Because everything costs so fucking much that the “economy” doesn’t represent their daily experience
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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.
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.
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
“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.
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.
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
Because everyone except the wealthy are struggling to pay their bills bootlicker
And obviously trump is the better solution, crayon eater? Two things can be true at the same time: it sucks for regular people but it sucks less now than in 2019.
your logic is flawed. of course both can be true, they serve the same master of corporations. l am still voting for the lesser of two evils, hillary 2.0, i mean biden.
