Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
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55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
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49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
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49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
Everything costs more, housing prices near me still rising, and my wage stays the same. If this is what a good economy looks like then give me a bad one.
Having lived through 2008, you keep that wish to yourself.
I bought my first house in 2009 - $125,000 on an income of $45,000. I even got a first time homebuyer credit of ~$8,000 to help make the purchase easier.
I make a little over $200,000 today, and I'm completely priced out of the market. I doubt I'll ever own a home again and am currently living in a rundown old sailboat.
I'd take 2008 over this economy any day of the week!
Good for you. In 2008 I went from having standing offers for paid internships at a half-dozen architecture firms to not knowing of a single open entry-level position in a 500 mile radius, and it stayed that way for almost three years. I graduated in 2010 and spent the next year mostly-unemployed in my parents' spare bedroom, applying to every listing for a fresh-out position nationwide and not getting so much an automated courtesy email to let me know my resume didn't make it the top of the pile of hundreds of others doing the exact same thing. I spent a year working for less than minimum wage as an illegally-misclassified "contractor" sorting mail and running errands, just to get an architecture firm on my resume. My best friend from architecture school became a barista and joined the National Guard to cover his student loan payments, and didn't land a job in the field he spent five years training to enter for another five years.
Inflation sucks right now, but this is a fucking cakewalk compared to the Great Recession. Lucky for you that you were in a position to capitalize on the misfortune of others, but don't forget for a second that millions of us went through years of misery.
Do you live in the Bay area? I'm guessing you've ruled out small condos/townhomes? Why did you sell your original house and not buy a new one?
How did that impact you? For me as a union electrician that meant members sitting for upwards of 2 years, with over 1500 people unemployed on the books in my local hall.
Right now there's 800, most since 2008 recession, never going above 300 or so since then. I don't know what a recession means for anyone else, but for me it's not having a job and income. But this one is worse, because while the pay is more since 2008, everything costs triple since then.
It gets worse either way, the only good times for us are when things are stable. But stability is worse than failure to someone whose occupation is Shareholder.
So everything would be the same, but you wouldn't have a wage.
Economy health does not equate to cheap fuckin groceries and gas.
The goddamn monopolies are fleecing us because they can, that’s not the economy’s fault, you’re just literally taking their lies/excuses as fact.
Your comment screams naivety. You may think you want a bad one but the rest of us know we don’t.
While your comment is dismissive and arrogant, you make a good point (even if it's not the point you intended).
The metrics we use the show the health of our economy do not reflect the economic circumstances of the average citizen, and that's a real problem.
As a millennial in the middle class it feels like we've been in a recession since 2008.
IIRC, wages have been flat to down since the 1970s, so it's likely this cuts across many generations, from the "greatest generation" on, and soon including generation alpha.
It hasn't been felt until the millennials, for sure. That's when the rifts really started to widen. Around the early 2000's
Eh, that's not my experience. I saw what corporate downsizing and Ronnie Raygunism did to the boomers and some of their parents' generation during the 80s. Many of us Gen Xers were very cynical about corporations as a result of early 90s recession (though some may have later forgot those lessons) and the growing corporate rule and the rise of things like Manpower and temp work - many of us chuckled when we saw the usual suspects rebranding this as the "gig economy" as if this was a good thing for workers.
Of course, many of our generation got burned, and burned hard, by the boom/bust cycles like the dot-com bubble and the real-estate speculation that came after. But then, so did older and younger generations.
When the poor and middle class suffers, it's not like just one set of people that happened to be born between certain years and are lumped into one group (mostly for marketing purposes, by the way) are the only ones affected.
As someone else points out here, though, for the first time in a long time, though, real wages have gone up in the very recent past. If that is a trend, it would be a reversal of literally decades of it not going up. I suspect it is not, being the cynic I am, and eyeing things like AI and the automation it is/will be enabling. I also think the uptick is partly a result of Covid and the powers that be seek to reverse any gains ASAP.
Lots of bad news from media milking outrage for views and clicks, in the name of News
Nah. More like employers/companies making it sound like their CEO is almost outside on the sidewalk begging for money for the company when it's time for a end of year salary review or when negociating salaries when applying for a job.
