Hahaha!
I’m uncomfortable calling specific posters out outside the Pit. It doesn’t really serve any purpose.
I understand, I wouldn’t want you to.
It’s just a tiny bit ironic. 
It’s okay…take a deep breath, we’re all friends here.
But individuals don’t think on averages. They think about themselves and alot of people haven’t gotten that raise and do struggle to make ends meet and their 401k account regardless of size hasn’t rebounded back to 2020 levels.
And I’d argue that any sitting president has very little to do with the economy.
The 401k should have. If it hasn’t they’ve invested poorly.
Many people pulled their money out of the market during the pandemic and put it cash or bonds as a safety net and never put it back in. Similar things happened during the Great Recession and large numbers of investors missed out on the post recessionary booms. Yes they probably were poor investors, but like a lot of people they need to blame someone else than themselves.
And this explains a lot doesn’t it. I screwed up but it is “fill in the blanks” fault.
Never underestimate the average American to shirk responsibility. It’s only the lucky that advance.
Not the lucky. Though we could go with the old adage “You make your own luck.”
The Krugman article cited above (and the surveys it cites) say the opposite – That when individuals think about themselves only, they think they are doing better than the overall economy. Like how some ridiculously high percentage of people think of themselves as “better than average drivers”. Financial acumen is considered a virtue and people like to present that they have it.
Conversely, a great number of people start with “I don’t like the president” and conclude that the economy must be doing poorly (for people other than themselves).
Sounds right. which means Carville’s adage isn’t currently working as normal. So last year I read:
Americans no longer judge the economy by the unemployment rate, new paper finds
And earlier this month I read this:
There seems to me a sour mood that I don’t quite understand. The dynamic will eventually change, but when is unknown.
As for better Biden administration messages, they run focus groups and presumably message in a direction consistent with those findings, to the extent they align with Democratic party/Joe Biden core values.
Because it’s propagated by a rightwing media machine that wants Americans to feel like the country is going to hell?
Partly, but isn’t it a constant that the out of office party talks down the current economy? I quickly found this on MSNBC, May 2020:
Steve Schmidt: The US has a ‘shattered economy’ because of the fool in the Oval Office
While I would agree we then had a President who at least acted the fool, I question that the economy was below par.
My impression is that FoxNews has better ratings than MSNBC, so maybe rightwing media is a bigger factor. And, although I don’t watch, maybe MSNBC is less relentlessly partisan.
I’m getting a lot of Biden ads on Facebook recently. I try to not waste my time watching them, but from what little I’ve seen, they’re about the accomplishments he’s produced and how the economy is doing perfectly fine. So he’s trying to attack the message that the economy is doing poorly.
The reason why everyone thinks the economy is doing poorly was somewhat mentioned before. All news outlets now are sensationalist and they all know that they get more clicks/views when they run bad news instead of good. There’s also an problem the last couple years of good news about the economy technically being bad news for Wall Street and vice versa, since interest rate hikes are more likely to happen if the economy continues doing well as interest rate increases have their effects ripple through the economy. It’s rather perverse, but that’s the effect due to how stock prices are arrived at. Thus, whenever there’s good economic news, the writers will always spin how that means that rates will likely keep going up.
The above is so obviously wrong and doesn’t pass the sniff test. Because it’s in 1982-84 dollars. I urge posters to get their basic-ass dot-gov economic data from dot-gov sources. The average hourly wage in May was $33 and change.
The working age population cannot “continue to decline” because it is currently increasing. Perhaps you could make a convincing argument that it will slow or even reverse, but something that isn’t happening now cannot continue.
They pulled their money out when Trump was President and now they’ll blame Biden for their losses because the markets rebounded during his term?
I have no doubt that it’s true, but it’s a good example on how some people will spin anything to make it “Biden Bad”.
This article from Krugman lays out the points I was trying to make much better than I ever could (gift link).
This article, like almost all articles on the economy, misses the whole point.
For most average people, there is no such thing as “the economy”
For these average people (ie. folks who get paid by the hour), there is only one issue: how much do I pay in rent, and how much does the gas pump show when I fill up?.
Professional economists like Krugman can blather on all they want with statistics and numbers and trends and percentages. But it is irrelevant. The only number that counts is your monthly rent, and your total at the gas pump. If those two numbers are higher now than a year ago, most people will tell you that the economy is not good.
And whoever is currently sitting in the White House gets the blame.
It is these average people(10,000 at a time, in a few swing counties) who will decide whether Trump wins the election.
I wonder if it would be a good measurement of “the economy” to track a number which I’ve never seen recorded: the rent paid by people who have moved to a new apartment within the past year.
It would be hard to measure. But if you could ask landlords for the names of every tenant who moved out recently, then track that tenant down and ask them if their new address is more or less expensive than the one they left. Collect a quarter million personal stories, and see a true picture of how “the economy” is doing.
This is all extremely stupid because for good or ill, the POTUS has little direct influence over the economy.
But you’re also right.