Perhaps most alarming, 7 out of 10 people surveyed believed the economy wasn’t getting better — even after they were explicitly told that inflation had eased and unemployment sat near record lows. That preface, designed specifically to persuade voters to brighten their view of the economy, did not seem to move them.
“When we intentionally put our finger on the scale, and 100 percent of people hear good economic indicators before saying if the economy’s going well for them, we still get walloped,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
US government is dangerously fking up. One of the most basic rules of governance going back thousands of years is to at the very least ensure the masses have plentiful bread and circuses.
A rant because this shit has been bothering me:
For circuses, it's the lack of new movies, TV episodes, and good books. Ironically it was knowledge of how important entertainment is that caused the US government and most governments to exempt entertainment media production from COVID lockdowns. Even before the Hollywood strikes caused an industry wide production halt, the number of episodes in a standard scripted TV season had been steadily shrinking. We have at this point gone from a standard yearly season of a TV show having 24 episodes to in 2023 and in upcoming announced seasons the number of episodes in a season is 8 episodes. This dramatic drop in episode count is even apparent in animated television. You have to look at content from places outside Hollywood, like Japan, to still find standard 24 episode seasons (example). The major film studios are not just making less movies and refusing to produce anything other than "cinematic universe" garbage but just canceling ready to release films in exchange for a tax deduction that is lower than even the worst possible box office revenue. On top of this the so-called "big five" publishers (ie where books come from that aren't content-mill Amazon Kindle store garbage from authors that somehow write over a hundred 350-page books per year) have dramatically cut how many new works of fiction they release each year.
We currently have food prices increasing and quality decreasing dramatically month over month. It's not just the price and quality but people notice that every time they visit a grocery store there are items out of stock (empty shelves) in categories other than the fresh produce section where something being periodically out of stock has always been expected. Because we are talking about the US, rather than "price and availability for a loaf of bread" it's better to look at frozen potato products, frozen burritos, and tortinos frozen pizzas. They are a staple for a vast majority of lower income Americans who don't even have access to full sized grocery stores.
Since 2020 when visiting a grocery store there is a decent chance the frozen food section doesn't have products like frozen tater tots or burritos in stock. In that time the price has gone from an average $2 for 28oz of frozen potato product to $6 for packages that are now 22oz. We are talking 300% inflation. Grocery stores also have added 10oz to 12oz packages that cost $3.50, in attempt to obfuscate this price increase on a staple. With frozen burritos the price went from on average $2.35 for a package of 12 to somewhere around $7. With tortinos frozen pizzas the price has gone from $1.25 to $3.00. On top of the prices increasing nearly three fold, the quality has noticably dropped on these food products that were already considered low income slop. This has been especially apparent with tortinos frozen pizzas where back in 2021 they changed something about the cheese that makes it no longer melt or brown even a little bit and has these weird discolored lumps in the cheese with an off flavor.
Deepthroating a copy of Atlas Shrugged is going to bite the US government in the ass so badly.
"Uhh...no one owes you your bread and circuses. You're not a business, stop being so entitled!"