I did like to see that Jon Stewart countered a recent author about how Gen Z has it the worst of any generation, ever, even if ever so gently. However, that author (John Della Volpe) was definitely old enough to know better - I think he is a boomer or Gen X - and I'm glad Jon didn't just let him blow smoke the entire interview. Jon came back with some boomer trauma that they went through; I often reflect on the kind of trauma those that can remember the Great Depression or WWII might have had.
The point is that every generation has trauma and the clickbait type of stuff about how this or that generation is somehow magically different or some inflection point is just kind of silly in the broader context.
Tbf I don't blame people for not knowing the economy is good right now. Because that shit doesn't affect anyone positively except the wealthy.
For most of us, the economy is bad? Cost of living/groceries goes up. Economy is great? Cost of living/groceries goes up. It makes no difference to us who aren't stock gamblers, whether the country is in recession, we certainly are. When the economy is good we see no benefit to us at the bottom whatsoever
First thing that makes sense here - income inequality has been increasing over time, and either side will see completely different economy
Except it's literally the opposite of that.
The other person who talks about income inequality is also wrong. While it's usually a safe bet that it's rising, at any given point in US history ever since 1980, it's actually going down now for the first time in God knows how long.
You are the first person I've seen claiming income inequality isn't growing. I'd love to see a source for that. Income growth outpacing inflation is totally different than reduction in income inequality.
Sure. Two ways to visualize:
Income by race -- you can literally see the lines squeezing together, as income on the higher lines falls (inflation), and income on the lower lines rises even beating inflation.
GINI coefficient is the usual statistical metric. It's a little more abstracted, but maybe more rigorous. Anyway you can see the steady trend line of it always going up, and then a little down tick at the end as it drops. Not really like "oh okay it's fixed now," but definitely also not "okay Biden spiked income inequality like everyone else does," since it started moving in the actual opposite direction.
Thank you for the sources. Some comments:
Yeah, fair. The racial breakdown was just the first thing I found and I thought it was a good stand-in for breakdown by income levels. I just looked, and managed to find more of exactly what I was looking for -- a chart explicitly broken down by income level. It shows a huge boost in income for the bottom half of Americans.
Well, but that's not Biden's fault, is it? He came in with some monster economic problems, and they ate up some of the gains of the good things he was able to do, and this is another example. To me. I don't really know enough of the details of how the tax credits work to say that for sure, though, that's just sort of my first interpretation.
Nice, I like that Time article better. It reinforces the GINI articles analysis: middle class folks wages didn’t go up with lower class wages. I think that’s sorta a good thing? Ideally the top 10% would not grow, but the bottom 90% would. But help getting to the bottom 50% is definitely not a bad thing.
Also, I never said the income inequality growth is Biden’s fault. But more that it’s the reason all these articles about how good the “economy” is doing might not be seen in the same light by people who are still struggling.
We can do better, and I think closing that gap is everyone’s goal, but the methods to achieve it can vary wildly.
Yeah, makes sense. I do understand how "naw you're wrong the economy's actually getting better yay Biden" could lead to a pretty violently disagreeable reaction.
Because the truth is that people have always been poor in America. We are just more advertised to than ever before and feel like we are temporarily embarrassed millionaires. There have been decades of romanticizing individual success with less emphasis on systems and social contract. There was an attack on unions. We had a shift from a war on poverty to a war on welfare. These decades long decisions will take a lot of time to change but Biden is starting. He can't say that the America we grew up in was a bad deal so he has to stay positive yet tactful in continuing to support unions, education funding, housing programs, childcare, healthcare, and so many things that we should have as an advanced economy.
And the efforts will take time. Maybe a generation. We've had right wing economic environment since Reagan and are slowly shifting back to pro-labor and pro-union environment with Biden. If we lose the momentum from the past 4 years we will certainly be worse off. I would encourage everyone to read history of labor movements in the US. They take years, decades even. But they do have lasting impacts that we often take for granted, like safer working conditions, days off, reduced child labor practices.... I know it sucks for things to be more expensive right now, especially with corporate profits at all time highs, but throwing away this progress would be a huge loss for all workers in America.
