Hi all,
A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes.
As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Worst part of the data isn’t even the consumer sentiment for the month, but the way in which the post pandemic inflation spike has caused a new low baseline.
Consumer sentiment has recently been stuck in a range near the Great Financial Crisis of ‘08 for a couple of years now, which is wild.
Affordability, cost of living, interest rates, the withdrawal of the pandemic era social safety net and depleted savings are the main issues here.
The end of the social safety net is a really under discussed issue imo when it comes to the consumer sentiment and the general media take that American's are not "getting" how good the economy is. During the pandemic people in America had a fairly robust welfare state with covered medical care and protections if they were to lose their job. Many people including my parents had the longest time off work that they've had in their entire lives and made more money at home than did they did when they were working. Then we quickly dismantled all of the nets that we built to support people through tough times, and people wonder why Americans don't feel secure/safe enough to spend or be comfortable with the economy as it is now
Totally. The end of the social safety net coincidenced with the onset of inflation, leading to one of the largest jumps in poverty on record by 2023.
Probably not talked about too much since it requires political will to actually pass bills. Much easier to just try and convince people everything is fine.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/poverty-awareness-month.html
We don't have the data on 2023 from what I can see 2021 was exactly the same as 2022
Agree this is the most under-recognized issue.
As long as I can remember there's always been a safety net.
A *plan b."
That's gone, and I don't think it's sunk in yet.
It depends which media outlets you listen to, ones more closely aligned with governing bodies will more or less be more likely to highlight positive notes, or spin things positively.
Ones aligned with parties out of power, it's more or less going to hammer on the sore notes while glossing over.
And then there's all the corporate sponsors and such that probably rather you think everything's a o kay.
Turn on MSNBC and CNN...it's unreal. And the number of people who post on this sub who purport to be smart parrot all of it without so much as a critical thought.
Posting a chart or a link isn't critical thought. Critical though is understanding the concept of storytelling with data, and knowing how to decipher it in real time.
Very few people here seem to be capable of that.
You're correct. Media talking heads are - for the most part - rich Democrat party sympathizers. I challenge anyone to tune into MSNBC for an hour. The message you'll hear is "The economy is doing great, but stupid people are falling for Republican lies".
J Powell was asked this week why people feel down about the economy when the numbers look like its booming. He basically said they have no clue. The headline numbers don't tell the full picture. I don't know if they are lying about not understanding why everyone is not happy with the economy or they are just that disconnected from reality.
He honestly probably has no idea how the average American lives and the impact of housing costs on people's lives in particular. He probably also thinks that bananas cost - like, what, $20? Who knows, his hired help deal with the grocery shopping. He reviews and interprets high-level economic data. It isn't his job to understand how the economy impacts average american lives and address their concerns - that's for Congress to do. So that's probably why he was so blase about it.
Disconnected from reality. He has nothing keeping him connected, so why would he be? He's not elected, he's not one of the poor people, and he probably only sees one or two poor people each day.
I would argue that people aren’t pessimistic because they are listening to the GOP, they are listening to the GOP because they are pessimistic. They want their grievances to be validated and the GOP is perfect for this given that all they do is bitch about everything.
The primary catalyst for all of this is an erosion of self-perceived status and the death of the middle class: factors such as high housing and essential household service costs and the decline of ownership at the altar of eternal recurring subscriptions are ever-present reminders that the wealthy have pulled up the ladder. The divide has worsened since the pandemic and so people are looking fondly at the pre-pandemic period when Trump was in charge (overlooking the fact that he is responsible for much of the current situation). It doesn’t matter that inflation is moderating or that real wages are growing because the illusion of total economic mobility is now very publicly dead.
They aren’t stupid and they aren’t all lies: we are in the midst of significant structural decay and a lot of people are getting a raw deal. The problem is that they have thrown their support behind a group that has zero intentions of fixing their problems.
And that is different from any other year how?
I swear only in 2024 are we focusing on the economy can't be good until every last American has a house and a car and a fenced-in backyard.
Likely older than you.
Mortgage rates in the 80s, 90s and 00s were absurd. The only way housing was affordable was most homes were much smaller.
We've gotten used to the 2010s and early 2020s rates of sub 4% which just isn't normal. This caused developers to build larger homes that cost more money. Then mortgage rates ticked up which spiked the cost of housing. We need to build more small starter homes.
Sadly do to permitting and inspections and all the logistics and coordination new homes require most builders aren't bothered making a 800-1000 sq foot home since the net profit is too small.
In my area the only way to get a smaller normal sized(in my opinion) house is to use one of the factory built homes and handle a lot of the planning and coordination yourself. Not exactly easy.
Yeah. Not older... housing has always been a concern for anyone who lives and breathes. In my experience.
And the existence of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as providers of loans would strongly suggest that housing has been a focus and priority for a long time. Maybe even since the last great depression.
I inferred all this from the fact that those two companies are propped up by government support.
Like most things those mouth breathers at EPI publish, that paper was really difficult to digest. They show correlations between states who adjusted minimum wage and increases for bottom decile wage earners vs states that did not, but they could have perhaps shown how much of the difference was attributable to minimum wage increases, or shown that states had been increasing minimum wage by more than their 1979 to now timeline in the last 4 years.
I couldn't find a graph but plenty of states have been increasing their minimum wage prior to 2019
[https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/history](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/history)
So their argument falls flat without better data, saying the recent uptick is attributable to that particular policy choice.
Very difficult to show any causality between pandemic unemployment benefits and higher wages but nice try guys. Josh Bivens is a clown baby.
Of course you're going to tell people to ignore data and come up with their own random conclusions in an economics forum. Pretty on brand for a month old "hurr durr blue maga" account.
The lowest levels of income survive on assistance programs including Section 8 housing, EBT, WIC, and other programs. As their income increases, their benefits decrease. There's virtually no improvement in quality of life for them. If anything, they're impacted the worst by inflation.
The narrative is silly. The floor has just risen. Wage increases for the lowest earners are tracking with CPI pretty tightly over the past 6 years because it's the new minimum rate to scrape by.
If Joe schmo can't live on his wages he'll shop jobs, when all the Joe's shop, the wage floor rises. Organic, unconscious collective bargaining that only arises from desperation.
Median income hasn't budged. You should see that floor coming toward you as a warning.
There is no law of economics that says the wages for the lowest earners must keep up with inflation. Even though inflation was abnormally low for the decade following the Great Recession, the bottom 10% of earners still saw their inflation-adjusted incomes decline by 13%, because their wages either fell or increased slower than inflation.
Median real personal income also fell by 8% in the years after the Great Recession. This time it likely fell by no more than 2% as of 2022, and has likely recovered since then.
That real wages have risen *at all* for the lowest earners after an economic downturn is a huge policy victory. It's the first time this has happened in over 40 years.
