Everything is expensive

[Dave Gray]

In order to meet my family's needs for the things that matter most, we have basically cut eating out, house cleaning and vacations.

It sucks.  The cost of living is skyrocketing.  I tried and was able to offset it for a while by just being more careful.  I shop at the cheaper store, I buy more off-brand, I chase rotating sales at different places.  But it's continuing to get worse.  Now we've had to excise certain things entirely.

If we buy the same stuff we bought before, I think that our grocery bill is like 3X what it was like 6 years ago.

[Fau Teixeira]

less processed foods are cheaper, buying meat at a meat market rather than a supermarket has done wonders for me. I wonder if you could shop at penn dutch (if those are still around in florida) for meat and rorabeks in lake worth of produce. You should see more savings that way.

Publix was a ripoff 6 years ago, i can only imagine now.

[Phishfan]

You stopped cleaning your house.!!! Things must be bad

I was just thinking about this today. I'm needing to rebudget my spending.

[Spider-Dan]

[CF DolFan]

That makes absolutely no sense. The economy went to chit along with Biden and his policies of trying to force people into playing along with the delusions of sick men. The fact we are now coming back to our senses has no bearing on how high prices are, and have been for quite some time.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

That makes absolutely no sense. The economy went to chit along with Biden and his policies of trying to force people into playing along with the delusions of sick men. The fact we are now coming back to our senses has no bearing on how high prices are, and have been for quite some time.

The economy went to crap under Trump. By the end of Biden's term it had started to recover then Trump came in and started a trade war.   

[Phishfan]

Bringing transgender in sports during a discussion of the economy is precisely the type of thing keeping Democrats from making headway with the majority of the country. I'm  a NPA that leans left on a lot of issues but you can't even sell this argument to all of your party nor the LBGTQ community. Democrats better find some talking points to win people over soon.

[Spider-Dan]

The guy currently destroying the economy is delivering precisely what he promised during the campaign: huge tariffs.  For people to then say "I don't understand why everything is so expensive now!" just proves that they were unwilling to listen when they were told this would be the outcome.

OR

They didn't care if this would be the outcome, because they were riled up about the prospect of a trans girl playing on a JV softball team*.  Whichever reasoning you find more acceptable, I suppose.

You say bringing up woke stuff during a discussion of the economy is why Democrats lose; I say Democrats losing because Republicans successfully weaponize anti-wokeness is why we get to experience Republican presidents detonating the economy over and over.

*I will concede that they may have instead been riled up about the prospect of a black kid getting into college over their kid, or a Spanish-speaking family moving in next door, all of which the GOP has successfully convinced the electorate to be dire threats.

[Phishfan]

So your answer to winning more votes is to keep bringing up talking points that made you lose votes. Get your head out of the clouds and find better talking points to win people back. The definition of insanity...

[CF DolFan]

Phish is an old school liberal. The kind who I may disagree on some issues, but still has common sense. I honestly don't even know how to process the progressives. Many things they come up with are so silly I don't even know that it registers in my brain they are being serious.

[Spider-Dan]

So your answer to winning more votes is to keep bringing up talking points that made you lose votes.

First off, telling people directly about the consequences of Trump's economic plans didn't work, because they simply refused to believe it.

Given that reality, an alternative approach is to point out that (the second round of) Trump destroying the economy is due to Republicans distracting people with culture war issues.  And that message is absolutely necessary, because Republicans will definitely try to do it again!

Your apparent countermeasure to this GOP strategy is... to shut up and hope Republicans never mention this again?  They have been busy branding Democrats as the party of child sex trafficking for the last decade, and you think saying less about Woke Issues will make attacks like that go away?  No.  The answer is to attack their tactics head on.

[Phishfan]

First off, telling people directly about the consequences of Trump's economic plans didn't work, because they simply refused to believe it.

Given that reality, an alternative approach is to point out that (the second round of) Trump destroying the economy is due to Republicans distracting people with culture war issues.  And that message is absolutely necessary, because Republicans will definitely try to do it again!

Your apparent countermeasure to this GOP strategy is... to shut up and hope Republicans never mention this again?  They have been busy branding Democrats as the party of child sex trafficking for the last decade, and you think saying less about Woke Issues will make attacks like that go away?  No.  The answer is to attack their tactics head on.

You brought that up at a point where not a single Trump voter had posted anything so you weren't attacking anything except to bring up a useless point on a subject that isn't gaining you any support with people who already agree with you about tariffs.

[Spider-Dan]

Your initial response - "Bringing transgender in sports during a discussion of the economy is precisely the type of thing keeping Democrats from making headway with the majority of the country" - is a strategy critique... so fine, let's talk strategy. You seem to believe that we should just focus on the economic facts, not the lies and fearmongering that made people too scared/angry to listen to facts.  Such attempts have already failed, repeatedly; both Trump wins came about by simply lying about the economy, on the heels of a Democratic president repairing GOP economic destruction.

I think you're also misinterpreting the tweet I cited.  The point of the tweet is not a defense of transgender athletes' right to compete or anything of the sort.  The point of the tweet is that nobody should care about the gender identity of the players on the girls' volleyball team that finishes 2nd in the Mountain West conference, and the fact that such minuscule issues have been successfully weaponized nationally by the GOP is the real problem we have to fight.

But I suspect that such an argument may not gain purchase with you if the right has already successfully convinced you that the single-digit number of transgender competitors among the 510,000+ athletes in the NCAA is actually a dire threat to women's sports, and it is Democrats (and not Republicans) that must promptly reverse course on this issue.

If so, then I'd say you are among the people who need to be reminded that we fucking told them this would happen and they ignored it because they were too distracted by the culture war.

[Downunder Dolphan]

I'm amazed you guys on your side of the world have only just noticed this now.

Post-Covid, price-gouging and profiteering had well and truly set in. From energy, basic consumables, pretty much everything absolutely essential has jumped in price, and there's bugger-all anyone can effectively do about it. The underlying CPI figure (from a retired Accountant's view, I consider it's been dodgy for decades because of what they choose to exclude at certain times, plus being influenced by non-essential discretionary spending like most electronics) eventually reflected this. In Australia it's been a huge issue for the last 18 months.

[Phishfan]

Spider, you can't see the forest for the trees man. They set the bait and you still don't see you fell into the trap.

By your position that no one should care you have dismissed all the other athletes,  friends,  and family involved. This isn't a voting issue for me. I think progressives should find some other hill to die on. You aren't going to gain votes on this topic.