> I’m not saying that the stats are wrong, but when it comes to politics, you can’t address economic anxiety by just pointing to statistics and saying, ‘Look, the numbers say everything is fine.’
So improving the economy can't address economic anxiety? That's a pretty grim picture of human nature.
For what it's worth, I feel better off than 4 years ago. My investments are up ~20%, which is a lot considered it's all diversified funds.
Only ~61% of Americans have any stock holdings and most of those are pretty minor and/or locked up long term in retirement vehicles like a 401k. For practical purposes that money doesn't exist for people which is why a well performing stock market is a crappy indicator for how people will actually feel about the economy. My 401k is up 30% YoY but I can't feel that because the money is locked up for another 30-35 years and I can't access it via the stock market because of my job.
A much better view IMO would be median real wage growth vs inflation because that's how people mostly interact with the economy, simple day to day purchases of food, shelter, and fuel/power.
I think people stop believing in statistics when they don't feel it is related to their daily life.
Looking at the prices of bread, eggs, meat, car price and rent/mortgage interest from another country, it's a lot of burden. Meat shoots up really a lot in Costco, and mortgage payment went up 50% as well.
Talking about the cars, the exactly same car was 30K when I bought it 4.5 years ago, and now it is 45K+ (Same model different year). It's hard to explain the differences by "the advancement of technology". And not to say that back then I got a 0% interest rate and nowadays it's at least 5% or 6%.
IMO, for ordinary people, this hike of interests does nothing to prevent real inflation that they care about, but simply increasing everything.
I think people fail to understand is that a large portion of the population has literally 0 investments, let alone diversified portolios that are technically up.
These people give absolutely 0 shits about the stock market being up and the economy being considered fine.
We on HN are sheltered and generally have decent jobs which do allow us to have investments and thus don't see the impact as much as those who don't see the bullish line of the stockmarket driving their portfolios up.
So improving the economy can't address economic anxiety? That's a pretty grim picture of human nature.
For what it's worth, I feel better off than 4 years ago. My investments are up ~20%, which is a lot considered it's all diversified funds.