1y ago

CNN Poll: Half of Americans think the economy is getting worse, despite months of stronger economic news | CNN Politics

www.cnn.com CNN Poll: Half of Americans think the economy is getting worse, despite months of stronger economic news | CNN Politics

Despite months of increasingly positive economic indicators, the American public remains negative about the state of the nation’s economy, with 51% saying they think the economy is still in a downturn and getting worse, according to a new CNN poll.

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Who’s it getting better for? Wall Street? Prices on shit keeps fucking going up. My paycheck ain’t.
- Yeah, according to a Federal Reserve survey from earlier this year "only 63% of adults surveyed said they would cover an unexpected $400 expense using cash or its equivalent, down from 68% the year before. Many noted they would lean on credit cards or family members to manage such a bill. About 13% said they wouldn’t be able to cover such an expense by any means."
  Upper middle class and above households have been doing great, but everyone else is in a bad way and getting worse.
- Real wages are up in the last two years the largest amount in nearly five decades. Rent costs are down year over year for two and a half years straight. Employment is up, new jobless claims are down, both while hours worked is down. Inflation continues to revert to the mean.
  If it doesn’t seem good for you, you’re either an extreme outlier or are just denying reality.
  
  Source: Trust me bro.
  
  Rent costs are down? Where??? What's a "real wage"? Do you have anything to back any of this up or are we just guessing?
  
  The wage increases haven't kept up with inflation so people aren't feeling it.
  
  Rent costs are down year over year for two and a half years straight
  You have no idea what you are talking about. Rent has more than doubled. I know people living in shitty 1 bedroom apartments who pay more than twice what I pay for my mortgage on a fairly average house.
  
  If you live in LA, rent only goes up.

As others have already stated, the job market is fine, the stocks are fine, but the ability to afford living day to day is worse than I have ever remembered. Here in my cheaper state here are some random prices:
A bag of Doritos is over $7.
Beef shortage makes ground beef for a family of 4 $14
Gas prices are over $3.70
My grocery bill increased by nearly 50% overall and we are buying less on top of that
Car prices are through the roof, making it impossible for people like me to change cars (I’m hearing they are going to drop again soon)
Rent prices are soaring to the point where it isn’t sustainable
Interest rate keeps rising
- Yeah, "the economy" doesn't mean anything.
  More commerce just means more money changing hands. Unemployment rate just measures jobs. None of this impacts the average person.
  Buying power is down and has been dropping for longer than I've been alive. This especially impacts the low and vanishing middle class Americans.
  
  Exactly. It all depends on which metrics you're looking at, and some are not even being looked at, conveniently enough for those with more money.
  
  Buying power is not going down. Do you at least have a source for that?
  I think you might be talking about the productivity-pay gap but it has nothing to do with purchasing power.
  Inflation adjusted wages are going up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
- $7 for a bag of Doritos is ABSURD

Groceries and gas is still inflated. Services are steadily raising rates and some people are still not being paid a living wage.
- So is rent.

That's because (yes, others here beat me to it) -- the economy is not the stock market. People's costs of living and wages aren't getting better, they're getting worse, even as giant corps have record profits and that is reflected on the stock tickers. If the average person was heavily invested early on in some of these corporate behemoths and could actually share in the rapacious profits, maybe things would be different... but that's not the case.
- Woah now!
  That's starting to sound like Socialism and having public ownership
  
  a society with an economic underpinning that meaingfully lifts all boats with a rising tide?! that... would be un-american! gotta have winners and loosers to feed that zero-sum game they love so much.

Been to a grocery store lately? Looked at rent prices? How about clothing? Gas? Basic necessities?
People think the economy's getting worse because it IS for consumers. I don't really give a shit if a company is paying less for grain than they did a year ago if the prices they charge for the final product havn't gone down!
Until basic costs of living start decreasing, most people aren't going to see any positive change.
- Yeah, this kind of headline has no bearing on 99% of people's lives, it's just corporate gaslighting to try to keep the population sedated.
- This is my thinking. I guess it's good the economy is good but prices of housing and food are skyrocketing for me so I don't feel it lol

When toxic "econimistism" comes home to roost. A "strong economy" as measured by stock markets and company profits, both owned primarily by the extremely wealthy is not the same as "working class people are doing well economically", which is what should be meant by "a strong economy" if it were not for the neoliberal brain rot.
- Honestly. There needs to be (probably is and I'm unaware) an index that measures the Average Joe ™️ economy health. So not just like the big Mac index, but a measure of how have the average Americans in the lower to middle class have gained increased take-home pay, reduced debt, asset valuation appreciation, and more indicators that actually increase their day to day life and financial situation.
  
