I believe people are substantially underestimating how much the economy contributes to Trump’s support, and being more aware of it would help better protect the democracy of the most powerful country in the world.
In 2020, the US budget deficit more than tripled. This and other (I think much smaller) factors resulted in US real median household income increasing by a completely unprecedented 11.6% in 2020 according to the Congressional Budget Office. Prior to that year, US real median household income under the Trump administration had improved by the 7% it had under the last Obama administration. However, by the end of 2020, US real median household income had increased by 19.3% total during the Trump administration, more than the 17.8% it had increased over all 4 previous presidential terms combined. If this had been accomplished in a way that didn't decrease long run incomes, we would have called it a miracle. Nothing anywhere near this has happened in the 41 years this statistic has been recorded. Caring about the long run impacts of deficits is esoteric. A miracle is what Americans of normal education experienced.
Polling bears this out. While partisans typically care deeply about culture wars, swing voters (who overall switched from voting from Biden to planning to vote for Trump) are concerned about the economy instead.
For the median income data source, see the supplemental data section. After thinking about various sources' methodology for this statistic more than my economics professors have, I believe this is the highest quality source for this statistic.
I feel more confident about this than I did in July.
The 2021 US real median household income numbers were released, and they showed a 1% decrease despite a similarly large stimulus package and real GDP growth improving by 7 percentage points, because inflation got so bad. Without a large stimulus package, and with worse inflation and real GDP growth, incomes could easily have decreased in 2022. US real median household income grew by 90% between 1979 and 2021, making a decrease a rare and important experience.
Nate Silver also came out with an article making a similar argument, noting that real disposable personal income has stagnated during the Biden administration. While I dislike this source because it is not a median measurement in a time when incomes could well be growing faster for poorer Americans than richer ones, he notes that it has historically been one of the best predictors of election outcomes.
Hey Ms. Albrecht, I believe this tendency to underestimate pocketbook issues is likely true of the general populace, though political operatives are usually more aware of their significance, e.g., election probability models invariably incorporate measures of economic activity. However, these models typically focus on current/incumbent economic performance, which is the case now: discontent is less about the excitement about real incomes in 2020 (not least since a lot was going on at the time...) and more about 2024 price levels.
Federal transfer payments notwithstanding, near-term macroeconomic outcomes usually have little to do with the White House's agenda,* which makes it particularly unfortunate that we don't do more to separate economic and social policymaking...
* That said, some of the inflation can be attributed to Biden's 2021 stimulus, and rents are high in part due to a surge in demand from new migrants amid extremely constrained housing supply (a straightforward economic reality, agnostic to the merits of said migration).
I’m glad experts are taking it more seriously than laypeople. However, I still feel like laypeople can have a lot of influence. Many of us are performing outreach in swing states, have significant online presences, and/or have friends or family members who are undecided.
I also think that these extremely unusual circumstances merit experts focusing on economic conditions outside the current presidential term more than would normally be the case.
I do feel that the inflation problems Biden has experienced are largely self-inflicted (to the extent that politicians can influence economic conditions, which I agree is generally overestimated under normal circumstances). His budget deficit in his first year wasn’t much smaller than Trump’s, which was another unprecedented circumstance and I believe also unnecessarily large. The deficit has still not come down to its normal levels for this part of the business cycle (even the levels before inflation was a problem). The Economist often argues that the deficits have played a big role in inflation, and my professors in my economics major have encouraged me to trust their analysis a lot. It’s still helpful to notice how little room for error he had given the context. I feel the role of deficits under Biden is more commonly understood in our community than the role of the deficit in 2020.
You're welcome. The Economist, in my opinion, has some minor biases but is usually very reasonable. The nuance I would add is that the effect of any fiscal expansion - and I'd be more inclined to emphasize expansion rather than the deficit per se - depends on many factors, not least of which is the concurrent output gap. M.Y. summarizes that point well.
