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David Fisher's avatar

In a recent conversation with Robert Reich, Jared Bernstein proposed the following,which I find kind of convincing. People answer surveys that ask "how is the economy" as though they were asked "what is the state of the world". The world is currently in, for my lifetime, an unusually scary and unstable place. I think many people feel that way. So the state of the world is making people unhappy and they get asked in surveys about "the economy" which is an abstraction so they answer about a broader abstraction, the state of the world.

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Rob Costello's avatar

It's very easy to believe that while the economy may be good for you right now, it's lousy for everyone else, and it's only a matter of time before you're next. These numbers are all about vibes. If you look online or in the news, you get the message daily that everything is, indeed, horrible. Our politics are unstable and precarious. The environment is unstable and precarious. The global scene is unstable and precarious. It feels like we're perpetually one war/bank failure/climate shift/covid resurgence away from social collapse. This is simply not an environment in which people can feel confident about their economic futures, despite however rosy things may personally appear at present.

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