Because it’s not true. Wall Street and the wealthy are thriving, the rest of us not so much.
No amount of gaslighting from the government is gonna help pay those bills
Did you read the article? Now, before you reflexively downvote me for saying something you didn’t want to hear, hear me out.
Whether an economy is “good” or “bad” is measured through several metrics. These are—
- Stock index performance
- Unemployment rate
- Inflation rate
- Wage growth
- People’s personal financial situation
Now, stock index performance generally benefits the wealthy more than it benefits the average American, however, the article does note that the number of Americans who own 401(K) investments, which benefit from better stock index performance, has increased significantly in recent years.
The unemployment rate is definitely tied to middle-class wealth. It means that everyone who is looking for a job is eventually able to find a job. Unemployment is low, and this is good for the middle and lower class.
The inflation rate is currently just north of 3%. This is above the target 2% rate but not by much, and certainly less than the 7-9% inflation experienced immediately post-pandemic, and the US cooled inflation down to that level far faster than other Western economies (e.g. the UK and Eurozone). The inflation rate measures the price change of a basket of household goods, and the burden of high inflation is basically borne by the entire middle class. Low inflation is good for the middle and lower class.
I don’t believe the article discussed wage growth, but wage growth has actually outpaced inflation in recent years due to a surge in worker power. This requires little introduction. The problem is that when people’s wages rise, they give all the credit to themselves and think “Well, I’m just one of the hardworking and lucky ones.” This is not true. A lot of people are getting pay raises, and employers are more willing to be generous with pay raises when the economy is good. In short, people credit increases in wages to their own hard work but blame inflation on the Government.
As stated in the article, most of the people surveyed reported that their personal financial situation improved, but they still think the overall US economy is bad. If this isn’t definitive proof of what I’ve said earlier (that the economy is good and people just don’t know it), I don’t know what is
Economists are not stupid. They know that economic growth is driven by the everyday consumer and that a good economy is one that benefits the average American, not just billionaires. Understand that people on the news fixate on stock indexes because it’s a single number that requires little explanation and leaves no room for nuance. When people with decades of education and experience in economics say the economy is good, we’d best listen. Rejecting this conclusion is the same Dunning-Kreuger-laced thinking that causes climate change deniers to deny the existence of that phenomenon.
Sorry, if this feels legit impossible to believe. I live in SoCal and literally everyone I know is struggling or has commented about how much more expensive rent is and how impossible it seems to get by compared to just a few years ago. Lots of people have to live with their parents/families now even though they work full time.
What do you or “economists” call it when no one (exaggerating here in case it’s not obvious) in a city/state can afford rent to live on their own like they used to be able to? Put another way, what do you call it when six figures used to mean stability and now it means paycheck to paycheck for many families?
You’re seriously saying people are just confused about their finances? What about all the articles about people not buying new cars and not buying this or that anymore? Why do economists think that is? That’s just a coincidence?
Rich people are doing good. Poor people are taking on credit card debt to buy basic groceries. People haven’t seen raises in years, or got them only on paper (for example, I got a raise, and then in the next breath got my hours cut to where it was actually a pay cut).
If people are struggling to buy basic necessities, they won’t spend on other things, which will slow the economy.
Most of what you said is false when generalised to the entire economy.
It might be true for you. It’s not true for most other people. You are trying to defeat a statistic with an anecdote.
Did you even read the post you are responding to???
the number of Americans who own 401(K) investments, which benefit from better stock index performance, has increased significantly in recent years
This is the same as saying lots of Americans have bank accounts. The accounts could be empty.
the US cooled inflation down to that level far faster than other Western economies (e.g. the UK and Eurozone)
The US did not experience the same economic effects as the UK. The UK performed Brexit which raised the cost of goods by definition, and had their price of fuel skyrocket due to the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war. The US is not dependent on Russian oil.
wage growth has actually outpaced inflation in recent years
EDIT: Wages with respect to productivity have been stagnant since 1970, but today’s average worker produces far more value for their employer. Employers are not sharing their increased profits with their workers, who are making roughly the same as workers from 1970. So yes, workers got a very slight real increase in pay, but are still vastly underpaid.