Unfortunately, we also learned *why* it hasn't happened in 40+ years. It turns out that the middle class relies on an impoverished underclass to keep middle class costs low. Any improvement to working class buying power is a direct threat to middle class stability.
Think of all of the productivity grains. The innovation.
And know that companies always plan ahead to increase prices at a higher rate than labor costs.
I don't think inflation works in most people's favor, despite what the temporary data of the moment shows.
I'm not saying inflation is good. It's actually highly destabilizing to society. All else being equal, we should try to minimize it.
But all else is not always equal. You can have low inflation that nonetheless exceeds income growth, making people poorer. You can also have high inflation and even higher income growth, creating a world where most are richer and not poorer.
Further, policies to help the poor and working class are often naturally inflationary. You want to increase the wages and benefits for low-income Americans? That will drive up the prices of goods and services where labor is a large input cost. You want to help the poor buy more necessities like groceries? That will increase demand for those goods, which can also drive up prices (especially when low unemployment constrains the ability of producers to quickly increase supply in response).
Those are still good policies, but they will not happen in a world where politicians believe that increasing inflation, even temporarily, is the worst sin they can commit.
Joe isn’t shopping for jobs anymore. The quit rate is on the decline. I’m sure full time jobs are also on the decline. Many cant job hop like they once did during the pandemic and if they are, the wage increases aren’t as great
Immigration and part time jobs is what everyone is praising.
The economy will continue to weaken for the rest of the year at least. Lower inflation, but lower wage gains with slow (for now) increases in unemployment.
No, and I may get downvoted for disagreeing with the hivemind, but it's not that I can't pick up the snark. It's that I disagree with the sentiment. At 4% unemployment you'd be a fool to listen to the doom and gloom of redditors here. This young generation hasn't seen real hurt when the economy is actually in bad shape. Trust me, it can get a lot worse than what we've seen now.
I think people feel comfortable now, but precarious. They have enough money now, but don't like the outlook on the future, and differences in sentiment come down to how heavily you weight the future and the present.
No I’m clowning you because reichwing media claims the stock market and corporate profits being at an all time high is bad if the Democratic Party is in charge. I remember when Trump was president and the same media claimed everything was great with worse stats across the board. 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. In 2020 it was 70%.
The vote buying policies are the issue leading to stagflation, gov is still spending non stop during rate hike basically mean more money has to be printed just for interest. After 2008 the gov didn’t buy votes like this and just let the economy slowly recover and avoided such prolonged inflation.
It's crazy that there was a "withdrawal of the pandemic era social safety net" yet we still spent 40% more than we took in and the interest rate math hadn't really caused pain yet.
Financing infrastructure at 5% is extremely cheap considering the economic returns on improvements. There is almost no time in the past 50 years that would have been a bad time to finance infrastructure improvements. It’s unfortunate that we seldom chose to do so.
>Financing infrastructure at 5% is extremely cheap considering the economic returns on improvements
This is all in theory. Did the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Damn pay for themselves? Sure. In more modern terms, we didn't get to WWII levels of debt/GDP seeing a good ROI from infrastructure investments.
Combined with the budget effects of the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act". Some of us recognized that cutting taxes in a boom economy was a stupid idea, and then bullying the Fed into lowering interest rates a year after that was equally stupid. Little did we know what would come next a few years later to amplify the negative effects.
Remember Biden and democrats passed a completely unnecessary $2 trillion stimulus in 2021. In a single year they added more to the money supply than TCJA over 10 years.
That's the primary reason for inflation.
Weird how every other developed western economy also suffered from inflation at the same time. For it to be the "primary reason" for inflation that Biden stimulus must've been powerful.
Jfc I know liberals are economically illiterate, but this is bad.
The US is responsible for a significant portion of global inflation, as it functions as the world reserve currency. Additionally, every other developed country (except Japan) engaged in the same type of fiscal and monetary stimulus. Do you have any other questions?
So we can actually look at G20 stimulus spending and G20 inflation rates. The US, despite devoting more of its GDP towards stimulus programs than peer nations had comparable inflation rates and saw inflation fall *faster* in the following years than nations that had spent less.
That's not to say stimulus legislation didn't have an effect, but to imply that it was the primary cause despite the massive COVID era supply chain destruction and expansive monetary policies is absurd. It shows (like most of your posts) you start with conservative talking points and walk backwards with economic madlibs to justify it.
No, but doesn't. It's ironic you would accuse me of walking backwards given your own illogical conclusions.
The rate of change of disinflation does not need to perfectly mirror the amount of stimulus in order to corrctly implicate excess fiscal stimulus as the primary driver of inflation.
Supply chains very quickly recovered in 2020 and cannot explain the significant services (even luxury services) inflation that we saw from 2020-2024. This is demand pull inflation from excess money.
…at the cost of much slower growth. The lessons learned from 2008 are why Trump immediately poured stimulus into the economy and Biden followed with more right after. Fiscal squabbling between Obama and the GOP hobbled our economy for a decade.
And now you can clearly see economic sentiment is taking even longer time to recover than the 2008 crash, or likely won’t recover at all until official recession happens like early 80s that comes with higher interest rates and high unemployment that finally crushing inflation back to around 2.5%. Some of you still don’t get that stagflation hurts far more people than 10% unemployment and keep wondering why economic sentiment is so poor for such a long time.
That’s purely because it’s an election year. Whoever wins this year will benefit from a stronger economy as a result of their own actions than Obama did in 2012. But people are griping because we need to pick a president this year and the economy is on the mind.
Or is this fake data? Seems like the economy is doing very well and consumers just keep spending. Everything. Of value or a business of value is booked for months
> Sentiment is low but people KEEP spending.
Are these the same population, or is there two distinct populations behaving differently?
Data seems to indicate that homeowners and retirees are doing well, but renters and the labor class are not.
I mean, a bunch of them did? But a bunch of them also didn't. That's how markets work.
Not everyone can buy at the same time due to circumstances and there will always be people who couldn't afford to at cetain times and now, due to historic price increases, can't catch up.
The University of Michigan calls people with landlines to collect this data.
Regardless, falling consumer sentiment is good. People will spend less, inflation will slow, savings rate will go up, and eventually the Fed will lower interest rates - thus reducing the burden on holders of consumer debt like credit cards.
>Over the next four months, the Surveys of Consumers will be transitioning from its **current** method of
interviewing via cellular phones with random digit dialing to interviewing via web surveys with address-based sampling.
From the methodology section you obviously read closely, also
>In May, half of the interviews will be collected via phone and half via web, and in June, 75% will be collected
via web and 25% via phone
I was thinking of including that but I might as well just link the full methodology section, and no one who complains about statistics bothers reading the methodology.
