Opinion | Is America on the Mend?
nytimes.com
whatever American consumers say about the state of the economy, they are spending as if their finances are in pretty good shape. Most recently, holiday sales appear to have been quite good.
...
Americans aren’t acting as if they’re terrified about crime. As I’ve written before, major downtowns have seen weekend foot traffic — roughly speaking, the number of people visiting the city for fun rather than work — recover to prepandemic levels, which isn’t what you’d expect if Americans were fleeing violent urban hellscapes.
Repeatedly telling us we are doing well when homelessness has hit a record high, credit usage is through the roof, housing is unaffordable to a majority of the population, and income inequality is the largest ever seen is a sure fire way to sow further distrust in government.
We are not doing well.
WE'RE not doing well, THE ECONOMY is doing well. WE are just cogs in the great economy machine. Keep up the good work!
Looking from over the border, you guys are absolutely fucked. I'm trying to calm my terror over your election season. I have only dread.
As long as citizens keep electing the same corporate owned oligarchs it will never get any better. We need to get rid of Democrats and Republicans, Republicrats
Being ignorant of your surroundings and financial status does not mean everything is ok. This is literally the head in sand approach. A toddler should understand this.
Right on. Glad to know Krugman and his friends in NY are ok. But him pointing at the numbers and saying "I'm right" really just comes across as ignorant. If you're on minimum wage and you can't escape it, then the times are worse than ever. His PhD students are probably in that income range and earn as much as they did 10 years ago, but he got his and probably doesn't even know hardship...
Yes, there are people for whom it's awful. Always has been. But the big question is "did it improve for most people?" — and it seems to have.
It has not. They can't gaslight us into prosperity.
They'll keep trying, and OP will keep helping.
This last year people have seen a cost of living jump across the board because of "inflation".
Have you noticed how many online services offer payment plans on things as cheap as $10? To me that doesn't sound like everything is ok. To me that looks more like people trying to pretend like it's ok while barely getting by.
Yes, inflation happened. And for the bulk of the population, wages went up even more. Doesn't mean that there is no pain, but things actually got better for a lot of folks.
Repeatedly telling that lie will never make it true
That's what I'm saying, it didn't happen. According to public records many companies that provide necessary items like food and diapers blamed inflation on price increases while their product costs dropped, making TONs of money off the common American.
Robert Reich talks about Huggies in particular
The stats literally show that prices went up but wages went up more.
There are specific subgroups for whom that has not happened. But for the population as a whole, it did
I'd have to see your stats because I don't believe that statement on it's face.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Note that layoffs during the pandemic disproportionately affected low income workers resulting in a spike in apparent wages
Except that's not what's going on. People are just saying "it's bad" even though the evidence is that it's not.
The evidence clearly shows Americans have maxed out their cards and are riding debt while buying only essentials. That's not good. That's ignorance of impending doom.
It's also NOT good for anyone who hasn't got a new job in the past couple years. If everything around you is 20% more expensive and you've received a 3% raise, things are very bad for you.
It is very good currently for those with 401ks and can leverage, use, or sell the gains they are getting.
On average, wages went up, even after accounting for inflation. There are people for whom this is not true, but for most people, they're actually better off.
Note that there's a really distortive spike during the pandemic as low-wage workers disproportionately lost their jobs.
That one metric, divorced from cost of living, is meaningless. If you want to make a convincing argument that Americans are doing better, you have to show that rising wages matched or outpaced rising prices. It doesn't matter if I make a dollar more than I did last year if everything costs two dollars more than it did last year.
Similar to people thinking crime is way up and rising when it’s way lower than it’s been and decreasing.
There are four big things that are making life shitty for those who find themselves in the lower class.
1: High housing costs. This could be resolved with zoning reform and more public investments in housing. Liberals would work to resolve these issues while conservatives will be their NIMBY selves and refuse to support public housing
2: High price of goods. Compounded by an internal labor shortage that could be alleviated by not demonizing immigrants and a series of wars that have put a strain on global trade, as well as the massive supply chain disruptions brought about by the pandemic, inflation was a given. It will take time to resolve itself, but it could be resolved more quickly if Congress could investigate corporations making record profits. That won’t happen when Republicans have as much sway as they do.
Minimum wage being stagnant. The only places have raised minimum wage have been in blue parts of the country. Republicans will always refuse to raise minimum wage. They will always support businesses paying the least amount of money possible.
Old-fashioned racism and sexism. Guess which party is working to revoke and has already revoked protections that prevent biased hiring and equal opportunity?
Things won’t get better unless Republicans have zero say in how the country is governed. A 20 seat lead in the house and a 2 seat lead in the Senate is not enough when Congress is full of Manchins and Sinemas. An overwhelming blue wave could and would produce real change in the country, but it won’t happen unless we mobilize early and fight for our rights.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In the short run, of course, the pandemic had severe economic and social effects, in many ways wider and deeper than almost anyone expected.
The psychological toll is hard to measure, but the weakening of social ties contributed to a range of negative trends, including a surge in violent crime.
It was easy to imagine that the pandemic experience would leave long-term scars — that long Covid and early retirements would leave us with a permanently reduced labor force, that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment, that the crime surge heralded a sustained breakdown in public order.
By now, anyone who writes about the economic situation has become accustomed to mail and social media posts (which often begin, “You moron”) insisting that the official statistics on low unemployment and inflation are misleading if not outright lies.
This is an area in which public perceptions have long been notoriously at odds with reality, with people telling pollsters that crime is rising even when it’s falling rapidly.
As I’ve written before, major downtowns have seen weekend foot traffic — roughly speaking, the number of people visiting the city for fun rather than work — recover to prepandemic levels, which isn’t what you’d expect if Americans were fleeing violent urban hellscapes.
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