Meh...AOC's grasp of economics doesn't look a whole better than Trump's from what we have seen so far, IMO.

Bot needs an undertitle. My vote is for 'slaying DC' or maybe something like 'come at me...'

What do you think is wrong with her grasp?

Has she bankrupted a Casino yet?

Her explanation of the unemployment rate being low because so many people are working multiple jobs was just awful. I am not a Trump fan. I think both are rather stupid.

That is the worst you got?

Not a Trump fan, just a fan of the economic policies of Trump.

Yeah, I am, she graduated cum laude from Boston University. Donald Trump is the exception, not the rule. And I’m moreso pointing out that idiots on right wing media stating she “has no clue about economics” are themselves idiots.

This is bad.

It's not at all a failure in the understanding of economics. This often repeated "fact" happens to be untrue. It's not something impossible on its face. It's not a fundamental misunderstanding of anything. It's just being wrong about some data. She's going along with something along the lines of an urban legend or meme or something that happens to fit with her ideology and while it's not literally accurate it's in the ballpark of kind of a general description of problems with the economy at the mid-lower income levels.

I think the set of people who give a **** about this comment, but aren't really meaning that they don't want universal healthcare and universal college education and raising the minimum wage is close to null.

Her being wrong on that doesn't really speak to her understanding of economics. She may have read bad literature on the subject but have a very good understanding of economics as a whole.

I've been agreeing with Paul D a lot lately. (or him agreeing with me since I posted that first) That's fine.

So this makes you wanna post here, but not the whole "insurance company refuses coverage, tells customer to **** off and die, unless she can set up a GoFundMe in time".

Seems super legit.

Why AOC's Instagram and Twitter accounts are so good

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

I bet she understands how tariffs and trade deficits work.

No, pay attention, we're using her degree in economics as a counter to the statement that she is economically illiterate or whatever the talking point on the right is.

Does the unemployment rate capture people who are underemployed or working more than one job to make ends meet?

Yes. U6 takes into account “underemployed” (people delivering pizzas but looking for office jobs) and people who would like to work but aren’t in the labor force. Like all unemployment numbers it’s approaching multi decade/lifetime lows as is % of people working more than 1 job to “make ends meet”. All of this is consistent with earnings and a host of other indicators that say the US economy is currently in good to great shape. Though the fall in multi job holders looks like a longer term trend that is going down regardless of whether or not the economy is doing well. There really isn’t any disagreement about that aside from the purely partisan hacks and the grossly ignorant.

Saying stupid stuff is unavoidable. How do they react when it gets pointed out?

OAC: Admit error, learn and move on.
Trump: Double down, triple down and hold my beer on the stupid.

Underemployment is not well defined and thus not well tracked. Related is "Part-time jobs for economic reasons" which is tracked.

http://www.aei.org/publication/part-...een-declining/

It skyrocketed during the financial crisis in 2008 and has been declining since then.

Working more than one job has actually just been declining.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/4-....htm?view_full

Pretty much the main economic fact/problem is that real median wages have been flat/declining for decades while productivity has increased dramatically and income and wealth for the top small percent has grown dramatically.

Progress, which imo is far and away mostly due to technological improvement, has not been shared at all for most people in terms of wealth. That's the crux of it, but people looking for more talking points walking among those who are struggling the most pretty naturally talk about people who are working multiple jobs and not getting ahead.

Here is the actual exchange and her explanation.



Worth noting, this was in July. She has had plenty of time to make a second error if that is what happened.

Trump claims climate change is a Chinese hoax because it is cold outside on Thanksgiving. That we are going to have great climate because he says so. That raking the forest will help with wildfires. That there are seasoned street fighters and disguised "middle easterners" in the caravan. That he knows more about electromagnetic propulsion than the experts. That the town of Paradise he just visited is called Pleasure. That you need to hold the receiver when you are on a speakerphone. That umbrellas are disposable once opened. That it is okay to assassinate and dismember journalists if you are spending a lot of money on weapons. And so much more. Like, this month I mean.

Thanks guys, I didn’t know that.

While U6 includes part-time workers for economic reasons it mixes that in with other things. The actual part-time workers for economic reasons is still 40% higher than it was in 2000 you ignorant ****.

The real kicker with this post here is the bolded. This is pure ****ing Trump-level rhetoric. Yeah, I looked at the same pretty simple issue and looked up the same damn statistics and that was all obvious, and yeah why would there be disagreement about it? But Ecriture has no damned idea about the state of agreement, but just throws out "Everybody who knows anything knows this" "people are saying" thing because like Trump he's a condescending dickbag. The point of almost every single ecriture/dessin post ever, always disingenuously phrased like "I'm no expert, but this is obvious to me - somebody else is a moran" is that he's better and smarter and there's a large class of very inferior people below him. What a prick.

This concludes Max's weekly #wellackshully economics post. Tune in next week!

From her quote it seems like she's saying the stats don't match the reality of what work is like. As in everyone cheers because unemployment numbers are low but that doesn't mean work itself gets less sucky especially for those at the bottom and people glommed onto AOC making some kind of declarative statement that U(whatever) wasn't true because she knows someone who works two jobs.

Maybe I misread it.

You read it like someone who doesn't feel threatened by her