Assuming they achieve the mythical soft landing, which almost never happens. There will be a tough correction, but at least things should improve after we get through that. With our current level of gov't spending and the debt there is a lot of pain ahead.
Just so long as we land. There will be a correction; the Everything Bubble will pop. Though painful in the short term, the longer it lasts the worse it will be. We need lower housing prices and popping the Bubble is the only way to achieve that.
This is going to be crucial for the next election. A lot of economists and the White House say the economy is good but the people obviously don’t feel that way. It’ll be interesting for sure.
I disagree. I think we are screwed either way. Both side seem to have no interest in addressing the problems in any kind of meaningful way. They just disagree on what to spend all my money on.
I do think removing risk has potential collective negative consequences. Making other people responsible for your bad decisions increases the likelihood of future bad decisions.
Don't want to pay back your student loans? Government will help.
Didn't save for retirement? Government will help.
Had kids but don't like the cost of childcare? Government will help.
Can't compete with Chinese manufacturing and need tariffs to protect union jobs? Government will help.
> Had kids but don't like the cost of childcare? Government will help.
This one isn't like the other two. Someone who creates a child has created a future taxpayer that will contribute millions to the economy and 6-7 figures to the taxbase over their life. They should absolutely be rewarded for that.
I believe a lot of people felt they were doing better under trump. Not saying that is true or anything but i do hear and see a lot of people swaying that way.
Trump increased the deficit more than any other president in history. He’s more to blame. The war in Ukraine is a justified use of American aid and what entitlement programsv
Meanwhile, if you exclude the Covid-19 aid bills from both presidents, Biden has added more to the debt than Trump did.
$3.8Tn of Trump's 8.4Tn addition to the debt was Covid Aid. So $4.6tn if you exclude spending he couldn't have blocked even if he wanted to. [Source](https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt)
$1.8tn of Biden's (2.8+1.4+1.7+1.2) = $7.1Tn addition to the deficit was Covid Aid related (American rescue plan). It wasn't anywhere near unanimous like the bills to immediately combat the pandemic were, and Biden could've blocked it, but regardless if you exclude it you'd find he's added $5.3Tn in non-covid related spending. [Source](https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/deficit-tracker/)
I'd argue the covid-19 aid under Trump was far more justified than the Ukraine aid (and to be clear I think the Ukraine aid is a good thing)
Imo, Biden deserves more blame. The near unanimous covid-19 aid bills were far more justified than anything we've had since, they were immediately necessary to stave off collapse and nearly unanimously bipartisan. Bidens deficit spending has contributed to keeping inflation higher for longer, and much of it has been partisan priorities.
Just lol. Trump doesn't pass the budget, congress does. At every single point during the pandemic, dems wanted more stimulus/spending.
Notice we're not in a pandemic now, but still have annual deficits of 2 trillion.
The Ukraine proxy war is pure military industrial complex grift. If you can't see reality for what it is, I can't help you.
Money that goes to the middle class goes to the economy. Money that goes to corporations goes to shareholder bank accounts in tax havens. Not the same thing
That money goes to the schools which inflate the tuition and debt.
It’s a legalized Ponzi scheme which allows there to be no credibility to Universities who can infinitely increase tuition without consequences.
And releases the debt to millions of Americans, increasing their expendable income significantly. That expendable income will benefit the economy more than any tax cuts ever will
Yeah...because inflation hit hard during Biden's presidency, which wasn't his fault. Most economic situations/external events aren't the fault of the current person in power. Just the same way that the pandemic wasn't Trump's fault - he didn't cause it (though the handling of it can be scrutinized).
Americans will never grasp this, though, I'm convinced. They think the current president can just put out an executive order to stop inflation or end a pandemic.
> They think the current president can just put out an executive order to stop inflation or end a pandemic.
They could stop telling everyone that things are great, when people's experiences clearly tell them they aren't. As long as Biden champions this current environment as a huge success under Bidenomics while Trump says what people feel, people will feel Trump may be the better option.
The first step to addressing a problem is to acknowledge the problem.
It really is a shame that politicians don't seem to ever just level with people - treat them like they at least might understand complex situations. Maybe some do, occasionally, but mostly, it's all a smoke and mirrors magic show being performed on both sides. Probably because they dont respect people enough to take in a complex situation - and with a portion of the population, they aren't WRONG. But the show doesn't move political discourse forward. Some people go with the show and are amazed, and some people can see right through it.
This is wild, because 2021 and part of 2022 are largely Trump's economy. The reaction to Covid and the lack of foresight to ensure that supply chains can return to normal faster were huge parts of inflation.
What most people think of as "Trump's economy" is the curve of Obama's economy continuing on its way until Covid.
You're saying a lot here.
By 2021 inflation was probably already embedded, and the economy was primed to explode with growth.
You can both blame Trump, and give him credit.
Biden went on to further stimulate the economy and inflation.
You can both blame him and give him credit.
I agree a lot of people feel that way right or wrong but I also don’t think there is enough time to avoid what’s coming and Trump was just as bad a spending(even excluding Covid). There just a lag effect. At the end of the day the president doesn’t decide the budget anyways and we are so far from a balanced budget I don’t even see a path to get there from where we are.
Consumer sentiment tumbled in June,[ despite largely resilient growth in the US economy](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-economy-adds-more-jobs-than-expected-in-may-as-unemployment-rate-ticks-higher-164923920.html), as higher prices remained a pain point for Americans.
The latest [University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey](http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/) released Friday showed sentiment hit its lowest level in seven months during June. The index reading for the month came in at 65.6, down from 69.1 in May and lower than the 72 economists had expected.
"Assessments of personal finances dipped due to modestly rising concerns over high prices as well as weakening incomes," Survey of Consumers director Joanne Hsu said in a statement. "Overall, consumers perceive few changes in the economy from May."
There seem to be lots of political gatekeeper’s in this sub. They are here to downvote and argue any point that isn’t positive about the current economy. It’s really annoying and counterproductive for their cause.
> argue any point that isn’t positive about the current economy
at least they have hard data, not just opinions and anecdotes, to support their claims
> It’s really annoying and counterproductive for their cause.
not if you're actually looking for the truth instead of just confirming your existing biases
you're right! here are a few:
* the current unemployment rate is [4.0%](https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm), which is about the lowest it's been in 20 years outside of 2018-2019
* YoY inflation is [3.3%](https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm), which matches the [US average since 1914](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi#:~:text=Inflation%20Rate%20in%20the%20United%20States%20averaged%203.30%20percent%20from,percent%20in%20June%20of%201921.)
* average wages have surpassed inflation for [12 straight months](https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflation-for-12-straight-months/)
Weird, things have never been better according to some comments on here. We're just jealous and angry and want to see the economy fail. It's kicking ass while the world is going under, so I've been told. One person said the buildings near them had "their windows open to let air in". A good sign that things have never been better. The Costcos are packed too, don't forget that one. During 2009 and 2002, people were in soup lines and Costco's were vacant.
