always be more patients than doctors, clients than lawyers, tenants than landlords and I got bitched out for including and caring about landlords. Landlords take a gamble with their money and provide people with housing. Vilifying such people (and with current rental laws and the covid rent suspension, etc.) is going to have a bad impact on the very people that need to be housed.

 

Not all landlords are equal though. I am not sure if it is true most places right now, but locally we still have a ton of out of town companies either amassing large quantities of rental houses, or pumping and dumping single family homes. There is a ton of speculation still locally and I don't think benevolence is driving it.

 

As someone in the real estate industry, those sub 3% loans that were pushed to help improve the dismal GDP growth and investment buyers are what have caused such low inventory. This will likely been an issue for the next decade unless inventory increases due to building. Care to guess what president did this?

I wouldn’t blame “bidenomics” for this.

The second item cause inflation are the price of consumer goods, groceries and vehicles. Vehicles are just starting to decline to go back to regular levels after being decimated by covid. And corporate profits are at levels never seen before.

I definitely think the Biden administration should be doing something here but the question is what?

House rates are set by inflationary metrics and moves from the Republican controlled FED.

And there is a housing building boom going on — in my area at least — but most are being made into rentals.

What ideas do Republicans have to address any of these items?

 

At a min. MAGA takes the idea of defending our border seriously. Millions of illegals in this nation have to be housed, causing the vacancy to drop dangerously while driving down wages an estimated 9%. I am heartened and hopeful that you note a building boom is going on. Fingers crossed it keeps up.

 

What did trump do to secure our border?
He sent the military a hundred miles to the boarder after a caravan dissipated

He built a wall in places it wasn’t needed and subbed to out to the lowest bidder and we see the results there of them already failing

He did make it so they had to apply for amnesty while outside the nation, I liked that policy.

Did you know that the vast majority of our illegal immigration are visa overstays? No one ever does anything about those.

 

An over-stay is not illegal but unlawful. But yeah, there should be a greater focus on that than exists currently. Agreed, the remain in Mexico policy appeared to help. I think simple expectations have an impact. People coming to the US have been interviewed and are telling us they perceive Biden/Harris have throw the border open wide (they did end the remain in Mexico policy and opened some of Obama's kids in cages again after Trump closed them.).

 

That would mean we grant visas faster than they can swim the river?

 

No clue

But both are an issue, no one even speaks about the one that is the cause of larger numbers.

 

Probably because a lot of people find it hard to believe.

 

Bidenomics works for those committed to live off the system.

 

Below:

It's likely true. A difference is that an overstay at least got into the country and must have shown a passport. An illegal can have gotten in and we have no idea who they are which is pretty dangerous.

 

It defies logic and reality to believe there are more visa holders than illegals.

 

Most people lock in the rate when they get a mortgage, and others gamble with adjustable rates. Its a choice, - a very bad one, but they have only themselves to blame.

As for the economy, inflation took a bite, but currently wages are raising faster than inflation, so people get a chance to catch up. US has recovered faster than the rest of the world.

 

I don't think Biden is to praise or blame for the economy. The federal reserve has done a great job controlling inflation without crashing the economy. Our country is now doing better in that department than most have in the post-covid inflation surge. Climate change is no hoax, but even if it was, alternative energy sources are the future.

 

Agreed about the alt. energy sources. But I think wind and lithium car batteries are not it. I heard hydrogen cars are very close to being a thing but that was months ago and I've heard nothing more of it since.

 

They get about 800K H1B requests yearly by themselves. How about people who come here simply on "vacation" that turns into years rather than days? Pure illegals I'd think were more likely to go home and back over and over. Here unlawfully over-staying? I've known a few and they're terrified to leave as re-entering legally again after the over-stay is unlikely.

 

The border used to be more fluid than it is today. the two border populations lived back and forth moving pretty freely but today we aren't seeing Mexican nationals making up the larger portion of border crossers. They are coming from all over SA and they aren't going home, this is their home now. We only have an estimate now, not a hard count.