Agreed. Changes this large for society will always take time. That’s why it’s important to not burn yourself out on one issue, or one fight. You gotta buckle in the for the long run. But keep fighting for change in a way that allows you to keep fighting. I feel guilty sometimes for not getting more involved in issues or causes that I think need support, but I have to remind myself that no one person can fight every battle. Forgive yourself from time to time for “not doing enough”. So long as you keep coming back to the table when your pace allows it.
Isn't that just showing an increase in income that's like a tiny percentage? Didn't that "raise" come during a period when inflation increased significantly and cancelled it all out?
Honestly, it's super annoying that you replied all defensive as if anyone was attacking Biden. It's hard to take anything you say seriously now. I'm voting for the piece of shit but it seems insane to pretend he's actually trying to help poor Americans at the expense of corporations and their shareholders.
There's an ongoing class war and there's bipartisan support for the rich in all three branches of gov.
Those are already inflation adjusted dollars - gains on the chart represent gains above inflation. The source is here with more explanation, and looking over it actually will show some important / upsetting caveats to what I said - just bear in mind that for some confusing reason, it is showing percentage change in a lot of its charts, instead of the raw underlying number.
And yeah I get that - I feel like I am becoming humorless and just yelling at people all the time good things about Biden. My feeling on it is more or less, why are you guys making me stick up for the Democrats I don’t even particularly like them. But it seems to me like people are spreading very specific malicious bullshit about them in this election, which is upsetting to me (because of the “bullshit” part and its potential impact on the US and the world if it swings the election, not because of the “Biden” part, if that makes sense).
You can't argue with reality my friend. I'm my lifetime alone, costs have gone up to the point where it felt like they teased us with the dream of being able to live comfortably before it was taken away. You can't tell me the economy improving is benefiting me when it's NOT. it adds nothing to my paycheck, it doesn't affect my industry. The only reason I'm not underwater is because I have a union.
Wage increases on the bottom are somewhat higher on a percentage basis, so if you made $10/hr one year and then $11/hr the next, that's a whopping 10% increase, but given how prices have increased that's really not great. These sorts of gains would have to be sustained over multiple years (like how inflation has sustained over multiple years) to make a good difference.
Wait but I thought Biden was hurting the poor on purpose and inequality was getting worse on purpose and even having inherited a fantastic
And so on
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Polling isn't going to change people's minds about it FEELING like a recession. It certainly feels like anyone who owns or controls any sort of economic production is on a cash-grab bender, jacking up prices on absolutely everything, and finding new ways to exploit the populace while the getting is good. People can't afford the basic staples of life. It FEELS pretty dire.
I made a post about this sometime ago about this split in expectations. People know that the economy is fine, actually great, for businesses they just don't think its good for them.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240502151808/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/opinion/biden-trump-consumer-confidence-economy.html
~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~
Like I've said above. Economy is bad? Costs of living and items go up.
Economy is GREAT! costs of living and items go up.
The economy's health only benefits the wealthy who can afford to play stocks, etc. It makes absolutely no difference to the rest of us who are getting fucked no matter how good the economy is
People can't afford rent and food. The most Biden has done to address the corporate greed and price gouging is telling them to knock it off lol. The attempts at trying to gaslight people into believing the economy is good won't work.
Biden claims he did this haha
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/21/biden-takes-credit-for-target-grocery-price-cuts.html
Corpo say economy is great because green line. I went from $200 for a month of food to $400 while losing 30 pounds. Retirement is fiction. I even got a new job paying double of what my old job was just to stay stagnant.
There not playing the same game as us.
Yeah, when people's personal experience is the same as what happens in a recession, they will think we are in a recession.
Looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, acts like a duck. Clearly thats a booming economy and not a duck.
and that game is rigged.
Any working class person living in the elements of this economy will tell you it is not good; cherry-picked indicators in these reports be damned. When the people tell you they are hurting in numbers this large, leaders must listen, not ignore.
But how can they tell, if all the indicators are good? How can they even figure out a solution if all the indicators don’t point to a problem?
They could find better indicators.
