On TV yesterday, I saw a reporter talking to a group of people who said they were unhappy with the economy. She said to one woman, “Inflation is coming down, wages are up, unemployment is down, and the stock market is doing well.” The woman replied, “Well, I would disagree with that.”
That sums up the facts-don’t-matter situation we have in this country today and is emblematic of H.L. Mencken’s famous line: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
@ReneeVoiceBrand There’s something to be said for folks who don’t do as well as they think they should even in booming economies. But what got me about that interview was that the woman didn’t say, “But I’m not getting better despite the improving economy.” Instead, she disagreed with those presented stats.
@johnldeboer Aha! Now I understand.
@johnldeboer From where I stand, the experience is more like "Rent, too high and rising, wages/retirement of household not rising, food costs, high and rising, utilities high and rising.
I'm glad you're not feeling a pinch, but there's a lot of us who are.
I don't tend to believe claims that contradict my lived experience.
Lately people act like if you don't say the economy is good, you're like an antivaxxer.
Someone's doing well, certainly.
@AskTheDevil Hate to disagree with you, but wages are rising and food prices have dipped - on the average. Food services (restaurants), utilities, and housing costs do remain significant contributors to inflation, though. Regarding your implication that poo-pooing the health of the economy is in the minority, I’ve found the opposite to be true. As that interview I referenced shows. Consumer sentiment is on the rise, based on polling, but it remains lower than what one would expect from the data.
@AskTheDevil The devil is in the details.😉
Seems that America doing well, based on the metrics, doesn't factor in the elusiveness of the "American Dream". It's one thing to disagree with facts. It's another to find the facts to be of little or no comfort. Telling a person that things are going well when they're personally in a struggle to, for example, stay housed, is not the basis of a productive conversation. Maybe reporters would learn more through using open-ended questions. People don't feel statistics.
@Cynicholic It wasn’t a confrontational interview - just a conversation between the people and the reporter. The reporter merely brought up encouraging trends in the economy to see if the folks at the table were experiencing them. What she got was a woman who denied the positive things were even happening. And these were not homeless, struggling-to-make-ends -meet people. Just sitting at a restaurant grousing about the price of eggs.
@johnldeboer If the reporter went 'deeper' I'm thinking the respondent might say....'I'm not benefiting' which is code for 'If I had more money'. There is a ''keeping up with the Joneses' syndrome on steroids since the middle-class has been decimated. Just a thought😍