To be fair, following a decade of persistently below-target inflation in the U.S., and to an even greater degree in other major developed economies, inflation wasn't the top concern on anybody's mind! Also, speaking of other countries, the other big consideration is that while such fiscal expansion likely drove U.S. prices higher than they would've gone otherwise, high inflation has in fact been a fairly global issue since it began in 2021.
I will add that I found this type of analysis for why inflation was higher in the US persuasive. For example, this study from 2022 by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that likely 3 percentage points of the higher inflation (basically all of it at the time) in the US compared to other rich countries was due to the stimulus in the US. But yes, I agree that the history of low inflation (and I believe lower stimulus than was appropriate during The Great Recession) made this a reasonable mistake to make.
I should note that the purpose of my post wasn't to make a point about the pros and cons of different policies. I just wanted to point out that the personal experiences of voters were probably pretty different than most of us were thinking. I feel like I should have put more thought into making that clearer. I've been enjoying our conversation though!
I want to describe how the discourse on sexual misconduct may be reducing the specific type of socioeconomic diversity I am personally familiar with.
I’m a white female American who worked as an HVAC technician with co-workers mostly from racial minorities before going to college. Most of the sexual misconduct incidents discussed in the Time article have likely differed from standard workplace discussions in my former career only in that the higher status person expressed romantic/sexual attraction, making their statement much more vulnerable than the trash-talk I’m familiar with. In the places most of my workplace experience comes from, people of all genders and statuses make sexual jokes about coworkers of all genders and statuses not only in their field, but while on the clock. I had tremendous fun participating in these conversations. It didn’t feel sexist to me because I gave as good as I got. My experience generalizes well; Even when Donald Trump made a joke about sexual assault that many upper-class Americans believed disqualified him, immediately before the election he won, Republican women were no more likely to think he should drop out of the race than Republican voters in general. Donald Trump has been able to maintain much of his popularity despite denying the legitimacy of a legitimate election in part because he identified the gatekeeping elements of upper-class American norms as classist. I am strongly against Trump, but believe we should note that many female Americans from poorer backgrounds enjoy these conversations, and many more oppose the kind of punishments popular in upper class American communities. This means strongly disliking these conversations is not an intrinsic virtue, but a decision EA culture has made that is about more than simple morality.
When I post about EA on social media, many of my co-workers from my blue-collar days think it sounds really cool. If any of them decided to engage further and made clumsy comments while getting used to EA culture, I would want them to be treated with empathy. Much of the conversation around the Time article (especially the response to Owen Cotton-Barratt’s mistake) has given me the impression that they would not be. We are a left-leaning movement. We need to include more conservative political perspectives to improve our data and get politicians to take our views on the worst catastrophes the world faces seriously. I feel my experience with much more poverty than the average EA has contributed unique insights that have improved our philosophical perspectives. The probability of an American raised in the poorest 20% (where my personal pre-college career experience comes from) reaching the richest 20% by age 26 is roughly a 3rd that of an American raised in the richest 20%. This likely means we miss out on some important professional talent by being intolerant towards lower class American norms. I am not advocating a switch to lower class American gender norms, just seeing the humanity more in the many people who have chosen them and therefore the people that accidentally violate upper-class American ones in good faith.
As someone from a poor family, I find the implicature of this piece, that I cannot control myself from harassing and bullying people, ridiculously offensive to the point of absurdity. The fact it hasn't got more pushback is the perfect example of "Tell me you live in a bubble without telling me you live in a bubble." I did have a good chuckle at the idea of Owen trying this anywhere near my very blue-collar father though so thanks for that.
Yes, poorer people are not a monolith! Some people from our background (especially the people who chose to stick around EA long enough to be on the forum) will prefer current EA norms and feel grateful for them. I don't mean to dismiss your experiences at all. There are many different socioeconomic cultures that are underrepresented in EA, so I don't know what direction we should shift our norms in overall. Maybe there is that much diversity even within the US. I was speaking about my personal experience as someone from this background and the experiences of all the people I know well enough to know their perspectives from this background. I'm sorry I gave the impression I was trying to speak for you. I also wasn't accusing us at all of having lack of control, just having the right to prefer different norms if we want to. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective! I do wish you had done so more politely though.