What indicators do you think would be accurate? I can probably find them for almost any metric
Corporations showing record profits tells me that it’s harder for everyday people. Record profits means cut hours, stagnated wages, outsourced labor, more expensive goods, “shrinkflation”, cheaper components, dialed back safety standards, crunch, making salaried employees perma-lance so they don’t have to worry about benefits anymore, ghost job postings that are never intended on being filled because being understaffed is the new normal, etc. And then corporations use that record profit to bribe the government into keeping it just as shitty as it is or making it worse for us.
The system is working as intended to siphon as much money and labor as it can from workers and consumers so the metrics focus on that. Then they have the nerve to tell us that we’re being crazy for thinking that things are getting difficult.
They can start by developing indicators that actually work, instead of indicators that make them look good.
As soon as something becomes a metric, it ceases to be a functional metric.
It's a confidence game, so they can't blab about the score.
By good economy you mean corporations making gang bucks while the people are being bled dry and putting shit on credit.
I think you mean "like gangbusters," but it's totally possible "making gang bucks" is a term I just haven't heard before.
Cheers!
Probably, I tend to make sayings and idioms slightly off while it still makes sense. I have a joke about myself where I say I ended up at the neighbors house again.
I get that! I'm partial to "getting two birds stoned at once" and "people in glass houses sink ships" myself.
I don't want to kick a gift horse in the mouth, but as someone who loves mixed metaphors, I'm stealing these.
Not the sharpest bulb in the tree.
We get it, you don’t actually understand what economy means
The issue is voters talk about how regular people are doing, while politicians talk about "the economy" which is rich people and business....
For them, shits going great. Because their record profits are coming from regular Americans being priced gouged.
Also, I stopped reading when the article clearly couldn't understand inflation compliants.
The inflation rate is slowly going down. But it's a rate, prices are still up and continuing to go up. That 9.1% from 2022 is still baked into the 3% increase we're experiencing.
Like. Say it was 100, 9% increase makes it 109. 3% of 109 is more than 3% of 100...
It's compounded, but it's not complicated and anyone writing about economics should understand that and explain it to their readers when talking about inflation rates.
So the inflation rate should go down but it's not like that means lower prices, it just means 1% increase now is more than a 1% increase in the past.
And that's not even getting into the harsh truth about inflation and capitalism:
A lack of inflation means people save money. That takes money out of circulation. A lot of our problems are because the wealthy do that with huge sums.
If enough money gets taken out of circulation then it leads to a recession as there's less money floating around and changing hands.
We need inflation to prop up this bullshit economic system the wealthy are obsessed with.
^ This!!
Inflation isn't going down, it's just going up slightly slower than before!
Not only is it compounding, but 3-4% inflation hasn't happened in over a decade. To get anything comparable to the last three years you have to go back to the 80s.
It's not a recession, it's outright class warfare.
Economists call this a K shaped recovery. People at the top of the economy stop being in a recession. People at the bottom of the economy stay in the recession. Net, it looks like a recovery.
Except it's literally the opposite of that - wages at the top are not keeping pace with inflation (whether to blame Biden for the massive 2022 inflation spike is a somewhat different story), but wages at the bottom are increasing, even outpacing inflation. All the lines are squeezing together.
Those lines have been diverging for over a generation. You'll need a vice grip the size of the Grand Canyon to squeeze hard enough make any real world difference.
Absolutely accurate. Also means it's kind of silly to kick out (with no plan for a better replacement, and with specific plans for something much much worse) the guy who actually vice gripped them together by a little bit, though, or assert that he's hurting everyone on purpose and that they're actually still going apart and that's his fault and if you try to tell me any different then (hostility).
Usually, economic policies on the scale of the whole country take quite a while to kick in and really produce significant improvement even when you can get them through congress (which, a bunch of his more aggressive than this stuff, he couldn't).
That isn't what your graph says at all
Want to explain a little more?
Unless you think black Americans make up the entirety of poor people that has nothing to do with high vs low income.
Saying it has "nothing" to do with it is wrong; they're so deeply connected that you might as well use either or both, since racial disparity is fundamental enough to the American economy that they give the same answer.