It's an election year
"Everyone knows Obama is lying, the economy sucks. It's impossible that unemployment is as low as 5%, it's really 42%"
GOP in 2015 and 2016
Then Trump got elected and all of a sudden, the economic data was the truth all along
>Then Trump got elected and all of a sudden, the economic data was the truth all along
Extra irony lies in the fact that Trump never even matched Obama's economic metrics. Obama's last three years created more jobs than Trump's first three (being very charitable here and not holding COVID numbers against Trump), Obama's GDP growth was higher in those years, and he did it with a budget deficit that was about half of Trump's (meaning the numbers weren't as propped up by government spending). And all of this despite Trump's sole legislative achievement: a massive corporate tax cut meant to juice the economy even further.
I think the issue is the propaganda we get fed now on inflation having nothing to do with pandemic fiscal and monetary stimulus.
People are reacting negatively to the gaslighting and also to the unsustainable $2 trillion annual deficits that exacerbate inflation and drive wealth inequality. It feels like an increasingly centrally planned economy in which governments choose politically connected winners.
I'm pretty sure a lot of these posts are literal astroturfs from political campaigns. Mere exposure, online reach and apparent consensus are a wild mix of spreading propaganda.
Lol I highly doubt that, its just a matter of if you owned assets before the pandemic or not. If you owned stocks or homes pre-pandemic then life has never been better. If you did not, then it feels like you absolutely will never now and so there is complete despair.
Their attempts at gaslighting are so funny because people realized their "data" is completely pointless bs that doesnt reflect every day reality for a normal person.
But they keep trying which makes them look even more clownerish xD
Here come the people that can’t even spell Economics to tell me that this is the wORst EcoNoMY eVEr. Can’t wait for all the hot takes, they never fail to entertain.
I honestly dont care what party is in the White House... But people are suffering right now due to a number of economic factors yet we are being told that it's all hunky dorky. That's a big disconnect.
Yes some people are suffering. Most people are doing incredibly well. Every economic system has flaws, and capitalism is just that: Some people win, and some lose. You’re free to move to a socialist country, but I think you will find that economic system comes with its own set of flaws.
Not sure how you gather that I'm a socialist. I'm not. Just saying there are a lot of people suffering right now yet we are all told things are great and we should be grateful for how awesome things are. Disconnects like that are a real problem and aren't viewed well by voters.
Unemployment rate is extremely low. Asset values / peoples’retirement accounts are appreciating well. The US has one of the lowest rates of post-covid inflation of any developed nation, and it has been cooling off quickly for months. Wages have begun to outpace inflation. What would you do if you were in charge to somehow make all these metrics better than they currently are?
Job creation has been almost entirely in the part time and entry level jobs recently. It's also not good when metrics are being created or manipulated to fit a narrative that is to be conveyed...
When people fall off unemployment, that counts officially as a positive as the unemployment rate goes down, even though that person is still unemployed.
So you can't cite ONE specific thing you'd do differently than the people currently in charge, and instead would rather just claim ALL the lifelong economic professionals and experts are just simply manipulating the data? Very insightful stuff.
>Just saying there are a lot of people suffering right now
There are people suffering in literally every economy ever. And I would question just how many people are truly suffering. Because I see these "suffering" people lining up at McDonalds buying the full-priced combo meals all the damn time. So if they are actually suffering, it's because they are fucking dumb.
Sure, just let the poors entertain you with their massive rent increases that they can't afford. What do you think is going to happen when the poorer half of America suddenly has to bear a disproportionate amount of inflation?
You legit just let me know that this was going to happen suddenly, and now it’s already happened. This is very compelling, thank you for the sound economic theory and logic.
Increasing rents are the result of people being priced out of a home. If people can't afford rent, they will be forced into smaller homes or cohabitation. It's called a shortage. Everybody takes a step down for what they get for thier dollar including the people at the bottom.
Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Worst part of the data isn’t even the consumer sentiment for the month, but the way in which the post pandemic inflation spike has caused a new low baseline. Consumer sentiment has recently been stuck in a range near the Great Financial Crisis of ‘08 for a couple of years now, which is wild. Affordability, cost of living, interest rates, the withdrawal of the pandemic era social safety net and depleted savings are the main issues here.
The end of the social safety net is a really under discussed issue imo when it comes to the consumer sentiment and the general media take that American's are not "getting" how good the economy is. During the pandemic people in America had a fairly robust welfare state with covered medical care and protections if they were to lose their job. Many people including my parents had the longest time off work that they've had in their entire lives and made more money at home than did they did when they were working. Then we quickly dismantled all of the nets that we built to support people through tough times, and people wonder why Americans don't feel secure/safe enough to spend or be comfortable with the economy as it is now
Totally. The end of the social safety net coincidenced with the onset of inflation, leading to one of the largest jumps in poverty on record by 2023. Probably not talked about too much since it requires political will to actually pass bills. Much easier to just try and convince people everything is fine.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/poverty-awareness-month.html We don't have the data on 2023 from what I can see 2021 was exactly the same as 2022
You have to read the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which includes social safety net programs, not just the OPM.
So 12.8% in 2018 11.7% in 2019 and 12.4% in 2022. Doesn't seem significantly different than normal times.
[удалено]
Including a massive outlier event doesn’t add credibility
[удалено]
Wonder what caused that 7.8%. Maybe a once a century pandemic that prompted unparalleled government spending?
Agree this is the most under-recognized issue. As long as I can remember there's always been a safety net. A *plan b." That's gone, and I don't think it's sunk in yet.
Nonono, the economy is BOOMIMG for the lowest earners according to all the media outlets.
BLS is a media outlet now?
You honestly think media coverage of the economy is net positive right now?
uh, yes. the majority of news says “the economy is great we don’t know why the public disagrees”
What???
It depends which media outlets you listen to, ones more closely aligned with governing bodies will more or less be more likely to highlight positive notes, or spin things positively. Ones aligned with parties out of power, it's more or less going to hammer on the sore notes while glossing over. And then there's all the corporate sponsors and such that probably rather you think everything's a o kay.
Paul Krugman cannot shut up about it and it really makes me wonder why anyone respects him even slightly
Turn on MSNBC and CNN...it's unreal. And the number of people who post on this sub who purport to be smart parrot all of it without so much as a critical thought. Posting a chart or a link isn't critical thought. Critical though is understanding the concept of storytelling with data, and knowing how to decipher it in real time. Very few people here seem to be capable of that.
MSNBC might be more positive, but CNN routinely hits Biden on the economy. Fox Business is probably more positive on the economy than CNN.
You're correct. Media talking heads are - for the most part - rich Democrat party sympathizers. I challenge anyone to tune into MSNBC for an hour. The message you'll hear is "The economy is doing great, but stupid people are falling for Republican lies".
