Scott Alexander

Here's a chart.

We have lines for Democrats and Republicans.

So it looks like Democrats started off at 75% saying that the national economy was very or fairly good.

When Trump was inaugurated, it started to go down.

By 2020, when the coronavirus crash happened, it was down to 50%.

Then obviously it dropped down to a very low percentage, under 10%.

When Biden was inaugurated, the Democrats' opinion went up again to about 60% or 65%.

And it stayed roughly around that level with a bit of a dip in the following months and then returning.

For Republicans, it's kind of the opposite story.

They start off very low at around 10% to 15%.

Then when Trump is inaugurated, it shoots up to around 80% or 90%.

When the coronavirus crash happens, it shoots down to about 30%, comes back up.

When Biden is inaugurated, it's sitting at around 80% and then drops down to about 25%.

And it drops down to about maybe under 10%, 5%, and stays there for the rest of the graph.

Scott writes, Obviously nothing real changes the exact second a new president is inaugurated, so people must be using questions about the economy to express their overall happiness about the state of the world.

Alex asks whether increasing political polarization could make this worse.

Both parties' extreme factions share a tendency to treat the country as controlled by a hegemonic conspiracy of their enemies, the woke coastal elite Soros cosmopolitan establishment, or the neoliberal fat cat Koch brothers' tech oligarch blob.

Does this mean everyone is getting some multiple of the other party's president is in power effect all the time?

3.

Discourse downstream of the Mike Green $140,000 poverty line post.