But sure, it's fair to ask for something specifically about income level instead of by race; here's one by percentiles and here's the GINI coefficient over time.
Goddamn people will upvote anything
You need to ask yourself why? If unemployment is low and the economy is growing, then why are 3 in 5 struggling? If you have a room with 100 people and 100 pizzas, statistically the room has plenty of food. If 60 of the people complain that they are hungry, you wouldn't scoff and tell them, "stop complaining, look at all the statistical pizza in the room! Things are actually quite good for everyone." Sure, maybe some are falling for propaganda, but propaganda doesn't get you 3 out of 5 people.
It might be that, because of the new gig economy, the number of shitty jobs has increased. Unemployment might be low, but "underemployment" might be high (if there is a way to even track that at all). I bet there are a lot of people who feel trapped in their jobs right now, and that doesn't help consumer confidence.
It is a recession for the bottom majority of the country... That's what happens when economic growth is only benefiting the top half ....
It is a recession for many folks, and that's a real problem that pretending it's not happening won't erase for them.
The majority of Americans know their situation sucks, they're just not able to express it in numbers, probably because they're busy trying to live their lives. These articles do nothing but smugly highlight that the numbers are tracking the wrong things. Unemployment being low doesn't mean much if a huge chunk of employment is shitty gig work. The stock market being up doesn't anything if over 90% of the stock market is owned by 10% of people. GDP doesn't mean shit and a prime example of that is Canada having nearly 40% of their GDP being made up by overpriced housing, in that case it's just people selling housing at each other and jacking up prices each time while renting it out at exorbitant rates. Not really much being produced there, certainly nothing that improves people's lives (except speculators).
Isn't this the same old "ThE eCoNoMy Is DoInG gReAt, WhY aRe YoU cOmPlAiNiNg?" BS as always?
The average person doesn't care how well the rich people's game is going if they're struggling to afford their groceries because of said rich people's game.
The Harris poll is garbage: https://www.thecrimson.com/column/forging-harvards-future/article/2024/3/26/bodnick-/
This really misses the big problem. For many people, the costs that are most inelastic (like food and housing) are the ones with the most inflation. For people in financial situations that aren't great, there aren't easy ways to lower costs.
Inflation statistics like the CPI also grossly inaccurately measure what an accurate basket of good is by including many things that are frivolous and so it totally misses how people are feeling. Did the price of a large television go down slightly decreasing the overall inflation a bit? Yes, but I still need to buy incredibly expensive food. I don't need to buy a TV. That makes me worried. I can't cut down on food.
This leads to having to consider things like: should I try to move to an even smaller place (since my tiny place is incredibly expensive), which results in moving costs? Should I look for a better paying job and is it likely I will find that and what happens if my employer finds out and fires me because I am searching for a new job?
There are also large feelings of uncertainty about the economy and about inflation. For those who own property and purchased it a lower cost than the market rate, things are fine. For everyone else, it's terrible.
Biden is doing a horrible job of being realistic about how people feel about these things. He is looking at ivory tower economic statistics and either he doesn't get it or isn't acknowledge it. The message from him is that he's doing a good job and things are improving. That isn't reassuring. It feels like a "let them eat cake" mentality. I'd much rather have him say "yes, certain things in the economy are problematic" and then either say how they will be improved or just bluntly say the best option is to not do anything because doing things (like market interference) is potentially worse.
I support the rights of trans people, and I like some of Biden's ideas, however for most lower middle class people who are completely stressed out, Biden seems like a terrible option. Even for lower middle class people who dislike Trump, they at least view him as a realist. I am left not knowing if Biden is ignorant of how people who don't own homes are feeling or if Biden is being so defensive with his record that he seems out of touch, but either way, he will definitely lose at his current trajectory.
He keeps not addressing this problem and it's a big problem for many voters, probably over half of all swing voters are affected by this. I wish I could advise Biden on what to say and do to improve his poll numbers, because many of the problems that bother large segments of the voters are things that could be easily resolved through the executive office without new laws while adhering to classical economic theory, but he's not going to make the needed changes, I have no way of suggesting things except sending a letter that will not be read but instead will just be summarized as a view (like "letter received, opinion is inflation is bad").