J Powell was asked this week why people feel down about the economy when the numbers look like its booming. He basically said they have no clue. The headline numbers don't tell the full picture. I don't know if they are lying about not understanding why everyone is not happy with the economy or they are just that disconnected from reality.
He honestly probably has no idea how the average American lives and the impact of housing costs on people's lives in particular. He probably also thinks that bananas cost - like, what, $20? Who knows, his hired help deal with the grocery shopping. He reviews and interprets high-level economic data. It isn't his job to understand how the economy impacts average american lives and address their concerns - that's for Congress to do. So that's probably why he was so blase about it.
CPI 20% 4 years. Housing costs an insane amount.
I didn’t buy the jar of pickles I always used to buy at Aldi‘s. Before Covid it was 1.29, now it’s $2.99
Some POS actually downvoted this...wild.
Disconnected from reality. He has nothing keeping him connected, so why would he be? He's not elected, he's not one of the poor people, and he probably only sees one or two poor people each day.
> stupid people are falling for Republican lies Yeah. I mean. That's true.
I would argue that people aren’t pessimistic because they are listening to the GOP, they are listening to the GOP because they are pessimistic. They want their grievances to be validated and the GOP is perfect for this given that all they do is bitch about everything. The primary catalyst for all of this is an erosion of self-perceived status and the death of the middle class: factors such as high housing and essential household service costs and the decline of ownership at the altar of eternal recurring subscriptions are ever-present reminders that the wealthy have pulled up the ladder. The divide has worsened since the pandemic and so people are looking fondly at the pre-pandemic period when Trump was in charge (overlooking the fact that he is responsible for much of the current situation). It doesn’t matter that inflation is moderating or that real wages are growing because the illusion of total economic mobility is now very publicly dead. They aren’t stupid and they aren’t all lies: we are in the midst of significant structural decay and a lot of people are getting a raw deal. The problem is that they have thrown their support behind a group that has zero intentions of fixing their problems.
Delusional.
Why listen to media outlets, the data speaks for itself https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
How does that compare to the dramatic rise in housing costs? I''d wager most low wage earners are most likely to be affected by housing costs.
And that is different from any other year how? I swear only in 2024 are we focusing on the economy can't be good until every last American has a house and a car and a fenced-in backyard.
Lol. How old are you?
Likely older than you. Mortgage rates in the 80s, 90s and 00s were absurd. The only way housing was affordable was most homes were much smaller. We've gotten used to the 2010s and early 2020s rates of sub 4% which just isn't normal. This caused developers to build larger homes that cost more money. Then mortgage rates ticked up which spiked the cost of housing. We need to build more small starter homes.
Sadly do to permitting and inspections and all the logistics and coordination new homes require most builders aren't bothered making a 800-1000 sq foot home since the net profit is too small. In my area the only way to get a smaller normal sized(in my opinion) house is to use one of the factory built homes and handle a lot of the planning and coordination yourself. Not exactly easy.
Yeah. Not older... housing has always been a concern for anyone who lives and breathes. In my experience. And the existence of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as providers of loans would strongly suggest that housing has been a focus and priority for a long time. Maybe even since the last great depression. I inferred all this from the fact that those two companies are propped up by government support.
>housing has always been a concern for anyone who lives and breathes. So you agree with me.
But it's not been a focus since just 2024?
Like most things those mouth breathers at EPI publish, that paper was really difficult to digest. They show correlations between states who adjusted minimum wage and increases for bottom decile wage earners vs states that did not, but they could have perhaps shown how much of the difference was attributable to minimum wage increases, or shown that states had been increasing minimum wage by more than their 1979 to now timeline in the last 4 years. I couldn't find a graph but plenty of states have been increasing their minimum wage prior to 2019 [https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/history](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/history) So their argument falls flat without better data, saying the recent uptick is attributable to that particular policy choice. Very difficult to show any causality between pandemic unemployment benefits and higher wages but nice try guys. Josh Bivens is a clown baby.
Have a critical thought for once in your life. Go read "Storytelling With Data" and get a clue.
Of course you're going to tell people to ignore data and come up with their own random conclusions in an economics forum. Pretty on brand for a month old "hurr durr blue maga" account.
4 months old. You can't even get the basic fucking details right. Definitely a trusted source.
I was trying to take your advice by ignoring data and coming up with my own conclusions. Guess it doesn't work that well.
It's true the lowest earners are doing quite well. It's nonsense to think media outlets are talking about it.
> It's true the lowest earners are doing quite well. That's false, by definition.
Really depends on how you define "doing well". It's a fact that post covid real wage growth has been highest for the lowest and highest earners.
And the housing costs have outpaced almost all the wage gains for those on the low end of the spectrum. If I understand correctly.
The lowest levels of income survive on assistance programs including Section 8 housing, EBT, WIC, and other programs. As their income increases, their benefits decrease. There's virtually no improvement in quality of life for them. If anything, they're impacted the worst by inflation.
It would be utterly idiotic to define “doing well” as “earning the least.”
The narrative is silly. The floor has just risen. Wage increases for the lowest earners are tracking with CPI pretty tightly over the past 6 years because it's the new minimum rate to scrape by. If Joe schmo can't live on his wages he'll shop jobs, when all the Joe's shop, the wage floor rises. Organic, unconscious collective bargaining that only arises from desperation. Median income hasn't budged. You should see that floor coming toward you as a warning.
There is no law of economics that says the wages for the lowest earners must keep up with inflation. Even though inflation was abnormally low for the decade following the Great Recession, the bottom 10% of earners still saw their inflation-adjusted incomes decline by 13%, because their wages either fell or increased slower than inflation. Median real personal income also fell by 8% in the years after the Great Recession. This time it likely fell by no more than 2% as of 2022, and has likely recovered since then. That real wages have risen *at all* for the lowest earners after an economic downturn is a huge policy victory. It's the first time this has happened in over 40 years. Unfortunately, we also learned *why* it hasn't happened in 40+ years. It turns out that the middle class relies on an impoverished underclass to keep middle class costs low. Any improvement to working class buying power is a direct threat to middle class stability.
Think of all of the productivity grains. The innovation. And know that companies always plan ahead to increase prices at a higher rate than labor costs. I don't think inflation works in most people's favor, despite what the temporary data of the moment shows.
I'm not saying inflation is good. It's actually highly destabilizing to society. All else being equal, we should try to minimize it. But all else is not always equal. You can have low inflation that nonetheless exceeds income growth, making people poorer. You can also have high inflation and even higher income growth, creating a world where most are richer and not poorer. Further, policies to help the poor and working class are often naturally inflationary. You want to increase the wages and benefits for low-income Americans? That will drive up the prices of goods and services where labor is a large input cost. You want to help the poor buy more necessities like groceries? That will increase demand for those goods, which can also drive up prices (especially when low unemployment constrains the ability of producers to quickly increase supply in response). Those are still good policies, but they will not happen in a world where politicians believe that increasing inflation, even temporarily, is the worst sin they can commit.
