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.
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.
Nov 16, 2023·edited Nov 16, 2023Liked by Noah Berlatsky
My pet theory (as a consumer but also a former consumer product marketer and merger specialist) is that companies have made being a consumer more painful in many ways--e.g. through crappier products, shrinkflation, locked shelves, hard-to-cancel subscriptions, hidden and junk fees, shortages, harder returns--and that this is playing out in consumer sentiment and other surveys. I don't think it explains everything, but I think it is a contributor. I wrote a little about it here: https://annelutzfernandez.substack.com/p/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about
Nov 16, 2023·edited Nov 16, 2023Liked by Noah Berlatsky
I think it can--though the experience may be unpleasant or difficult, consumers still buy things because they need or want them. At the end of the day, though, if the buying experience is less pleasurable or predictable than it has been in the past, you're likely to feel more pessimistic about your ability to achieve satisfaction.
Well…the point here is that there are a range of ways to measure how people feel about the economy, and they virtually all point the same direction, with one outlier.
Homelessness is a pretty easy thing to solve; you just give people housing: there’s good empirical evidence that that works. We just don’t have the political will, unfortunately.
I think it's like that narrative that's "Biden's too old, he needs to step aside for younger blood!" that the media (and a few younger Democrats) are pushing right now. To me, it really smells like the Mainstream Media misses 2016, when Hillary v. Bernie—no, v. Teh Donald! v. The Rest of the Republican Party kept people glued to 24-hour television channels and reading major newspapers (or major newspaper sites like the NY TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, and THE WALL STREET JOURNAL which are all behind paywalls!).
Since they missed all those lovely profitable clicks in 2020 thanks to COVID-19 and lockdown, especially after Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race because, strangely, he felt relief and harm reduction measures were a bit more important than winning the Democratic nomination? Gods know Trump tried to give them those juicy stories (even to the point of threatening The Ukraine if they didn't dig up some dirt on Joe Biden through his failson Hunter!) but, with his opponent playing Least in Sight, which he could do thanks to the pandemic, Trump was punching down at empty air—when he wasn't showing how unserious a person he was in the face of the worst health and societal emergency since The Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918.
So in 2024, with "living with COVID" being the new normal, they're like the MCU trying to bring people back with a big splashy event—BIDEN V. TRUMP II: WAR OF THE GERIATRICS! I don't think it'll work as well as the first one did, though—we've had four years of Biden doing a far better job than his detractors give him credit for (as one of those detractors, I'm...pleasantly surprised he's done this well!), and Trump seemingly determined to end up behind bars by attacking everybody from judges to prosecutors to witnesses with increasingly unhinged and paranoid rants, the race could be over as early as late Spring 2024 when the Republican Party's frontrunner finds himself in prison for sedition and unable to run for office, and they have to come up with a last-minute compromise candidate. 🤣🤣🤣
Nov 17, 2023·edited Nov 17, 2023Liked by Noah Berlatsky
My last comment doesn't really address The Economy, does it? I started out making a comparison, and ended up following the comparison all the way home.... 🤷♂️
My point, and I did have one, was that a big part of it is the media fueling the narrative of how precarious the economy is, or at least fueling speculation with "Why isn't Biden given credit for a better economy?" I really believe they are pushing all this speculation so Trump v. Biden 2024 is exciting, and "clicky", enough to boost their reader/viewership and stock prices again. What do THEY care if America becomes a dictatorship under Trump? The people on top are rich and have other places to flee to anyway, and besides under Dear Leader Trump they can probably eradicate all those pesky, annoying "independent journalists" who are more concerned with exposing corruption than pushing a comforting narrative!
Also, like a lot of recent recoveries it doesn't FEEL like it's reaching the rest of us. Yes, Minimum Wage is finally rising about $7.25/hr. in most places—but it's nowhere near keeping up with the cost of living in those places. Yes, unemployment is lower—but that's because people often have to work more than one job just to keep their heads above water. Yes, there are more opportunities for people—but our "reformed" privatized Health Insurance is antithetical with the "gig economy" the Techno-Libertarians tout, and Internet is a for-profit business rather than a public utility.
And Yes, Biden is making progress—but it's not near fast enough, and right now he seems more interested in funding foreign wars, which are easier if it's not YOUR war because all you have to do is throw money and equipment at it, than taking care of problems at home. I absolutely believe we should keep helping The Ukraine, but we should also keep some kind of leash on Netanyahu and his Gang of Killers—if only because we don't want to help create something far worse than Hamas and Hezbollah because, like the Schumers, we're all "My Israel, Right or Wrong"! Unfortunately, if you raise "humanitarian concerns" with the Right or rabidly pro-Israel NeoLibs, they consider you "weak". (It would be funny if they all weren't both so pathetic and so harmful, like termites.)
And finally, before I drift off-topic yet again? I blame both the Mainstream Media (which includes much of Right-Wing Hate Media these days!), and the Biden Administration not working harder not just to get the message out, but to make things feel BETTER for the 99%, too.
This is a bit off topic, but I'm puzzled no one is happier about lower gas prices. They sure bitched when the prices went up. I'm also puzzled WHY gas prices are so stable. In the past, if someone just sneezed in the Middle East, gas would go up, now we're a month into a war and no reaction from the markets.
This is tangential, but I wonder how much spending is up because middle class folks started spending more during Covid. (I myself bought a ukelele. Don't judge.) I think perhaps online shopping became a coping mechanism during lockdown, a coping mechanism that didn't necessarily end when we started going outside again.
I know that's not the point of the post; it's just a thought that came up for me.
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.
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.