He is going to keep relying on ivory tower economic statistics because fundamentally he's a career politician, he believes his bureaucrats or lacks the ability to understand the real experiences behind the data, and Trump is going to swoop right in and pluck every disaffected swing voter or disaffected Democrat he doesn't reach. The fact that Biden is also doing cool or nice or interesting things in terms of other policy choices doesn't somehow make up for this major weakness in ignoring this.
The fact that The Guardian is referring to the public's "misconceptions" highlights how journalists and also politicians just regurgitate erudite statistics without reflecting on their real world implication, as though regular voters were just wrong or stupid. This is also a problem of Democrats at large who don't know how to take academic research and information and look to the real-world meaning of it and then communicate effectively with regular people or implement practical policies based on this data.
So yeah, Biden will definitely lose. Trans people should figure out how to organize now for possible fascism, which sucks. They should figure out how to technologically, emotionally, and organizationally prepare for a worse case scenario. I can't fathom Biden would win.
I completely respect your points and opinions here. Trying to be a realist myself... I don't see Trump doing shite to help the average American though economically. He'll help big oil, wall street execs, and he'll keep fueling the divide over social issues.
Let's be real, trump doesn't care about us and it's worth reminding voters of that.
In the past, I have been a proponent of learning to cook. Meal prep can save you money, and it tastes better than mickey dee's. I still believe this, but the bill at the grocery store is making it more and more difficult.
So now, I've been researching gardening and I hope i can save money by growing my own vegetables. I think there are ways to get it going without spending a ton of money. Especially by using reclaimed materials that are free or close to it.
The issue that concerns me is the amount of time it takes to get the compost pile going. There will be upfront costs if your soil is shit and needs to be amended. Which defeats the entire purpose of growing your own food.
It sorta feels like we're fucked whichever direction we look.
Great write up, professional commentators should quote your take.
This is a good write up thanks.
What bothers me is that in his state of the union address he spent time talking about junk fees with Ticketmaster et. al. (which is a problem) yet never really touched on the bigger problem of housing costs. Nor is there any real push by his administration or the Democrats to address this issue any time soon. Like you I don't know if this is intentional or ignorance due to his advisors.
It's a frustrating place to be because I know that Trump gives even less of a shit about the "poors" and would make things even worse. So a large part of this country's population will sit in the status quo for a minimum of 4 more years hoping that the next round of elections will bring in something new and progressive.
FWIW, the Biden administration is doing a decent amount of behind the scenes work on housing costs, both directly (funding low income housing) and indirectly (incentivising cities to change laws that decrease supply and prop up the local landlords). Some of the reasons (IMO) he doesn't talk much about this are:
Is it stupid? Absolutely!
Is Biden doing enough on housing? Definitely not!
But a big chunk of what he is doing is flying under the radar, partially because they're not advertising it and partially because it takes longer than just one presidential term for these kinds of projects to make it to fruition. The first development in my city that took advantage of Biden administration policies finally broke ground in September. The first actual affordable unit to come out of it will be available in 2025.
It's good to know that this administration is doing something to help directly or indirectly. And if there is a constant in the world of American politics its Democrats don't have a clue how to sell their agenda or legislative wins to the public.
But it doesn't have to be that way. There has to be smart people that would want to work with this reelection campaign that can craft sound bites and advertising that promotes what they have done. And do it in a way that isn't scary to the donor base.