I'm curious: Do you feel like your wider lower class culture was very different from mine, or is it more that your family held different views that were a minority? Also, where were you raised and what role did religion play? My experience comes from Sacramento, California and religion was rarely discussed. I hope you don't mind me asking these questions; There are so few of us around that EA needs all the data on us it can get!
I recently reached over 1,000 Karma, meaning my upvotes now give 2 Karma and my strong upvotes give 6 Karma. I'm most proud of my contributions to the forum about economics, but almost all of my increased ability to influence discourse now is from participating in the discussions on sexual misconduct. An upvote from me on Global Health & Development (my primary cause area) now counts twice as much as an upvote from 12 out of 19 of the authors of posts with 200-300 Karma with the Global Health & Development tag. They are generally experts in their field working at major EA organizations, whereas I am an electrical engineering undergraduate.
I think these kinds of people should have far more ability to influence the discussion via the power of their upvotes than me. They will notice things about the merits of the cases people are making that I won't until I'm a lot smarter and wiser and farther along in my career. I don't think the ability to say something popular about culture wars translates well into having insights about the object level content. It is very easy to get Karma by participating in community discussions, so a lot of people are now probably in my position after the increased activity in that area around the scandals. I really want the people with more expertise in their field to be the ones influencing how visible posts and comments about their field are.
I propose that Karma earned from comments on posts with the community tag accrues at a slower rate.
Edit: I just noticed a post by moderators that does a better job of explaining why karma is so easy to accumulate in community posts:
I believe people are substantially underestimating how much the economy contributes to Trump’s support, and being more aware of it would help better protect the democracy of the most powerful country in the world.
In 2020, the US budget deficit more than tripled. This and other (I think much smaller) factors resulted in US real median household income increasing by a completely unprecedented 11.6% in 2020 according to the Congressional Budget Office. Prior to that year, US real median household income under the Trump administration had improved by the 7% it had under the last Obama administration. However, by the end of 2020, US real median household income had increased by 19.3% total during the Trump administration, more than the 17.8% it had increased over all 4 previous presidential terms combined. If this had been accomplished in a way that didn't decrease long run incomes, we would have called it a miracle. Nothing anywhere near this has happened in the 41 years this statistic has been recorded. Caring about the long run impacts of deficits is esoteric. A miracle is what Americans of normal education experienced.
Polling bears this out. While partisans typically care deeply about culture wars, swing voters (who overall switched from voting from Biden to planning to vote for Trump) are concerned about the economy instead.
For the median income data source, see the supplemental data section. After thinking about various sources' methodology for this statistic more than my economics professors have, I believe this is the highest quality source for this statistic.
I feel more confident about this than I did in July.
The 2021 US real median household income numbers were released, and they showed a 1% decrease despite a similarly large stimulus package and real GDP growth improving by 7 percentage points, because inflation got so bad. Without a large stimulus package, and with worse inflation and real GDP growth, incomes could easily have decreased in 2022. US real median household income grew by 90% between 1979 and 2021, making a decrease a rare and important experience.
Nate Silver also came out with an article making a similar argument, noting that real disposable personal income has stagnated during the Biden administration. While I dislike this source because it is not a median measurement in a time when incomes could well be growing faster for poorer Americans than richer ones, he notes that it has historically been one of the best predictors of election outcomes.
Hey Ms. Albrecht, I believe this tendency to underestimate pocketbook issues is likely true of the general populace, though political operatives are usually more aware of their significance, e.g., election probability models invariably incorporate measures of economic activity. However, these models typically focus on current/incumbent economic performance, which is the case now: discontent is less about the excitement about real incomes in 2020 (not least since a lot was going on at the time...) and more about 2024 price levels.
Federal transfer payments notwithstanding, near-term macroeconomic outcomes usually have little to do with the White House's agenda,* which makes it particularly unfortunate that we don't do more to separate economic and social policymaking...
