Groceries really are the problem. I lived comfortably up until about a year ago. Now the checking account gets pretty low every couple weeks. And that's with decent raises for me and my wife. I don't even care about gas prices except in how they add to the cost of everything that gets shipped. Food prices are killing us.

That's why they say "unemployment being too low is bad for the economy". Low unemployment means higher negotiating power for workers, which means higher wages and better working conditions. The only way that statement makes any sense is if they're exclusively talking about yacht money.

Not at all. You’re missing the forest for the trees lmao

The problem is that no matter how much inflation goes down, if the price gouging capitalists that own the grocery stores, the gas stations, and so on don’t stop.

It’s not about rich people’s yacht it’s about the American people being taken advantage of simply because they can. The economy is doing a lot better, record low unemployment for example is a huge metric here but what difference does that make when the grocery stores are selling less for more money?

You’re crying about rich people’s yachts when you should be crying about record price gouging without any cause. Those yachts don’t have impact on the average American’s QoL but price gouging absolutely does.

But stock market go up! You're welcome!

it’s about capitalist scum pice gouging the fuck out of people for literally everything. The economy is doing better but we don’t see it directly because we’re still being abused as if the economy hasn’t upturned

"We just don't get it, our portfolios are performing so well! I just sit here and rake in money how can the ~~poors~~ people not love this economy!?"

I assumed that was true. The article, however, claims

Inequality has lessened somewhat in recent years as wage growth has favored poorer workers.

Ed: even if the article is correct, the gap is still massive. And so the increased profits (due to price gouging) may make some numbers look better, I can't help but think many households are still struggling to catch up?

Supposedly pay has increased across the board but enough to catch us up to, say, 2019 buying power? The article claims households are better off than in 2020.

The article seems to want to blame those with dim views of the economy without a satisfactory explanation of the psychology, just a bunch of guesses that, to me, don't seem convincing. The supporting evidence seems rather cherry picked.

If food is up 25% since the pandemic, have all wages also gone up that much? Ok, ok, sure, overall cost of living probably hasn't gone up that much. But my wages most certainly have not even come close to catching up with the current COL.

So maybe it is the middle classes, rather than lowest earners, who are feeling shafted. Maybe those in charge aren't looking at the right statistics to understand the perceptions.

Never been as wide a gap between pollsters and the public.

No, no they aren’t, your comment is simplifying the issues here, not sure if you just don’t know what you’re talking about or what.

Things like record lows for unemployment for example, nothing to do with the stock market. There have been a lot of important wins for Americans.

with that said, the number one reason it hasn’t touched the QoL for the average American is because all of these capitalist pigs refuse to stop price gouging. That is where it hits us, the gas tank the grocery store, etc. they skyrocketed prices while shrinking sizes and all that because fuck you

Open your fucking eyes, the bigger problem is our out of control corporations

The people selling missiles to Israel

voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.

“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it,” she said.

Why the fuck would anyone be “mystified” by the fact that shit is still way more expensive than it used to be, and we’re still only getting paid what we used to be?

Fucking liberals.

The people who bought homes at 3% interest rates are doing fairly ok. The increases in Healthcare, food, and utilities really suck but are mostly manageable if your housing cost is fixed.

Until we see policy makers talking about how rent prices are outstripping any wage increases, a large portion of the population will continue to feel increasingly crushed and disenfranchised. Averages cease being useful measures when the difference between the budgeting with a fixed mortgage vs variable rent is so significant.

Fortunately, I am in the first group, but had been renting for a long time before that. A lot of people I care about are still renters or stuck living with family. Even though I'm comfortable, I can't take anyone seriously who says this economy is healthy without addressing the millions of people struggling to make ends meet.

I really wish we'd see policy makers shift to measures of quality of life, including financial security, over raw economic metrics. Those metrics are even sometimes at odds to each other. For example, people fully owning durable homes and cars that don't need much maintenance would increase their quality of life, but decrease measures of economic activity.

“Let me be clear: Any corporation that is not passing these savings on to the consumers needs to stop their price gouging,” Biden said recently in Pueblo, Colorado. “The American people are tired of being played for suckers.”

Then do something about it.

The problem is that lots of people think Trump will fix all of that rather than make it far worse.

It always feels like a conservative saying something about "states rights."

Sure the economy is good. But good for whom?