Trump lies constantly but he's also very blunt and realistic about problems (as long as he can disclaim responsibility for their cause). Do you think Trump will avoid talking about this as it gets closer to election time? No, he's going to be blunt and realistic and pragmatic sounding and Biden will come off as out of touch to the incredibly large base of quiet regular lower middle class and middle class people affected by this. Probably 40% of the vote will be won based on how people are feeling about this and Biden is responding to that by saying "Actually, you're feelings about the economy are invalid because according to my policy wonks, the economic data is good." It's insulting and enraging to the people who are struggling. Many lower middle class and middle class people don't care that much about abortion or trans issues or whether Trump is a pathological liar being paid by a foreign country to destabilize America. They just want to be able to pay their bills and not be so damned stressed out. Biden absolutely does not get it. This is also the fault of the officials surrounding Biden who should be doing a better job of addressing these problems. Biden is very old and generously ran against Trump out of kindness because he knew he'd be more likely to win. The people around him should be addressing this, the DC insiders and people he took with him into office, and no one addresses the problem or crafts policy. This is an easy win for Trump and he knows it, Trump is not stupid contrary to what many want to imply, he's enormously intelligent and just mean at times and cruel towards many minorities, but Trump needs to do barely anything to win at this point. You don't get into Wharton as an idiot, even if you come from money, so liberals who want to claim he's stupid are doing themselves a disservice by underestimating Trump. Trump is greedy and corrupt and cruel and incredibly intelligent, and if you don't get the fourth part you miss the threat. Trump also at times has good intentions and people sense that, which is also a threat because he doesn't seem completely disingenuous. Biden's campaign is like the Titanic in a field of icebergs and all Trump has to do is just wait. For Biden to win, he'd have to make a lot of changes which he should have done over a year ago, and based on the team around him that hasn't dealt with the problems correctly, he's probably not going to make the right choices on this. If he makes superficial meaningless gestures on this issues in a last minute hail mary pass, it's not going to matter. Voters aren't stupid. I wish I could write Biden or his team and tell them what they should do, but I'm some nobody. No one would care.
Good little write-up. I was just thinking along these lines today. It's a real shame Biden didn't try just a little harder to connect with the working class.
His state of the union definitely was pro-working class. A couple quotes from that speech: "A future where the days of trickle-down economics are over and the wealthy and biggest corporations no longer get all the breaks." "America’s comeback is building a future of American possibilities, building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down, investing in all of America, in all Americans to make sure everyone has a fair shot and we leave no one behind!"
Maybe the commercal and financial Egonomy is on the rise. But the private economy of the average citizen is nof.
No one cares that businesses are doing well if they aren’t paying their employees
Well it fucking is. Everyone is broke. No one is spending like they were a few years ago.
It is legitimately such a weird economy, because by all the standard broad metrics it is doing fine, but on an individual basis it varies widely. Cost of living has shot up with inflation, but wages generally didn't go up to match, particularly for people who kept the same employer throughout the Pandemic until now.
The only metric that is important is how far their paycheck goes, and it simply doesn't go as far anymore.
I took some pretty high level statistical analysis courses back in the day, with a professor who is about as close to "rockstar" as someone can be in the field of statistical analysis.
One thing he always said was that it was easy to paint a picture exactly the way someone wants while being 100% honest and reporting real numbers.
What was hard, was picking thru all the numbers, identifying trends, and quantifying the effects and how likely a bunch of changes would play out to predict future outcomes.
Our economy runs on "numbers must go up".
If a CEO of a publicly traded company says anything other than "Shits amazing!" The numbers go down.
Because stock prices are really just investors opinion, real life doesn't have much effect on the economy.
So everyone cheats a little (or a lot) to make their numbers seem like everything is great. Do a meta analysis on those numbers, and it looks like everyone is doing great.
But it's all just because no one wants to be the one to say it's not.
Because in our economy, if people think things are bad, then that makes things bad. People sell stocks and hide money under mattresses (what the rich do with offshore accounts) and that Cascades I to not enough money to buy anything. And then not enough sales to employ people.
It's a feedback loop that the only way to prevent is constantly telling people everything is fine.
The longer we let 0.01% of the population hoard insane wealth, the more we risk the death spiral
It's getting to the point where they have so much, they're the entire economy. If they decide to just bury all their gold, we're fucked.
So we have to keep making these rich assholes think everything is great and numbers will always go up.
Or just tax their fucking wealth...
I know basically nothing about economics, but from what it seems, I shouldn’t be wishing for record losses instead of record profits? They both seem to have a cascading effect that fucks us from what it seems (but them buying more yachts while we hurt definitely feels worse than all of us hurting).
'Wrongly believe' is the weakest attempt at gaslighting I've seen today.
I find it so sad to see The Guardian of all news organizations join in on this bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThO bullshit. Fortunately it looks simply like a poorly written article, but that's little comfort for the damaging effects it will have regardless, e.g. in my trust of The Guardian articles henceforth.