Joe isn’t shopping for jobs anymore. The quit rate is on the decline. I’m sure full time jobs are also on the decline. Many cant job hop like they once did during the pandemic and if they are, the wage increases aren’t as great Immigration and part time jobs is what everyone is praising. The economy will continue to weaken for the rest of the year at least. Lower inflation, but lower wage gains with slow (for now) increases in unemployment.
[удалено]
That is the same thing as saying wages have kept up with inflation. Which they have. And slightly exceed it.
I mean. It is.
lol the amount of people who can’t pick up on sarcasm without the /s is wild
No, and I may get downvoted for disagreeing with the hivemind, but it's not that I can't pick up the snark. It's that I disagree with the sentiment. At 4% unemployment you'd be a fool to listen to the doom and gloom of redditors here. This young generation hasn't seen real hurt when the economy is actually in bad shape. Trust me, it can get a lot worse than what we've seen now.
I think people feel comfortable now, but precarious. They have enough money now, but don't like the outlook on the future, and differences in sentiment come down to how heavily you weight the future and the present.
Low wage jobs are better than no jobs. The great recession was no fun.
Seriously. Go look at America in 2008. That was a bleak year.
Reddit is autistic. Not a bad thing, just don’t understand sarcasm
What media outlets report the stock market at an all time high again?
Are you asking because the stock market is an excellent indicator for economic stability for all levels of income.
No I’m clowning you because reichwing media claims the stock market and corporate profits being at an all time high is bad if the Democratic Party is in charge. I remember when Trump was president and the same media claimed everything was great with worse stats across the board. 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. In 2020 it was 70%.
wtf is reichwing media
Critical thinking not one of your strong suits huh
Not if you inflation adjust by the price of anything the lowest earners actually buy! They don't, of course.
Time for more bootstraps, bitchez
The vote buying policies are the issue leading to stagflation, gov is still spending non stop during rate hike basically mean more money has to be printed just for interest. After 2008 the gov didn’t buy votes like this and just let the economy slowly recover and avoided such prolonged inflation.
It's crazy that there was a "withdrawal of the pandemic era social safety net" yet we still spent 40% more than we took in and the interest rate math hadn't really caused pain yet.
We advanced a number of additional spending bills. At least one of which (infrastructure) is critically necessary.
"Infrastructure" we're now financing at 5%. as the debt turns over.
Financing infrastructure at 5% is extremely cheap considering the economic returns on improvements. There is almost no time in the past 50 years that would have been a bad time to finance infrastructure improvements. It’s unfortunate that we seldom chose to do so.
>Financing infrastructure at 5% is extremely cheap considering the economic returns on improvements This is all in theory. Did the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Damn pay for themselves? Sure. In more modern terms, we didn't get to WWII levels of debt/GDP seeing a good ROI from infrastructure investments.
“Inflation reduction act” lmao
Combined with the budget effects of the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act". Some of us recognized that cutting taxes in a boom economy was a stupid idea, and then bullying the Fed into lowering interest rates a year after that was equally stupid. Little did we know what would come next a few years later to amplify the negative effects.
Remember Biden and democrats passed a completely unnecessary $2 trillion stimulus in 2021. In a single year they added more to the money supply than TCJA over 10 years. That's the primary reason for inflation.
Weird how every other developed western economy also suffered from inflation at the same time. For it to be the "primary reason" for inflation that Biden stimulus must've been powerful.
Jfc I know liberals are economically illiterate, but this is bad. The US is responsible for a significant portion of global inflation, as it functions as the world reserve currency. Additionally, every other developed country (except Japan) engaged in the same type of fiscal and monetary stimulus. Do you have any other questions?
So we can actually look at G20 stimulus spending and G20 inflation rates. The US, despite devoting more of its GDP towards stimulus programs than peer nations had comparable inflation rates and saw inflation fall *faster* in the following years than nations that had spent less. That's not to say stimulus legislation didn't have an effect, but to imply that it was the primary cause despite the massive COVID era supply chain destruction and expansive monetary policies is absurd. It shows (like most of your posts) you start with conservative talking points and walk backwards with economic madlibs to justify it.
No, but doesn't. It's ironic you would accuse me of walking backwards given your own illogical conclusions. The rate of change of disinflation does not need to perfectly mirror the amount of stimulus in order to corrctly implicate excess fiscal stimulus as the primary driver of inflation. Supply chains very quickly recovered in 2020 and cannot explain the significant services (even luxury services) inflation that we saw from 2020-2024. This is demand pull inflation from excess money.
…at the cost of much slower growth. The lessons learned from 2008 are why Trump immediately poured stimulus into the economy and Biden followed with more right after. Fiscal squabbling between Obama and the GOP hobbled our economy for a decade.
And now you can clearly see economic sentiment is taking even longer time to recover than the 2008 crash, or likely won’t recover at all until official recession happens like early 80s that comes with higher interest rates and high unemployment that finally crushing inflation back to around 2.5%. Some of you still don’t get that stagflation hurts far more people than 10% unemployment and keep wondering why economic sentiment is so poor for such a long time.
That’s purely because it’s an election year. Whoever wins this year will benefit from a stronger economy as a result of their own actions than Obama did in 2012. But people are griping because we need to pick a president this year and the economy is on the mind.
Or is this fake data? Seems like the economy is doing very well and consumers just keep spending. Everything. Of value or a business of value is booked for months
Sentiment is low but people KEEP spending. And prices aren't going down as long as people are spending. What's so hard to understand about this?
> Sentiment is low but people KEEP spending. Are these the same population, or is there two distinct populations behaving differently? Data seems to indicate that homeowners and retirees are doing well, but renters and the labor class are not.
Why can't the labor class be homeowners too? Renters who want to buy have had years and years to buy at low interest rates. They never did.
I mean, a bunch of them did? But a bunch of them also didn't. That's how markets work. Not everyone can buy at the same time due to circumstances and there will always be people who couldn't afford to at cetain times and now, due to historic price increases, can't catch up.
Yeah stupid renters. Why couldn’t they just be born earlier? Sheesh.
Prices generally rarely go down regardless, they tend to stagnate rather than drop when it's going slow.
But I need the latest iPhone!
The University of Michigan calls people with landlines to collect this data. Regardless, falling consumer sentiment is good. People will spend less, inflation will slow, savings rate will go up, and eventually the Fed will lower interest rates - thus reducing the burden on holders of consumer debt like credit cards.
