Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden
Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden
Exclusive Harris poll for the Guardian shows 55% believe economy is shrinking, in troubling sign for president’s re-election bid
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
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55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
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49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
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49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
Tbf I don't blame people for not knowing the economy is good right now. Because that shit doesn't affect anyone positively except the wealthy.
For most of us, the economy is bad? Cost of living/groceries goes up. Economy is great? Cost of living/groceries goes up. It makes no difference to us who aren't stock gamblers, whether the country is in recession, we certainly are. When the economy is good we see no benefit to us at the bottom whatsoever
Polling isn't going to change people's minds about it FEELING like a recession. It certainly feels like anyone who owns or controls any sort of economic production is on a cash-grab bender, jacking up prices on absolutely everything, and finding new ways to exploit the populace while the getting is good. People can't afford the basic staples of life. It FEELS pretty dire.
It's not a recession, it's outright class warfare.
The issue is voters talk about how regular people are doing, while politicians talk about "the economy" which is rich people and business....
For them, shits going great. Because their record profits are coming from regular Americans being priced gouged.
Also, I stopped reading when the article clearly couldn't understand inflation compliants.
The poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation. The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing. In reality, the rate of inflation has fallen sharply from its post-Covid peak of 9.1% and has been fluctuating between 3% and 4% a year.
In April, the inflation rate went down from 3.5% to 3.4% – far from inflation’s 40-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 – triggering a stock market rally that pushed the Dow Jones index to a record high.
The inflation rate is slowly going down. But it's a rate, prices are still up and continuing to go up. That 9.1% from 2022 is still baked into the 3% increase we're experiencing.
Like. Say it was 100, 9% increase makes it 109. 3% of 109 is more than 3% of 100...
It's compounded, but it's not complicated and anyone writing about economics should understand that and explain it to their readers when talking about inflation rates.
So the inflation rate should go down but it's not like that means lower prices, it just means 1% increase now is more than a 1% increase in the past.
And that's not even getting into the harsh truth about inflation and capitalism:
A lack of inflation means people save money. That takes money out of circulation. A lot of our problems are because the wealthy do that with huge sums.
If enough money gets taken out of circulation then it leads to a recession as there's less money floating around and changing hands.
We need inflation to prop up this bullshit economic system the wealthy are obsessed with.
You need to ask yourself why? If unemployment is low and the economy is growing, then why are 3 in 5 struggling? If you have a room with 100 people and 100 pizzas, statistically the room has plenty of food. If 60 of the people complain that they are hungry, you wouldn't scoff and tell them, "stop complaining, look at all the statistical pizza in the room! Things are actually quite good for everyone." Sure, maybe some are falling for propaganda, but propaganda doesn't get you 3 out of 5 people.
The majority of Americans know their situation sucks, they're just not able to express it in numbers, probably because they're busy trying to live their lives. These articles do nothing but smugly highlight that the numbers are tracking the wrong things. Unemployment being low doesn't mean much if a huge chunk of employment is shitty gig work. The stock market being up doesn't anything if over 90% of the stock market is owned by 10% of people. GDP doesn't mean shit and a prime example of that is Canada having nearly 40% of their GDP being made up by overpriced housing, in that case it's just people selling housing at each other and jacking up prices each time while renting it out at exorbitant rates. Not really much being produced there, certainly nothing that improves people's lives (except speculators).
It is a recession for the bottom majority of the country... That's what happens when economic growth is only benefiting the top half ....
It is a recession for many folks, and that's a real problem that pretending it's not happening won't erase for them.
Isn't this the same old "ThE eCoNoMy Is DoInG gReAt, WhY aRe YoU cOmPlAiNiNg?" BS as always?
The average person doesn't care how well the rich people's game is going if they're struggling to afford their groceries because of said rich people's game.
The Harris poll is garbage: https://www.thecrimson.com/column/forging-harvards-future/article/2024/3/26/bodnick-/
This really misses the big problem. For many people, the costs that are most inelastic (like food and housing) are the ones with the most inflation. For people in financial situations that aren't great, there aren't easy ways to lower costs.
Inflation statistics like the CPI also grossly inaccurately measure what an accurate basket of good is by including many things that are frivolous and so it totally misses how people are feeling. Did the price of a large television go down slightly decreasing the overall inflation a bit? Yes, but I still need to buy incredibly expensive food. I don't need to buy a TV. That makes me worried. I can't cut down on food.
This leads to having to consider things like: should I try to move to an even smaller place (since my tiny place is incredibly expensive), which results in moving costs? Should I look for a better paying job and is it likely I will find that and what happens if my employer finds out and fires me because I am searching for a new job?
There are also large feelings of uncertainty about the economy and about inflation. For those who own property and purchased it a lower cost than the market rate, things are fine. For everyone else, it's terrible.
Biden is doing a horrible job of being realistic about how people feel about these things. He is looking at ivory tower economic statistics and either he doesn't get it or isn't acknowledge it. The message from him is that he's doing a good job and things are improving. That isn't reassuring. It feels like a "let them eat cake" mentality. I'd much rather have him say "yes, certain things in the economy are problematic" and then either say how they will be improved or just bluntly say the best option is to not do anything because doing things (like market interference) is potentially worse.
I support the rights of trans people, and I like some of Biden's ideas, however for most lower middle class people who are completely stressed out, Biden seems like a terrible option. Even for lower middle class people who dislike Trump, they at least view him as a realist. I am left not knowing if Biden is ignorant of how people who don't own homes are feeling or if Biden is being so defensive with his record that he seems out of touch, but either way, he will definitely lose at his current trajectory.