My pet theory (as a consumer but also a former consumer product marketer and merger specialist) is that companies have made being a consumer more painful in many ways--e.g. through crappier products, shrinkflation, locked shelves, hard-to-cancel subscriptions, hidden and junk fees, shortages, harder returns--and that this is playing out in consumer sentiment and other surveys. I don't think it explains everything, but I think it is a contributor. I wrote a little about it here: https://annelutzfernandez.substack.com/p/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about
that doesn't really gibe with robust consumer spending though...
I think it can--though the experience may be unpleasant or difficult, consumers still buy things because they need or want them. At the end of the day, though, if the buying experience is less pleasurable or predictable than it has been in the past, you're likely to feel more pessimistic about your ability to achieve satisfaction.
Homelessness in the U.S. is not going away anytime soon. I think the way we measure “the economy” is not useful, or is misleading in a number of ways.
Well…the point here is that there are a range of ways to measure how people feel about the economy, and they virtually all point the same direction, with one outlier.
Homelessness is a pretty easy thing to solve; you just give people housing: there’s good empirical evidence that that works. We just don’t have the political will, unfortunately.
I think it's like that narrative that's "Biden's too old, he needs to step aside for younger blood!" that the media (and a few younger Democrats) are pushing right now. To me, it really smells like the Mainstream Media misses 2016, when Hillary v. Bernie—no, v. Teh Donald! v. The Rest of the Republican Party kept people glued to 24-hour television channels and reading major newspapers (or major newspaper sites like the NY TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, and THE WALL STREET JOURNAL which are all behind paywalls!).
Since they missed all those lovely profitable clicks in 2020 thanks to COVID-19 and lockdown, especially after Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race because, strangely, he felt relief and harm reduction measures were a bit more important than winning the Democratic nomination? Gods know Trump tried to give them those juicy stories (even to the point of threatening The Ukraine if they didn't dig up some dirt on Joe Biden through his failson Hunter!) but, with his opponent playing Least in Sight, which he could do thanks to the pandemic, Trump was punching down at empty air—when he wasn't showing how unserious a person he was in the face of the worst health and societal emergency since The Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918.
So in 2024, with "living with COVID" being the new normal, they're like the MCU trying to bring people back with a big splashy event—BIDEN V. TRUMP II: WAR OF THE GERIATRICS! I don't think it'll work as well as the first one did, though—we've had four years of Biden doing a far better job than his detractors give him credit for (as one of those detractors, I'm...pleasantly surprised he's done this well!), and Trump seemingly determined to end up behind bars by attacking everybody from judges to prosecutors to witnesses with increasingly unhinged and paranoid rants, the race could be over as early as late Spring 2024 when the Republican Party's frontrunner finds himself in prison for sedition and unable to run for office, and they have to come up with a last-minute compromise candidate. 🤣🤣🤣
My last comment doesn't really address The Economy, does it? I started out making a comparison, and ended up following the comparison all the way home.... 🤷♂️
My point, and I did have one, was that a big part of it is the media fueling the narrative of how precarious the economy is, or at least fueling speculation with "Why isn't Biden given credit for a better economy?" I really believe they are pushing all this speculation so Trump v. Biden 2024 is exciting, and "clicky", enough to boost their reader/viewership and stock prices again. What do THEY care if America becomes a dictatorship under Trump? The people on top are rich and have other places to flee to anyway, and besides under Dear Leader Trump they can probably eradicate all those pesky, annoying "independent journalists" who are more concerned with exposing corruption than pushing a comforting narrative!
Also, like a lot of recent recoveries it doesn't FEEL like it's reaching the rest of us. Yes, Minimum Wage is finally rising about $7.25/hr. in most places—but it's nowhere near keeping up with the cost of living in those places. Yes, unemployment is lower—but that's because people often have to work more than one job just to keep their heads above water. Yes, there are more opportunities for people—but our "reformed" privatized Health Insurance is antithetical with the "gig economy" the Techno-Libertarians tout, and Internet is a for-profit business rather than a public utility.
And Yes, Biden is making progress—but it's not near fast enough, and right now he seems more interested in funding foreign wars, which are easier if it's not YOUR war because all you have to do is throw money and equipment at it, than taking care of problems at home. I absolutely believe we should keep helping The Ukraine, but we should also keep some kind of leash on Netanyahu and his Gang of Killers—if only because we don't want to help create something far worse than Hamas and Hezbollah because, like the Schumers, we're all "My Israel, Right or Wrong"! Unfortunately, if you raise "humanitarian concerns" with the Right or rabidly pro-Israel NeoLibs, they consider you "weak". (It would be funny if they all weren't both so pathetic and so harmful, like termites.)
And finally, before I drift off-topic yet again? I blame both the Mainstream Media (which includes much of Right-Wing Hate Media these days!), and the Biden Administration not working harder not just to get the message out, but to make things feel BETTER for the 99%, too.
This is a bit off topic, but I'm puzzled no one is happier about lower gas prices. They sure bitched when the prices went up. I'm also puzzled WHY gas prices are so stable. In the past, if someone just sneezed in the Middle East, gas would go up, now we're a month into a war and no reaction from the markets.
Israel isn’t where the oil is and diplomacy seems to have avoided a wider war I guess?
Inflation in general has been trending down and there are some signs that economic polls are better; might take a while to fully percolate through....
This is tangential, but I wonder how much spending is up because middle class folks started spending more during Covid. (I myself bought a ukelele. Don't judge.) I think perhaps online shopping became a coping mechanism during lockdown, a coping mechanism that didn't necessarily end when we started going outside again.
I know that's not the point of the post; it's just a thought that came up for me.