What Americans think about the debt ceiling fight

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [What Americans think about the debt ceiling fight]( What Americans think about the debt ceiling fight, William A. Gaston, Brookings Institute Many economists and budget experts predict that a default would trigger significant interest rate increases, a fall in the stock market, instability throughout the financial system, and the weakening of the dollar’s leading role in the global economy. Still the people don’t believe them, at least not yet. When a recent Economist/YouGov survey asked voters whether a failure to raise the debt ceiling followed by a default on the national debt would be a crisis, only 37% answered in the affirmative. Forty percent thought it would be a major problem but not a crisis, and the rest regarded this prospect as at most a minor problem. Most Americans do believe that the federal government spends too much and has accumulated too much debt, but they are not sure what to do about these problems. According to some polls, the debt ceiling should be raised only in return for spending cuts; according to others, these issues should not be linked. A recent Harvard/Harris survey found that 64% of voters think that Republicans should agree to raise the debt ceiling only if Democrats agree to spending restraints. But the most recent Washington Post/ABC survey found the reverse: only 28% of respondents want President Biden to agree to spending cuts in return for Republicans allowing the federal government to pay its debts, compared to 59% who want spending cuts and the debt ceiling to be addressed as separate rather than linked issues. One possible interpretation: many people don’t yet understand the link between the debt ceiling and debt default. A recent CBS News poll informed voters that “the debt ceiling is the legal limit the federal government can borrow to pay its current debts” and then asked whether Congress should raise the ceiling. Forty-six percent said that Congress should do so; more (54%) said that it should not. But when informed failing to raise the ceiling could result in the U.S. defaulting on its current debt, only 30% continued to say that the ceiling should not be increased. - [A new Supreme Court case threatens to make gerrymandering even worse]( A new Supreme Court case threatens to make gerrymandering even worse, Ian Millhiser, Vox In January, a federal court determined that South Carolina violated the Constitution’s prohibition on racial gerrymandering when it drew one of its congressional districts in the 2021 redistricting cycle. This case, known as Alexander v. South Carolina Conference of the NAACP, tees up the question of whether state lawmakers may use race to identify Democratic voters, and then draw district lines intended to diminish these voters’ ability to elect a candidate of their choice. Should the Supreme Court permit this kind of gerrymandering, it would likely have profound consequences for voting rights throughout the nation — potentially shutting down one of the few remaining ways to challenge a gerrymandered map that violates the US Constitution. - [Coastal Cities Priced Out Low-Wage Workers. Now College Graduates Are Leaving, Too.]( Coastal Cities Priced Out Low-Wage Workers. Now College Graduates Are Leaving, Too., Emily Badger, Robert Geberoff, and Josh Katz, The New York Times But it appears in domestic migration data that, years after lower-wage residents have been priced out of expensive coastal metros, higher-paid workers are now turning away from them, too. Working-age Americans with a degree are still flowing into these regions from other parts of the country, often in large numbers. But as the pool leaving grows faster, that educational advantage is eroding. Boston’s pull with college graduates has weakened. Seattle’s edge vanished during the pandemic. And the analysis shows San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and Washington all crossing a significant threshold: More college-educated workers left than moved in. For most of this century, large metros with a million residents or more have received all of the net gains from college-educated workers migrating around the country, at the expense of smaller places. But among those large urban areas, the dozen metros with the highest living costs — nearly all of them coastal — have had a uniquely bifurcated migration pattern: As they saw net gains from college graduates, they lost large numbers of workers without degrees. At least, that was true until recently. Now, large, expensive metros are shedding both kinds of workers. - [Daily Kos is relying more and more on the support of readers and activists to cover our expenses. Can you support our work with a $5 donation?]( - [Why Are Americans So Negative About the Economy?]( Why Are Americans So Negative About the Economy?, Paul Krugman, The New York Times Since December 2021 the U.S. economy has added almost six million jobs while the unemployment rate has fallen from 3.9 percent to 3.4 percent, a level not seen since the 1960s. And no, unemployment isn’t low because Americans have dropped out of the labor force: The percentage of adults either working or looking for a job has declined, but that’s almost entirely a result of an aging population, and labor force participation is right back in line with prepandemic projections. But inflation, while still elevated, has come way down. The inflation rate over the past six months was 3.3 percent, compared with 9.6 percent last June. The price of gasoline, a major political talking point last year, is now more or less normal compared with average earnings. And people have noticed. In October, 20 percent of Americans named inflation as the most important problem facing the nation; that’s now down to 9 percent. So what’s going on? The general rule seems to be that Americans are feeling good about their personal situation but believe that bad things are happening to other people. A Federal Reserve study found that in late 2021 a record-high percentage of Americans were positive about their own finances while a record low were positive about the economy. We don’t have results for 2022 yet, but my guess is that they’ll look similar. - [Daily Kos hats are here just in time for spring. Click here to get yours.]( - [Biden team aims to compete in North Carolina, test ground in Florida]( Biden team aims to compete in North Carolina, test ground in Florida, Michael Scherer and Tyler Pager, The Washington Post The strategy — which has been briefed to donors in recent weeks and has been signaled in early television advertising buys by the Democratic National Committee — comes as the party and Biden’s team make plans to focus most of their organizing and spending energy on the states that Biden won in 2020. But the campaign’s early moves provide alternate paths to victory if the president finds himself struggling next year to repeat his 2020 victory. Biden won Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by less than a single percentage point. If he loses all three states in 2024, he can still win the White House by winning North Carolina and holding onto his other states. [...] Since Biden announced his reelection effort, his nascent campaign, which still lacks a headquarters and many senior staff hires, has spent about $1.6 million on television advertising with the DNC, according to media-tracking firm AdImpact. Of the money spent on state-specific television markets, about 12 percent has been divided between North Carolina and Florida, with the rest going to six states that Biden won in 2020 that are widely expected to be battlegrounds in 2024: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. - [The persistence of tragedy, the preservation of memory]( The persistence of tragedy, the preservation of memory, Susan J. Demas, Michigan Advance When even the most sensitive people casually declare, “I haven’t thought about the pandemic in forever,” it stops me cold. Every week, thousands of people are still dying of COVID. It hasn’t gone away, no matter how much we wish it to, no matter how many politically driven declarations there are. There are a lot of reasons for hope. We’re far more equipped to fight COVID than when it overtook the world in early 2020. But essentially telling seniors and immunocompromised people that their lives don’t matter because you’re “over” the pandemic is madness. And jeering those who care about others is a sickness of the soul. It’s that same cruelty that we encounter after every mass shooting. We’re told in so many different ways to just get over it and for God’s sake, stop making it political. We’re somehow supposed to believe that there’s no way to prevent weapons of war annihilating us beyond recognition every day, in every part of this country, when we just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Two months after students like my daughter survived the Michigan State University shooting, so many people are not OK. I’m not sure we really know what being OK is anymore. 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