Maybe I shouldn't have even mentioned calculus in this post¶

Maybe I shouldn't have even mentioned calculus in this post. I literally said you DON'T need calculus to understand what's going on.

The response by liberals has been indignantly trying to inject MORE math into the situation -- a social situation they want to explain away. https://t.co/uiyxxl1osE Every part of the red area, people are thinking "My rent is higher than it was, and I don't like that."

Every part of the green, they're thinking "My rent is only slightly lower than it was at its worst, which was already way too high -- and it's STILL too high." It's really that simple. People haven't been tricked by social media into hating something good. They haven't been let down by their lack of understanding of statistics and economic trends.

They are looking at their bank accounts and saying "I don't make enough to survive." Liberals are busy celebrating the "victories" they have notched by searching for them in whatever subsets of the population they apply to.

And then they get confused when the rest of the population doesn't feel like the political system has anything to offer them. You don't need to lose the majority of the country to lose an election. Saying "Oh, but [X] population should be grateful," such as pointing out that most people don't rent, means you acknowledge your system doesn't serve everyone. And they admit this all the time. "Of course costs of living are increasing! They always do! But so do wages!"

Except we already know that wages don't rise fast enough to meet rising costs. The BEST liberalism has ever offered people is a shift in that balance, where wages aren't outcompeted as much. Hidden by those broader trends -- which are still depressing overall ("You aren't getting left behind quite as quickly as you could be!") -- is the day-to-day reality of the working class. Even as "wages" as an abstract concept go up, there is immense squeeze felt in the moment. You, as a "prototypical working class Jane," see your costs of living shoot up without any increase in your income. Maybe in a few months or a year, you get a "cost of living adjustment." In that time, costs have continued to rise -- maybe not as quickly as before. That entire time before your raise, you are in freefall. You're cutting back on even the tiny luxuries you used to get through the day. If you had savings, you've been eating into them. You've maybe been spending on credit, racking up debt -- and interest -- adding to the cost. Maybe your job is absolutely miserable. Maybe your boss is sexually harassing you or committing wage theft or other labor violations -- but you don't fight back, because you can't afford to even risk losing your already sub-living wage income. Maybe you've been in a similar situation for years, and it's only gotten worse once rapid inflation set in.

And then Joe Biden comes in and "fixes everything." Except you're still in that position. Your rent is no longer skyrocketing, but it's still way higher. Your wages have gone up a bit, but you still feel like you're treading water. Your job is still miserable, but there are "better options" out there. Do you qualify for them? Are they close enough? Do you have the time and energy to go looking while fighting for your life? Zooming back out, we can callously refer to the various bits of economic strain felt across the entire working class, even as broader trends theoretically start to tick up, as "friction." People don't just magically see extra money flowing in -- they have to work to find it. And even when they do, they're still worse off on the whole than they were a few years ago. You can say numbers are ticking up, but a giant swath of the population is not feeling improvement. If they do, it's minimal, and doesn't compensate for what they've already lost. The sheer callousness of telling people they should be grateful that things aren't as bad as they could be is emblematic of a fundamental failing of liberalism.

(For any liberals reading this, understand that "liberalism" doesn't exclude conservatives.)

https://t.co/jodB1Oflnw People aren't just refusing to vote for Joe Biden because they think he's a scumbag. Some are: Joe Biden personally has been doing awful, unforgivable stuff, like letting COVID run rampant and writing a blank check for Palestinian genocide.

But mostly, they're just fed up. They're not buying a narrative that promises things will get better if you just keep voting. They're certainly not buying a narrative that things are actually better already, if you just delve deeply enough into the graphs.

People are suffering. Stop pretending they aren't.