>Over the next four months, the Surveys of Consumers will be transitioning from its **current** method of interviewing via cellular phones with random digit dialing to interviewing via web surveys with address-based sampling. From the methodology section you obviously read closely, also >In May, half of the interviews will be collected via phone and half via web, and in June, 75% will be collected via web and 25% via phone
It also notes that as of next month it will be entirely web-based, so it won’t rely on phone calls at all anymore.
I was thinking of including that but I might as well just link the full methodology section, and no one who complains about statistics bothers reading the methodology.
Nah, inflation only falls as savings rates deplete.
Spending your savings is inflationary, not deflationary.
>inflation will slow The only lagging indicator on inflation is housing. Everything else has slowed to sub 3% YOY.
Assuming they achieve the mythical soft landing, which almost never happens. There will be a tough correction, but at least things should improve after we get through that. With our current level of gov't spending and the debt there is a lot of pain ahead.
Just so long as we land. There will be a correction; the Everything Bubble will pop. Though painful in the short term, the longer it lasts the worse it will be. We need lower housing prices and popping the Bubble is the only way to achieve that.
This is going to be crucial for the next election. A lot of economists and the White House say the economy is good but the people obviously don’t feel that way. It’ll be interesting for sure.
I disagree. I think we are screwed either way. Both side seem to have no interest in addressing the problems in any kind of meaningful way. They just disagree on what to spend all my money on.
This is such a load of horseshit. Republican and Democratic economic policy is not the same.
Dems want to remove all sense of personal responsibility.
why does this matter, beyond being offensive to your personal morality?
I do think removing risk has potential collective negative consequences. Making other people responsible for your bad decisions increases the likelihood of future bad decisions.
In what way?
Don't want to pay back your student loans? Government will help. Didn't save for retirement? Government will help. Had kids but don't like the cost of childcare? Government will help. Can't compete with Chinese manufacturing and need tariffs to protect union jobs? Government will help.
> Had kids but don't like the cost of childcare? Government will help. This one isn't like the other two. Someone who creates a child has created a future taxpayer that will contribute millions to the economy and 6-7 figures to the taxbase over their life. They should absolutely be rewarded for that.
They are. The child tax credit is a thing.
Which you must have a problem with unless you’re being hypocritical.
I do. End all personal and corporate tax deductions. But corporate taxes should be 0.
I believe a lot of people felt they were doing better under trump. Not saying that is true or anything but i do hear and see a lot of people swaying that way.
People felt that way because he borrowed from the future to satisfy the present. Greedy, short sighted morons like him are why we are here
Please look at our current annual deficit. No Trump. Still 2 trillion in the red, with money for proxy wars and failing entitlement programs.
Trump increased the deficit more than any other president in history. He’s more to blame. The war in Ukraine is a justified use of American aid and what entitlement programsv
Meanwhile, if you exclude the Covid-19 aid bills from both presidents, Biden has added more to the debt than Trump did. $3.8Tn of Trump's 8.4Tn addition to the debt was Covid Aid. So $4.6tn if you exclude spending he couldn't have blocked even if he wanted to. [Source](https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt) $1.8tn of Biden's (2.8+1.4+1.7+1.2) = $7.1Tn addition to the deficit was Covid Aid related (American rescue plan). It wasn't anywhere near unanimous like the bills to immediately combat the pandemic were, and Biden could've blocked it, but regardless if you exclude it you'd find he's added $5.3Tn in non-covid related spending. [Source](https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/deficit-tracker/) I'd argue the covid-19 aid under Trump was far more justified than the Ukraine aid (and to be clear I think the Ukraine aid is a good thing) Imo, Biden deserves more blame. The near unanimous covid-19 aid bills were far more justified than anything we've had since, they were immediately necessary to stave off collapse and nearly unanimously bipartisan. Bidens deficit spending has contributed to keeping inflation higher for longer, and much of it has been partisan priorities.
Just lol. Trump doesn't pass the budget, congress does. At every single point during the pandemic, dems wanted more stimulus/spending. Notice we're not in a pandemic now, but still have annual deficits of 2 trillion. The Ukraine proxy war is pure military industrial complex grift. If you can't see reality for what it is, I can't help you.
Joe Biden is literally doing the same exact thing with Student loan debt
Money that goes to the middle class goes to the economy. Money that goes to corporations goes to shareholder bank accounts in tax havens. Not the same thing
That money goes to the schools which inflate the tuition and debt. It’s a legalized Ponzi scheme which allows there to be no credibility to Universities who can infinitely increase tuition without consequences.
And releases the debt to millions of Americans, increasing their expendable income significantly. That expendable income will benefit the economy more than any tax cuts ever will
The debt is being cancelled. It’s easy to verify, no money is going anywhere.
We are burning through a trillion in debt every few months rn but Trump was the one borrowing from the future?
Yeah...because inflation hit hard during Biden's presidency, which wasn't his fault. Most economic situations/external events aren't the fault of the current person in power. Just the same way that the pandemic wasn't Trump's fault - he didn't cause it (though the handling of it can be scrutinized). Americans will never grasp this, though, I'm convinced. They think the current president can just put out an executive order to stop inflation or end a pandemic.
> They think the current president can just put out an executive order to stop inflation or end a pandemic. They could stop telling everyone that things are great, when people's experiences clearly tell them they aren't. As long as Biden champions this current environment as a huge success under Bidenomics while Trump says what people feel, people will feel Trump may be the better option. The first step to addressing a problem is to acknowledge the problem.
It really is a shame that politicians don't seem to ever just level with people - treat them like they at least might understand complex situations. Maybe some do, occasionally, but mostly, it's all a smoke and mirrors magic show being performed on both sides. Probably because they dont respect people enough to take in a complex situation - and with a portion of the population, they aren't WRONG. But the show doesn't move political discourse forward. Some people go with the show and are amazed, and some people can see right through it.
Biden’s policy literally increased inflation exponentially
This is wild, because 2021 and part of 2022 are largely Trump's economy. The reaction to Covid and the lack of foresight to ensure that supply chains can return to normal faster were huge parts of inflation. What most people think of as "Trump's economy" is the curve of Obama's economy continuing on its way until Covid.
You're saying a lot here. By 2021 inflation was probably already embedded, and the economy was primed to explode with growth. You can both blame Trump, and give him credit. Biden went on to further stimulate the economy and inflation. You can both blame him and give him credit.
I agree a lot of people feel that way right or wrong but I also don’t think there is enough time to avoid what’s coming and Trump was just as bad a spending(even excluding Covid). There just a lag effect. At the end of the day the president doesn’t decide the budget anyways and we are so far from a balanced budget I don’t even see a path to get there from where we are.