The inflation rate measures the price change of a basket of household goods
No, it doesn’t. That’s the consumer price index.
employers are more willing to be generous with pay raises when the economy is good. In short, people credit increases in wages to their own hard work but blame inflation on the Government.
No, increased wages are not because bosses decided to be nice. Corporate profits reached records during the pandemic, paying more reduces profits. Unions and displays of labor activism in the US have expanded significantly in the past few years. People are demanding higher wages from their employers. The entire purpose of the Federal Reserve is to combat inflation. Action by the government is the only way to control inflation.
Economists are not stupid.
That’s debatable, but some are certainly self-serving.
Tell me how high interest rates benefits those who have to borrow money for school, medical expenses, a car, or a first home.
It seems like you read but didn’t understand what I said.
When you say that the US “didn’t experience the same economic effects as the UK”, I respond with “it doesn’t matter”. It doesn’t matter why the US didn’t experience a worse economy, just that it didn’t. When you say that wages lagged behind inflation for the 50 years prior, I absolutely dispute that conclusion. It seems like you saw someone else talk about it, thought “this sounds true”, and then didn’t look at the data, which is much more mixed:
You think that the “consumer price index” is different from inflation. The consumer price index is a method for measuring inflation, and you being confused by this honestly makes me want to dismiss all remaining credibility you held. This is like if I said “temperature scales measure how hot or cold something is” and you replied, “no, that’s a thermometer”.
I never claimed that wages increase because employers are “nice”. I assert that employers are more willing to give higher wage increases in good economic conditions, because such conditions give workers more bargaining power. Employers in better economic conditions have more money to give to wage increases, so workers are more able to extract that money through wage negotiations. Compare this to bad economic conditions when employers are going to be much less able to give raises or when the labour force is shrinking, causing supply in the labour market to outpace demand (driving down wages). If the economy is growing, there is more demand for labour, and thus suppliers of labour (workers) are able to demand higher prices (wages). Is this really so hard to grasp?
Wages lagged behind inflation for the 50 years prior, and the gains since March 2023 are not nearly enough to make up for this.
That’s very much not true.
EDIT: I’ll update my previous comment for clarity
I was drafting a response but I see your edit now. This report seems to echo a lot of what you’re saying, but it lays blame with several far more long-term and structural problems. It certainly would be difficult to argue that we’re doing as well as we were doing in the post-war boom of the middle 20th century, but that’s like saying things are not currently good because they were better in the past. While technically true, it kinda misses the point and distorts the definition of “good.”
You’re right, but so are the people saying that things are significantly improving. Coincidentally that’s exactly what the article is talking about.
Because everything costs so fucking much that the “economy” doesn’t represent their daily experience
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Because it costs me $60 to walk into the fucking grocery store.
Well, buy less than 4 things next time. Sheesh
Two less avocado toasts
2Avacados2 furious.
Coming this summer
Groceries. Are. Still. High. Where is the confusion???
Because grocery prices aren’t high because the economy is doing poorly. We are being price gouged by grocery cartels.
You are being fooled into blaming Biden for what CEOs are doing to you.
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Agreed.
It is, in fact, time to stop being the bigger person and start being the more effective person. I don’t care if we set an example, let’s get some shit done.
Democrats are already moving in the direction you want them to, but I’m sure you have a great excuse as to why they aren’t doing enough.
https://time.com/6977026/democrats-biden-executive-authority-grocery-prices/
Doing enough should be dragging price gouging executives through the street. But I guess wagging a finger at them will definitely make my grocery bill go down🤷🏼♂️
They could address stagnant wages in the midst of record inflation. What’s minimum wage again?
Furthermore, wage growth has been beating inflation for the most recent 12 months.
Man, the way they calculated this statistic is so misleading, and counter intuitive to the claim it’s ridiculous.
The only reason for “real wage growth” is shown as outpacing inflation is because they aren’t counting people who lost their job because of COVID as a loss of income, but as someone exiting the job market.
Basically “wages” increased because the majority of people who lost their jobs were low income earners, leaving more white collar jobs to represent wage earnings.
Source?
Bidens only response is asking them to stop price gouging then doing nothing when they don’t stop screwing Americans
why do people think nothing has been done?