* That said, some of the inflation can be attributed to Biden's 2021 stimulus, and rents are high in part due to a surge in demand from new migrants amid extremely constrained housing supply (a straightforward economic reality, agnostic to the merits of said migration).
Thank you for sharing!
I’m glad experts are taking it more seriously than laypeople. However, I still feel like laypeople can have a lot of influence. Many of us are performing outreach in swing states, have significant online presences, and/or have friends or family members who are undecided.
I also think that these extremely unusual circumstances merit experts focusing on economic conditions outside the current presidential term more than would normally be the case.
I do feel that the inflation problems Biden has experienced are largely self-inflicted (to the extent that politicians can influence economic conditions, which I agree is generally overestimated under normal circumstances). His budget deficit in his first year wasn’t much smaller than Trump’s, which was another unprecedented circumstance and I believe also unnecessarily large. The deficit has still not come down to its normal levels for this part of the business cycle (even the levels before inflation was a problem). The Economist often argues that the deficits have played a big role in inflation, and my professors in my economics major have encouraged me to trust their analysis a lot. It’s still helpful to notice how little room for error he had given the context. I feel the role of deficits under Biden is more commonly understood in our community than the role of the deficit in 2020.
You're welcome. The Economist, in my opinion, has some minor biases but is usually very reasonable. The nuance I would add is that the effect of any fiscal expansion - and I'd be more inclined to emphasize expansion rather than the deficit per se - depends on many factors, not least of which is the concurrent output gap. M.Y. summarizes that point well.
To be fair, following a decade of persistently below-target inflation in the U.S., and to an even greater degree in other major developed economies, inflation wasn't the top concern on anybody's mind! Also, speaking of other countries, the other big consideration is that while such fiscal expansion likely drove U.S. prices higher than they would've gone otherwise, high inflation has in fact been a fairly global issue since it began in 2021.
Thanks for sharing your expertise.
I will add that I found this type of analysis for why inflation was higher in the US persuasive. For example, this study from 2022 by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that likely 3 percentage points of the higher inflation (basically all of it at the time) in the US compared to other rich countries was due to the stimulus in the US. But yes, I agree that the history of low inflation (and I believe lower stimulus than was appropriate during The Great Recession) made this a reasonable mistake to make.
I should note that the purpose of my post wasn't to make a point about the pros and cons of different policies. I just wanted to point out that the personal experiences of voters were probably pretty different than most of us were thinking. I feel like I should have put more thought into making that clearer. I've been enjoying our conversation though!
On Socioeconomic Diversity:
I want to describe how the discourse on sexual misconduct may be reducing the specific type of socioeconomic diversity I am personally familiar with.
I’m a white female American who worked as an HVAC technician with co-workers mostly from racial minorities before going to college. Most of the sexual misconduct incidents discussed in the Time article have likely differed from standard workplace discussions in my former career only in that the higher status person expressed romantic/sexual attraction, making their statement much more vulnerable than the trash-talk I’m familiar with. In the places most of my workplace experience comes from, people of all genders and statuses make sexual jokes about coworkers of all genders and statuses not only in their field, but while on the clock. I had tremendous fun participating in these conversations. It didn’t feel sexist to me because I gave as good as I got. My experience generalizes well; Even when Donald Trump made a joke about sexual assault that many upper-class Americans believed disqualified him, immediately before the election he won, Republican women were no more likely to think he should drop out of the race than Republican voters in general. Donald Trump has been able to maintain much of his popularity despite denying the legitimacy of a legitimate election in part because he identified the gatekeeping elements of upper-class American norms as classist. I am strongly against Trump, but believe we should note that many female Americans from poorer backgrounds enjoy these conversations, and many more oppose the kind of punishments popular in upper class American communities. This means strongly disliking these conversations is not an intrinsic virtue, but a decision EA culture has made that is about more than simple morality.