Also, it's not just that, when it combines clickbait headlines with the first half of the article working to obfuscate the Truth with correct but irrelevant facts - beatings will continue until moral improves - even if the second half tries to sound more balanced. Is Fox News going to be the goal now, even if only for the first half of every article, going forward?
Average people, who don't own stock (or if they do, don't rely on it as their primary source of income) could care less about bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThO or even the theoretical underpinnings of inflation, and care far more about their current job security and cost of actual food. Whether the proper term of "recession" applies or if it instead is some other word that should be used to describe it, either way the economy is "not good", so hyper-focusing on uneducated people not knowing the technical definition of "recession" doesn't seem to be helping the situation any? Even if it sells advertising space for this article:-(.
The AutoTL;DR summary, with no title and much of the rage-baiting removed, is much better than the actual article.
Lol people are feeling the recession regardless of what your numbers say.
Since this is a problem of perception the question becomes what do people think the economy would look like if it was doing well? What hasn't changed in their lives that they expected to when the economy started doing better?
We are obviously not currently in a recession but the economy is not great for regular folks, however it has not been since like the 90's.
But we are in recession. I got no money for nothing.
And just wait until AI really gets going...I've been saying this kind of thing for years online and off, and was mostly mocked and dismissed. Of course, there seem to be few politicians that had the foresight to want to do anything about automation, other than silly mantras about "retraining".
As a for instance: I remember trying to tell the maqa types, when they were screaming about coal that the very coal companies they claim care so much about "American jobs" are actively seeking ways to automate the entire thing - all of it.
The GDP says you’re doing fine. Stop complaining that you have to live with you're parents.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian.
But the road to recovery has been bumpy, largely because of inflation and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to tamp down high prices.
A similar percentage of respondents agreed “it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when I feel financially squeezed each month” and that the economy was worse than the media made it out to be.
Another thing that hasn’t changed: views on the economy largely depend on which political party people belong to.
And three-quarters of everyone polled said they support at least one of the key pillars of Bidenomics, which include investments in infrastructure, hi-tech electronics manufacturing, clean-energy facilities and more union jobs.
“What Americans are saying in this data is: ‘Economists may say things are getting better, but we’re not feeling it where I live,’” said John Gerzema, CEO of the Harris Poll.
The original article contains 928 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I have a friend with whom i disagree on most issues. They were recently complaining about how bad the economy is, how expensive food is, and that their family can't afford to eat beef. They have a large house, they've been paying an extra $1000-2000 per month on their mortgage for the last two years, and they invited 2 adult children to move home so the kids could save money for houses. They watch Fox News (or worse) and believe they're struggling. I pointed out some cheap chicken and other items in a grocery ad and the response was, "but those are just the things that are on sale; everything else is expensive." I was stunned - almost everything i buy is on sale. Yes....you're right...the wagyu costs more than it used to.
My kids also complain, "Our grocery bill is twice what it was two years ago!" Maybe because you're now spending $75/wk in protein shakes and supplements?
I'm not saying that people aren't struggling or that they shouldn't be able to buy things they want, but the people who complain the loudest (in my experience) are not the ones who are in the most difficult situations.
My conservative parents have also been complaining about the economy and their financial situation. In April they spent 4k to get a box at a baseball game and asked me for money to pay for it, citing that its a special spend to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. Then last week I found out that they are going on a 16k eastern European river cruise this summer. Talk about temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Yeah, I really feel this. My kids are teens and one is actively lifting/bulking, so food goes so much faster now, and foods with lean protein (so much chicken) are much more expensive than a reasonable amount of veggies and carbs to help fill up
A decade or two ago I would really tease a couple friend of ours for preparing meals like “steak on a plate” instead of something more nutritionally balanced and with healthier fat choices. Now my one kid wants “chicken on a plate”, twice as much chicken and nothing else
The big problem is that people are thinking in the wrong monetary units. While you're getting paid in a constantly depreciating fiat currency, gold has been perfectly stable, and one ounce of gold still equals one ounce of gold. And so the crazy people in Washington can't inflate it away.