Right. Fuck, better go back to trump because Biden didn’t solve it.
Get the Mexicages back out, remove presidential term limits, let’s do a day ™ of fascism and put anyone who trump owes money back in charge!
I’m not saying this is your perspective but this is the kind of stupid in reading here that starts from the same perspective.
Wall Street =!= “The Economy”
The article states that most people surveyed said their personal financial situation improved but they still think the economy is bad.
Let that sink in. Most people say they are better off, but most of them still think the economy is bad. They know that they themselves are doing good but think it sucks for everyone else.
In the telephone survey of 1,818 adults Aug. 10-14, 71% of Americans described the economy as either not so good or poor. And 51% said it’s getting worse.
But 60% said their financial situation is good or excellent.
Come the fuck on dude. How can you possibly believe that? And who’s upvoting all your comments?
Everything you say now is suspect if you can believe that data is representative of most Americans. Not only that, you’re parroting the info everywhere like you’re confident in the data and knowledgeable on the subject, and yet it’s based on fucking phone interviews. What single, working mom do you think answers a random phone number and then is also willing to take an interview about the economy?
Statistically, some working mothers will answer the phone and finish the survey. If the survey was done correctly, and sampling bias and all that is accounted for, 1800 respondents is plenty to get a good representative picture of Americans. Surveys can work very well; even when using non-ideal survey methods.
Anecdotally, this survey seems to align pretty well with the people I know. E.g. people complaining about a pie costing something like 30% more than 5 years ago, while their income doubled or tripled in that same timeframe. Help-wanted signs in my area seem to be advertising wages around 50% more than 2019 as well.
I won’t debate your take on phone interviews being representative of any American under 80; I think it’s ridiculous
About your anecdote, you’re saying you think some people earn double or triple at the same job? Surely not, right? So what about the people that still work at those jobs? How do you think life is going for them?
I don’t think anyone I worked with in 2019 has the same job (they were either promoted or switched jobs). For the people working those jobs now, I’m guessing the businesses needed to raise wages to attract new talent, probably more than the ~30% inflation. In regards to family I know that work service or manufacturing jobs, they either switched jobs for higher pay, got promoted, or their union negotiated decent pay increases. Again, I’m guessing most businesses needed to raise their wages to attract workers to replace those that switched jobs; and from the “help wanted” signs I see, it looks like they raised wages more than inflation.
Rich people’s money is thriving under Biden. So why don’t Americans believe it?
Oh, we do, we just don’t like what’s happening for the rest of us.
“Please, I can’t afford food or housing”
Media outlets:
Economy doing great!!! Inflation down and stocks up!!!
“Okay, I guess I’ll just fucking die then”
Depends on what you mean by “the economy”.
Wall Street is striving, GDP is striving, but average people struggle to make rent.You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Thriving is the word you’re looking for
sorry, English isn’t my first language.
I looked over the metrics in the article and none of them approximate what percentage of Americans are struggling to pay their bills. That number probably closely approximates the percentage who think the economy isn’t doing well. This is a different situation from people wrongly believing crime rates are high.
As long as private shareholders are having record quarterly earnings, almost all economists, hired by wealthy organizations largely to push the narrative that benefits those organizations, will of course declare victory.
Economists also generally defend our “free market” rigged crony capitalism as the only way too. They’re literally the priesthood of this grift.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rent-homelessness-harvard-report-center-for-housing-studies/
The homelessness epidemic is getting worse. Our people are dying in the streets in record numbers, please, go down to your nearest homeless tent city in every major population center in the US and tell them they’re being dramatic.
This economy no longer cares about customers or employees. The Reagan/Kemp grift eviscerated the customers first, employees second, investors last model. Now it’s private shareholders first and only demanding companies sabotage their long term future to goose their next quarter with layoffs, anticompetitive behaviors, and tax cheats. Why care about the products/services you literally exist to provide when you’re part of an oligopoly, buying and killing any potential competitors trying to improve your economic sector’s product/service? At that point, you can make shadows of what you used to make and your captive consumer base has nowhere else to go. Despite its primary selling point, market capitalism’s end goal has been thoroughly proven: to END competition.
