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View submission: Casual Questions Thread
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.
There's nothing here!