Americans' opinions about the state of the economy have diverged from reality | Hacker News Reader

Americans' opinions about the state of the economy have diverged from reality

economist.com

7 pointsdzdt15 comments

“Our results should assuage concerns that a vibecession today spells a recession tomorrow. The gap between sentiment and economic reality has finally stabilised after growing steadily from 2020-22. Bad vibes may be the new normal.”

The factors long correlated with high consumer sentiment still predict market outcomes (per the article) while not predicting consumer sentiment. The link between market conditions and reported confidence seems severed since 2020.

Wondering whether this is a disinformation/propaganda story in that rampant disinformation/propaganda are souring sentiment. Or, a polling error of some kind. Or, something related to a significantly divergent event (global pandemic in modernity) upending long associations.

Would be interesting to see a comparison between various things following the 1918 pandemic and this pandemic. Naively, I suspect market concentration and other factors against labor market equilibrium exist today that did not exist in 1918.

Odd, I remember hearing the same thing in 2007. Then the Great Recession happened and those voices disappeared and completely forgot statements they had made. Interesting though that at that time, it was the Republicans saying the Democrats were trying to engineer a recession for political reasons, now the roles are reversed and the public cares more about the financial realities of their lives than the pronouncements from Washington that everything is going great.

The economy many Americans are living in is not the one being reported on by the media. "Reality" is a completely different debate.

Can you elaborate on this? Not sure I understand.

The article postulates that something changed from the Covid pandemic to cause the divergence. I think a more plausible alternate explanation is the cause is a concerted and successful effort to spread misinformation for political reasons.

With how much information can be purchased or gathered about a person, it seems worthwhile for someone to do a deep dive on a random selection of participants.

I've always seen the American economy as a tool to generate precarity in the working and middle classes (tying your access to healthcare to employment is example one for me) in order to benefit the owning class. I mean, we call it a capitalist economy, not a laborist one; it's not that much of a stretch that it's built to serve owners of capital. I've long been regarded as a depressed malcontent for this view, and yet it seems that over the last few years that most people I know have come around to something like this view. Even my boomer parents who used to have an unshakeable work ethic have become cynical to the system (my mother's employer was bought by a private equity firm and I'm pretty sure their main goal was to drive out any remaining joy that might have lingered in her job).

There has always been propaganda and misinformation, why should it only now start to have this effect? Perhaps the pandemic simply changed peoples' perspectives.

> tying your access to healthcare to employment is example one for me

This is plain wrong nowadays with ACA.

I just put my info into healthcare.gov with $0 in income. Here's the result:

> Based on the income and household information you provided, members of your household don't appear to qualify for a premium tax credit or other savings on health insurance. You can continue to view plans, but they'll be listed at full price.

Are you doing it right? Almost all people below the poverty level will qualify for basically free plans.

I'm pretty sure I know my own information, but feel free to give it a spin yourself - basically-healthy, single, 37-year-old male in Bexar County Texas. The plans offered were quite far from free and also had deductibles over $7K. Perhaps if I lived in a Medicaid expansion state, things would be better, but I live in Texas with 5.2 million uninsured residents. I suspect if it was so easy to get, then that number would be quite a bit lower.

Texas - that’s your problem.

-edit-

Sometimes we swing and miss.

Is this comment on the right article?

It was not! Thanks for bringing that up.

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