Capitalism is eating its own tail having conquered the monopoly board and having no more meaningful new markets left to metastasize in and exploit.
There needs to be laws passed that change the structure of “fiduciaries”
Companies should exist for their employees first, customers second, and then shareholders, in that order. Pay the people creating the product/service as much as possible, put out the best possible product/service at the most competitive rate possible, and if there’s anything left over the shareholders get their cut.
Ironically, if corporations actually did this, they’d likely have plenty of success. It’s just mind boggling that the lazy fuckers pushing numbers around on a computer screen are the ones considered fiduciaries
There is such a business structure. It’s called a worker co-operative. They’re pretty common in some areas (e.g. grocery) where they are able to compete with and even win against traditionally-owned grocery store chains. For example, one of the largest grocery co-operatives in the US, WinCo foods, competes with and actually beats the likes of Walmart and Kroger (called Fred Meyer here) in the price department. They do have some outside investment (IIRC), but the stores are mostly owned by the employees that work there.
I think we ought to encourage these types of businesses through extremely favourable tax treatment. I’m talking a 0% tax rate on dividends paid by co-operatives to workers. At the same time, it’s understandable that most people start businesses for personal profit, which drives the creation of most businesses, so I think a hybrid system wherein the owner starts with a maximum of 50% equity in the company is fair, and the rest is owned by the workers. Imposing an expiration on the owner’s shares (say, 50 years?) would mean that after the founders die, the entire company will be owned by the workers, while not extinguishing the motivation for people to establish businesses in the first place.
Only rich people and corporations are doing well.
EVERYONE ELSE is in a fucking recession…
A majority of Americans say that their own personal finances are doing well, and even when the question is expanded to their whole state, voters say the economy has improved.
Then from the source itself:
60% said their financial situation is good or excellent.
Read your own source, it is a year old, and 51% said the economy was getting worse. Only like 30% said it was good or excellent…
Damn, I didn’t even realize OP’s article was sourcing a 2023 poll. Well here are the updated numbers for 2024:
Exactly half (50%) say their personal financial situation is excellent or good
U.S. adults scored a 48.92 on our financial well-being scale
So overall the numbers haven’t changed much since 2023 on how people see their own personal finances. Your point that, despite that, they still think the economy is getting worse just reiterates what the article is saying. For some people their finances are bad and they think things are getting worse. For some people their finances are good ant they think things are getting better. But strangely, for some people their finances are good but they still think things are getting worse. Or, to put it another way, some people think they’re in good shape, but the economy is in bad shape, which is a pretty weird disconnect. And the number of people in that last category is not small.
How we measure the economy does not measure the financial stability of the masses.
And however you DO measure it, it’s better now than last term.
NOT BEST. Better. That’s a reasonable measuring stick.
I really don’t like that the sources on this article are missing.
Sure, that’s a lot of money for the wealthy who control 93% of stock, but it’s also tens of millions of Americans who will have a more comfortable and secure retirement. In fact, the number of Americans who have over $1 million in their retirement accounts grew by 20% in the last quarter of 2023.
Fine and dandy, except that half of Americans don’t have a retirement account. Or 47% of Americans.
So while retirement indexes are up, 1:2 people are not going to see that.
Inflation eased slightly in April — the first time this year that has happened. Overall inflation edged down to 3.4% and slipped to 3.6% when you exclude food and energy costs. (food expected to rise by an additional 2.2%)
Good to see the brakes are working. But just remember that not everyone goes out to by a car or house on a twice-a-week basis. But everyone does with the grocery store. Which in Biden’s defense, he has started trying to pull back.
Though effort =/= job done.
Surely there are some numbers we could look at every day besides the stock market numbers. Like couldn’t we have Real Income and/or Purchasing Power right next to the DOW and the S&P? Or how about instead of the Dow and S&P since, like you said - most Americans lives don’t change by the changes in the stock market.
Why can’t we Manufacture Consent?
Instead of complaining about the obvious disconnect between metrics and real world, often regional CoL, etc etc (oh and cost of medical care). Here’s a simple solution:
Raise federal minimum wage, it’s been a good decade and a bit since it went up from $5/h, the dollar has only inflated oh about 45% since 2009