When I post about EA on social media, many of my co-workers from my blue-collar days think it sounds really cool. If any of them decided to engage further and made clumsy comments while getting used to EA culture, I would want them to be treated with empathy. Much of the conversation around the Time article (especially the response to Owen Cotton-Barratt’s mistake) has given me the impression that they would not be. We are a left-leaning movement. We need to include more conservative political perspectives to improve our data and get politicians to take our views on the worst catastrophes the world faces seriously. I feel my experience with much more poverty than the average EA has contributed unique insights that have improved our philosophical perspectives. The probability of an American raised in the poorest 20% (where my personal pre-college career experience comes from) reaching the richest 20% by age 26 is roughly a 3rd that of an American raised in the richest 20%. This likely means we miss out on some important professional talent by being intolerant towards lower class American norms. I am not advocating a switch to lower class American gender norms, just seeing the humanity more in the many people who have chosen them and therefore the people that accidentally violate upper-class American ones in good faith.
phenomenal post.
Thanks a lot! Yep, a question I always ask myself in EA's diversity discussions is "Which kind of diversity are we talking about?"
A LessWrong post on the topic you might like if you didn't read it yet is Kaj Sotala's "You can never be universally inclusive".
As someone from a poor family, I find the implicature of this piece, that I cannot control myself from harassing and bullying people, ridiculously offensive to the point of absurdity. The fact it hasn't got more pushback is the perfect example of "Tell me you live in a bubble without telling me you live in a bubble." I did have a good chuckle at the idea of Owen trying this anywhere near my very blue-collar father though so thanks for that.
Yes, poorer people are not a monolith! Some people from our background (especially the people who chose to stick around EA long enough to be on the forum) will prefer current EA norms and feel grateful for them. I don't mean to dismiss your experiences at all. There are many different socioeconomic cultures that are underrepresented in EA, so I don't know what direction we should shift our norms in overall. Maybe there is that much diversity even within the US. I was speaking about my personal experience as someone from this background and the experiences of all the people I know well enough to know their perspectives from this background. I'm sorry I gave the impression I was trying to speak for you. I also wasn't accusing us at all of having lack of control, just having the right to prefer different norms if we want to. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective! I do wish you had done so more politely though.
I'm curious: Do you feel like your wider lower class culture was very different from mine, or is it more that your family held different views that were a minority? Also, where were you raised and what role did religion play? My experience comes from Sacramento, California and religion was rarely discussed. I hope you don't mind me asking these questions; There are so few of us around that EA needs all the data on us it can get!
If anyone's curious about GoodEAGoneBad's reply, we continue the conversation in a comment I made sharing this shortform on this post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2JXLxKbSsbicnt9N9/ea-needs-life-veterans-and-less-smart-people
Proposing a change to how Karma is accrued:
I recently reached over 1,000 Karma, meaning my upvotes now give 2 Karma and my strong upvotes give 6 Karma. I'm most proud of my contributions to the forum about economics, but almost all of my increased ability to influence discourse now is from participating in the discussions on sexual misconduct. An upvote from me on Global Health & Development (my primary cause area) now counts twice as much as an upvote from 12 out of 19 of the authors of posts with 200-300 Karma with the Global Health & Development tag. They are generally experts in their field working at major EA organizations, whereas I am an electrical engineering undergraduate.
I think these kinds of people should have far more ability to influence the discussion via the power of their upvotes than me. They will notice things about the merits of the cases people are making that I won't until I'm a lot smarter and wiser and farther along in my career. I don't think the ability to say something popular about culture wars translates well into having insights about the object level content. It is very easy to get Karma by participating in community discussions, so a lot of people are now probably in my position after the increased activity in that area around the scandals. I really want the people with more expertise in their field to be the ones influencing how visible posts and comments about their field are.
I propose that Karma earned from comments on posts with the community tag accrues at a slower rate.
Edit: I just noticed a post by moderators that does a better job of explaining why karma is so easy to accumulate in community posts:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dDudLPHv7AgPLrzef/karma-overrates-some-topics-resulting-issues-and-potential
Thanks for calling this out Sonia. A number of folks have suggested this and we're thinking about it actively on the Forum team.