  There’s a FRED series called real disposable income: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0
  Which is after-tax personal income adjusted for inflation.
- Yeah I got a 20% raise and my rent is going up 24%. Any progress I make is immediately thwarted.
  If I stay here I'll be paying half my take home income on rent for a 1BR
  
  That is literally the deal in Boston, MA. Where the going rate for a 1 bedroom apartment is in the ballpark of $2500 USD/month. Exactly half of my take-home income.
  Oh, that's without factoring in utilities.
- Pretty sure it’s measured by gdp

That's because no matter how well stock prices are doing, it still costs substantially more to buy groceries than it did last year, by way of example. The average American is screwed just as hard with a good economy as a bad one, and the poorer you are, the rawer the screwing.
- No one measures the economy based on stock prices.
  Inflation is going down, real wages are going up, unemployment is down.

Guys, we just have to wait for it to trickle down! Don't worry, any decade now and it will finally pay off...

Months of gaslighting that they were doing great didn't work out so well. Being told wages are up, inflation down, economy great while wondering how they are gonna pay rent contradicted the desired message.
- Agreed. Yeah wages are up and inflation is down compared to last year. But so long as inflation is higher than wage growth then people will continue to lose ground financially.

Corporations and the 1% keep posting record profits.
The rest of us keep having to pay higher prices.
CNN: Why do many Americans think the economy is getting worse?? It's working as designed.
- Corporate profits are relatively flat as a percentage of national income (it has gone up a bit since COVID): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A445RE1A156NBEA
  People always seem to remember to adjust wages for inflation but understandably because of media headlines almost never adjust profits for inflation.
  
  Major corporations in America hide most of their profits. If you listen to their earnings calls, they'll still be boasting about record profits.

That's because it is getting worse. No one believes the bullshit that it's getting better. It's fake news.
- I mean, I do. The job market is probably the best it's been in decades. The economy is doing extremely well. Food prices are high because two of the world's largest grain producers are fighting a war with one another.
  
  My business and everyone else in my area that I talk to have all said this year has been slow for them as well.
  
  The kob market was better 2 years ago

That's because our useless news media has been beating the drum of recession for literally years now because fear mongering is all they know how to do.
- Also because wages are still stagnant and costs keep going up. On average, the economy is doing great, but that news to the people on the bottom is just an indicator of how much they are being exploited.
  
  But that isn't entirely true.
  "wages are still stagnant"
  Wages saw the biggest bump in decades just a couple of years back. The article is from late 2021, and while that feels like it was an eternity ago, the reality is that it was less than 2 years ago.
  https://apnews.com/article/business-wages-salaries-increase-8ce98ea3bcc14c4810eb5a1111e1df49
  "costs keep going up"
  US inflation is the lowest of almost all industrialized nations - down to 2.97% right now, compared to 3X that a year ago.
- Rent is up, grocery prices are up, gas is up again, pay hasn't kept up with inflation, corporate profits at all time highs and Powell at the Fed is literally trying to weaken labors negotiating power, but sure it's the media brainwashing people...

The economy is fantastic for like the 10% of the country who owns 75% of the country's junk

The stock market isn't the economy. Wall Street has a vested interest in us believing the opposite, however, so of course CNN and others will keep acting like they're the same thing.

Remove the income of the top 1% of Americans from the equation and you'll REALLY see how good the "economy" is.

Or maybe... just maybe... this is backwards and the notable thing is that statistics have been cited in support of a claim that the economy is improving, despite the fact that at least half of Americans believe that it isn't.

Yeah I mean, gains on Wall Street may be considered "stronger economic news" by some, but it tends to matter for relatively few.
A strong economy doesn't rely on news stories about Wall St. If I see my money going further, I take it as strong economic news. If I see my wages go up, I take it as strong economic news. If I ever see rents go down, or housing in general become more affordable, or literally anything that affects most common people in a positive way based on some financial change, I'll take it as strong economic news.
Wall St making more money? Not strong economic news. Just stories that highlight how the rich continue to get richer and how out of touch one small subset of the population is from the rest.

just because the ball is bouncing doesn't mean it's getting any higher.

“Months of stronger economic news”. Oh you mean propaganda? The economy is getting worse. Price gouging and job losses are an easy way to gauge things.
People don’t need news to know how fucked up their shit is. All they have to do is experience it and then they’ll know themselves the truth. You won’t get this take from the news because they are gaslighting you.

Half of Americans are lying because reality doesn't suit their narrative.
- If Trump had been president, this exact same economy would have been the best ever.

Should we guess which half thinks that?

It's ok guys, I got my 2% annual raise so that should fix things... right?

Alright, no one has said it yet. People's view of how the economy is often strongly related to their political party. So it wouldn't surprise me if half of people always believe the economy is getting worse.

By most metrics, the economy is still gloomy long term. It's a prediction over the course of years not months.
Consider the great depression, the economy was fucked months before the stock market crashed, but if you only looked at the stock market to determine that, you would think everything was fine up until it was too late.
I recommend watching wealthion and anyone they interview on their channel.

Can you say "election cycle"?
- Looking at the mid term election results, current voters seem to value social policy over economic policy (it should have been a right wing blow out, but it wasn't)
  I wouldnt say bad news about the economy is due to an election cycle. The average boomer is a year past retirement now. There are going to be huge consequences over the next 10 years because of this as their children will need to take care of them, and there won't be more kids than parents which our society is used to to fill in the labor gap as the boomers leave.

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