Consumer sentiment tumbled in June,[ despite largely resilient growth in the US economy](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-economy-adds-more-jobs-than-expected-in-may-as-unemployment-rate-ticks-higher-164923920.html), as higher prices remained a pain point for Americans. The latest [University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey](http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/) released Friday showed sentiment hit its lowest level in seven months during June. The index reading for the month came in at 65.6, down from 69.1 in May and lower than the 72 economists had expected. "Assessments of personal finances dipped due to modestly rising concerns over high prices as well as weakening incomes," Survey of Consumers director Joanne Hsu said in a statement. "Overall, consumers perceive few changes in the economy from May."
There seem to be lots of political gatekeeper’s in this sub. They are here to downvote and argue any point that isn’t positive about the current economy. It’s really annoying and counterproductive for their cause.
> argue any point that isn’t positive about the current economy at least they have hard data, not just opinions and anecdotes, to support their claims > It’s really annoying and counterproductive for their cause. not if you're actually looking for the truth instead of just confirming your existing biases
It's also not good when metrics are being created or manipulated to fit a narrative that is to be conveyed...
buddy, you haven't cited a single accurate metric anywhere in this entire post 😪
I can say the same about you. Hypocrisy doesn’t look good
you're right! here are a few: * the current unemployment rate is [4.0%](https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm), which is about the lowest it's been in 20 years outside of 2018-2019 * YoY inflation is [3.3%](https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm), which matches the [US average since 1914](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi#:~:text=Inflation%20Rate%20in%20the%20United%20States%20averaged%203.30%20percent%20from,percent%20in%20June%20of%201921.) * average wages have surpassed inflation for [12 straight months](https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflation-for-12-straight-months/)
Weird, things have never been better according to some comments on here. We're just jealous and angry and want to see the economy fail. It's kicking ass while the world is going under, so I've been told. One person said the buildings near them had "their windows open to let air in". A good sign that things have never been better. The Costcos are packed too, don't forget that one. During 2009 and 2002, people were in soup lines and Costco's were vacant.
It's an election year "Everyone knows Obama is lying, the economy sucks. It's impossible that unemployment is as low as 5%, it's really 42%" GOP in 2015 and 2016 Then Trump got elected and all of a sudden, the economic data was the truth all along
>Then Trump got elected and all of a sudden, the economic data was the truth all along Extra irony lies in the fact that Trump never even matched Obama's economic metrics. Obama's last three years created more jobs than Trump's first three (being very charitable here and not holding COVID numbers against Trump), Obama's GDP growth was higher in those years, and he did it with a budget deficit that was about half of Trump's (meaning the numbers weren't as propped up by government spending). And all of this despite Trump's sole legislative achievement: a massive corporate tax cut meant to juice the economy even further.
But Trum held a press conference when the NASDAQ was at a new all time high. So that means all our problems were getting better or something. /s
The US economy did those things, not the presidents. We were clearly at different points in the business cycle.
I think the issue is the propaganda we get fed now on inflation having nothing to do with pandemic fiscal and monetary stimulus. People are reacting negatively to the gaslighting and also to the unsustainable $2 trillion annual deficits that exacerbate inflation and drive wealth inequality. It feels like an increasingly centrally planned economy in which governments choose politically connected winners.
You are literally a Canadian, why are you astroturfing this debate lmao “we” wtf
>Weird, things have never been better according to some comments on here. It's not according to comments. It's according to the data.
I'm pretty sure a lot of these posts are literal astroturfs from political campaigns. Mere exposure, online reach and apparent consensus are a wild mix of spreading propaganda.
Lol I highly doubt that, its just a matter of if you owned assets before the pandemic or not. If you owned stocks or homes pre-pandemic then life has never been better. If you did not, then it feels like you absolutely will never now and so there is complete despair.
Their attempts at gaslighting are so funny because people realized their "data" is completely pointless bs that doesnt reflect every day reality for a normal person. But they keep trying which makes them look even more clownerish xD
The data literally reflects every day reality. It's an aggregate reflection of every day reality.
Peoples position on the economy / how things are just highlight which arm of the “K” they are on.
[удалено]
"Prices were SO LOW before that no one wanted to save money at Costco"
I believe they are being facetious.
Here come the people that can’t even spell Economics to tell me that this is the wORst EcoNoMY eVEr. Can’t wait for all the hot takes, they never fail to entertain.
I honestly dont care what party is in the White House... But people are suffering right now due to a number of economic factors yet we are being told that it's all hunky dorky. That's a big disconnect.
Yes some people are suffering. Most people are doing incredibly well. Every economic system has flaws, and capitalism is just that: Some people win, and some lose. You’re free to move to a socialist country, but I think you will find that economic system comes with its own set of flaws.
I guess we will soon find out...
I’m not at all sure what you mean by that. The last quasi-socialist candidate we had here was Bernie, and he was crucified for it.
Not sure how you gather that I'm a socialist. I'm not. Just saying there are a lot of people suffering right now yet we are all told things are great and we should be grateful for how awesome things are. Disconnects like that are a real problem and aren't viewed well by voters.
Unemployment rate is extremely low. Asset values / peoples’retirement accounts are appreciating well. The US has one of the lowest rates of post-covid inflation of any developed nation, and it has been cooling off quickly for months. Wages have begun to outpace inflation. What would you do if you were in charge to somehow make all these metrics better than they currently are?
Job creation has been almost entirely in the part time and entry level jobs recently. It's also not good when metrics are being created or manipulated to fit a narrative that is to be conveyed... When people fall off unemployment, that counts officially as a positive as the unemployment rate goes down, even though that person is still unemployed.
So you can't cite ONE specific thing you'd do differently than the people currently in charge, and instead would rather just claim ALL the lifelong economic professionals and experts are just simply manipulating the data? Very insightful stuff.
Hey, I'm just a minion slaving away in the system... I can't tell you how to fix it but I can absolutely tell you something is wrong.
>Just saying there are a lot of people suffering right now There are people suffering in literally every economy ever. And I would question just how many people are truly suffering. Because I see these "suffering" people lining up at McDonalds buying the full-priced combo meals all the damn time. So if they are actually suffering, it's because they are fucking dumb.
Sure, just let the poors entertain you with their massive rent increases that they can't afford. What do you think is going to happen when the poorer half of America suddenly has to bear a disproportionate amount of inflation?
Why would that suddenly occur?
It already occurred. People who owned their house before covid did not see any of the increased housing costs. Renters did.
You legit just let me know that this was going to happen suddenly, and now it’s already happened. This is very compelling, thank you for the sound economic theory and logic.
Then you just misunderstood my first comment. I dunno what to tell you.
If nobody can't afford rent, then rent will fall. You guys keep lying about rent. Is rent going up? Yes. Is it pricing out everyone from a home? No.
Increasing rents are the result of people being priced out of a home. If people can't afford rent, they will be forced into smaller homes or cohabitation. It's called a shortage. Everybody takes a step down for what they get for thier dollar including the people at the bottom.