3 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Casual Questions Thread
Typically the economy is evaluated on the following for macro scale.
Stock market - up from when he took office, not stellar but pretty average steady growth
GDP - very good right now
Unemployment - very good right now
Wages - rising but lagging behind cost of living increases as tends to happen
Inflation - bad to start his term but after he took action has returned to normal levels
The problem is that inflation returning to normal levels doesn't undo previous inflation. So the times inflation was high are still impacting people.
Added to that specific cost sectors had supply issues (large avian flu outbreak effecting chicken and egg prices, war in Ukraine affecting international grain prices) and you have a good economy in a macro sense but not in a way that helps lower and middle class people. Which is certainly a larger issue discussion about capitalism, but also pretty much explains what is going on very well.
People don't care that "the economy" is good if it doesn't actually affect them.
Comment by bl1y at 08/11/2023 at 21:42 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The stock market doing well is good, but as far dinner table economics go, it's not a great number to tout. Most folks' stocks are in their retirement savings, so any immediate economic crunch is going to be much more relevant to them. It's something they do care about, but it gets put on the back burner if there's any more pressing economic concerns. It's also really hard for messaging when Biden's simultaneously talking about how bad it is companies are posting record profits.
Unemployment is good, but also basically on par with the pre-pandemic numbers. However, we also know that unemployment stats rarely give a full picture. Labor force participation is down.
Wages going up is good, but the overall picture isn't good if wages can't keep pace with inflation. Over the last two years, average rent has gone up 15%, and I don't know many folks who saw a 15% raise. And sure it may always lag, but it doesn't always lag this much.
And for inflation, it hasn't gotten back to normal levels. Definitely down from it's peak, but still at 3.7%, when ideal is closer to 2%, so we're looking at inflation still being almost double where we want it.
People don't care that "the economy" is good if it doesn't actually affect them.
And I think this is basically the heart of the problem, it's attempting to define "the economy" differently from how the average person thinks about it. It's not true that the economy is typically evaluated on the macro scale. It might be typically evaluated on the macro scale on CNBC, but the most common way it's evaluated is when people compare their bills to their paychecks. Biden needs to stop talking about The Economy^TM and start focusing on the economy.