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.
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.
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.
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…
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 can start by developing indicators that actually work, instead of indicators that make them look good.
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.
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.
‘Wrongly believe’ is the weakest attempt at gaslighting I’ve seen today.
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It’s metrics.
American culture has an absolutely horrible relationship with metrics.
For “the economy” the metrics are profits of corporations. Because back in the day that would generally translate to employee pay, number of employees, and how much money was changing hands.
But metrics should never be the final thing you look at, it’s just an indicator.
Like, if your engine light isn’t on but black smoke is pouring out from the engine…
It’s probably best to look under the hood at what’s actually happening.
But because our economy is based of wealthy investors, and they just care about the metrics, people game the metrics and come up with this rosey view of how things are.
Regular Americans don’t care about the metrics that are being gamed. We’re looking at the crazy person who’s driving a car around that’s obviously on fire. When they wave at us like everything is normal, it’s not reassuring, it makes us think that person has no clue what’s going on, and it’s probably not a good idea to let them keep driving
this exactly describes the truth of what is going on
Recession is coming. What we are seeing is how capitalism works. Businesses are squeezing as much profitability as they can out of existing products. The stories you see about record profits drive those actions. As long as they are making money, they push the strategy. The stories we are just starting to see about price cuts (like Target lowering grocery prices and the likes) are early indicators that corporate profits are peaking and adjustments need to be made to continue sales before revenue falls off a cliff.
People suffer when they get priced out of purchasing power. Businesses will suffer when they squeeze the market too hard, which is where we are. Unfortunately, people are going to suffer on that side, too, as businesses cut jobs to try to stem the bleeding.
We are in for a few fucked up years regardless of who gets elected in the next presidency. It takes a long time for real changes in the economy to show up. A lot of what we are dealing with is from the money flooded into the economy during Covid (under both Trump and Biden) and the swings in pricing due to loss of supply chain and the stickiness of pricing associated with its return.
like Target lowering grocery prices and the like
That’s not them.lowering prices…
That’s them launching a “value brand” they slap their name on.
It’s priced low to capture market share. Why make $1 a unit you’re selling when you can make $2 a unit because you’re also the one who makes it?
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 poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation. The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing. In reality, the rate of inflation has fallen sharply from its post-Covid peak of 9.1% and has been fluctuating between 3% and 4% a year.
In April, the inflation rate went down from 3.5% to 3.4% – far from inflation’s 40-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 – triggering a stock market rally that pushed the Dow Jones index to a record high.
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.