He keeps not addressing this problem and it's a big problem for many voters, probably over half of all swing voters are affected by this. I wish I could advise Biden on what to say and do to improve his poll numbers, because many of the problems that bother large segments of the voters are things that could be easily resolved through the executive office without new laws while adhering to classical economic theory, but he's not going to make the needed changes, I have no way of suggesting things except sending a letter that will not be read but instead will just be summarized as a view (like "letter received, opinion is inflation is bad").
He is going to keep relying on ivory tower economic statistics because fundamentally he's a career politician, he believes his bureaucrats or lacks the ability to understand the real experiences behind the data, and Trump is going to swoop right in and pluck every disaffected swing voter or disaffected Democrat he doesn't reach. The fact that Biden is also doing cool or nice or interesting things in terms of other policy choices doesn't somehow make up for this major weakness in ignoring this.
The fact that The Guardian is referring to the public's "misconceptions" highlights how journalists and also politicians just regurgitate erudite statistics without reflecting on their real world implication, as though regular voters were just wrong or stupid. This is also a problem of Democrats at large who don't know how to take academic research and information and look to the real-world meaning of it and then communicate effectively with regular people or implement practical policies based on this data.
So yeah, Biden will definitely lose. Trans people should figure out how to organize now for possible fascism, which sucks. They should figure out how to technologically, emotionally, and organizationally prepare for a worse case scenario. I can't fathom Biden would win.
Maybe the commercal and financial Egonomy is on the rise. But the private economy of the average citizen is nof.
No one cares that businesses are doing well if they aren’t paying their employees
Well it fucking is. Everyone is broke. No one is spending like they were a few years ago.
It is legitimately such a weird economy, because by all the standard broad metrics it is doing fine, but on an individual basis it varies widely. Cost of living has shot up with inflation, but wages generally didn't go up to match, particularly for people who kept the same employer throughout the Pandemic until now.
The only metric that is important is how far their paycheck goes, and it simply doesn't go as far anymore.
I find it so sad to see The Guardian of all news organizations join in on this bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThO bullshit. Fortunately it looks simply like a poorly written article, but that's little comfort for the damaging effects it will have regardless, e.g. in my trust of The Guardian articles henceforth.
Also, it's not just that, when it combines clickbait headlines with the first half of the article working to obfuscate the Truth with correct but irrelevant facts - beatings will continue until moral improves - even if the second half tries to sound more balanced. Is Fox News going to be the goal now, even if only for the first half of every article, going forward?
Average people, who don't own stock (or if they do, don't rely on it as their primary source of income) could care less about bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThO or even the theoretical underpinnings of inflation, and care far more about their current job security and cost of actual food. Whether the proper term of "recession" applies or if it instead is some other word that should be used to describe it, either way the economy is "not good", so hyper-focusing on uneducated people not knowing the technical definition of "recession" doesn't seem to be helping the situation any? Even if it sells advertising space for this article:-(.
The AutoTL;DR summary, with no title and much of the rage-baiting removed, is much better than the actual article.
'Wrongly believe' is the weakest attempt at gaslighting I've seen today.
Lol people are feeling the recession regardless of what your numbers say.
Since this is a problem of perception the question becomes what do people think the economy would look like if it was doing well? What hasn't changed in their lives that they expected to when the economy started doing better?
We are obviously not currently in a recession but the economy is not great for regular folks, however it has not been since like the 90's.
The GDP says you’re doing fine. Stop complaining that you have to live with you're parents.
But we are in recession. I got no money for nothing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian.
But the road to recovery has been bumpy, largely because of inflation and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to tamp down high prices.
A similar percentage of respondents agreed “it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when I feel financially squeezed each month” and that the economy was worse than the media made it out to be.
Another thing that hasn’t changed: views on the economy largely depend on which political party people belong to.
And three-quarters of everyone polled said they support at least one of the key pillars of Bidenomics, which include investments in infrastructure, hi-tech electronics manufacturing, clean-energy facilities and more union jobs.
“What Americans are saying in this data is: ‘Economists may say things are getting better, but we’re not feeling it where I live,’” said John Gerzema, CEO of the Harris Poll.
The original article contains 928 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
And just wait until AI really gets going...I've been saying this kind of thing for years online and off, and was mostly mocked and dismissed. Of course, there seem to be few politicians that had the foresight to want to do anything about automation, other than silly mantras about "retraining".
As a for instance: I remember trying to tell the maqa types, when they were screaming about coal that the very coal companies they claim care so much about "American jobs" are actively seeking ways to automate the entire thing - all of it.
Sp500 and also nasdaq went up which are quite good news.
I made a post about this sometime ago about this split in expectations. People know that the economy is fine, actually great, for businesses they just don't think its good for them.
I have a friend with whom i disagree on most issues. They were recently complaining about how bad the economy is, how expensive food is, and that their family can't afford to eat beef. They have a large house, they've been paying an extra $1000-2000 per month on their mortgage for the last two years, and they invited 2 adult children to move home so the kids could save money for houses. They watch Fox News (or worse) and believe they're struggling. I pointed out some cheap chicken and other items in a grocery ad and the response was, "but those are just the things that are on sale; everything else is expensive." I was stunned - almost everything i buy is on sale. Yes....you're right...the wagyu costs more than it used to.
My kids also complain, "Our grocery bill is twice what it was two years ago!" Maybe because you're now spending $75/wk in protein shakes and supplements?
I'm not saying that people aren't struggling or that they shouldn't be able to buy things they want, but the people who complain the loudest (in my experience) are not the ones who are in the most difficult situations.
The big problem is that people are thinking in the wrong monetary units. While you're getting paid in a constantly depreciating fiat currency, gold has been perfectly stable, and one ounce of gold still equals one ounce of gold. And so the crazy people in Washington can't inflate it away.