This probably should have been the first response, about 300 posts ago, instead of caricaturing it as “disinformation goblins” and other nonsense.
People believe objectively false things about the economy. And they have therefore been misinformed. It’s not complicated.
But still caricaturing positive economic information as “charts”. What if Bob is one of the 15 million people who got a job in Biden’s term, would he still see it as a chart?
Then he’s possibly part of the number of people currently optimistic about the economy. But neither of those groups make up the majority of the voting public.
Right, and possibly not, because the polls are saying that the majority of people are happy with their personal financial situation, and yet many of those people still believe the economy overall is going south.
So Bob may well be a person who was unemployed, then got a nice job under Boden, but thinks that overall unemployment must be going up, because he tends to watch conservative media, and that is what conservative media tells him every day.
Or possibly not due to some other reasons related to his previous jobs, healthcare or housing costs, etc; funny how that works.
So, here’s an interesting stat from that Fed survey that Krugman linked. I’ll link it here again, just for convenience:
If you go to “page 8”, it shows the level of economic well-being of each age cohort, based on their own view of their finances. The %'s doing at least OK or better:
82% for ages 60+
72% for ages 45-59
66% for ages 30-44
66% for ages 18-29
This is interesting, because ages 45+ groups both have said they’re doing better than a year before, whereas 18-44 has lost a few %.
We do see a big separation in the older age 60+ group, who appear to be doing better than other groups. This is probably always the case, because this group has almost 100% health insurance, they have social security, and they’ve built up their lifetime’s worth of savings/investments and likely have full or near-full equity in a house.
I’m in the 45-59 group. My own finances are doing well, and are better than before the pandemic by a good amount. My wife complains about grocery prices all the time, but she did that even before the pandemic. 
Obvious reason that springs to mind is that older people are more likely to have homes gaining equity. Younger people seeing homes becoming increasing unaffordable. Also likely more worries about student debt, rising education costs for their kids, etc.
I’m also in 45-59 and the general “vibe” among myself and friends is “Doing okay but not actually doing notably better despite supposedly significant job/wage advancement which kinda sucks”
Right, so shall we use the data or not? Every time we try to inject data into this, you caricature it as “charts and graphs”.
Unhappy because of his previous job doesn’t make sense for this particular hypothetical. I got a job under Biden, but I’m unhappy because the job I had prior to being unemployed was bad…wut?
Healthcare coverage has improved significantly under Biden, both for general workers and veterans in particular.
House cost is one though, sure. It’s a real problem, particularly in some parts of the country. It’s a bit odd to consider that as an indicator of a recession though, as obviously house prices tend to track the economy overall. Let alone if that’s why we’re saying it’s rational for Bob to think unemployment is at a 50 year high.
Was this on your Word of the Day calendar this morning or something 
lol, really? Ok, to use an exaggerated hypothetical: I used to be a supermodel masseuse. I lost my job (no one wants massages during a pandemic!) and got a job in 2023 collecting dog poop at the park.
I got a job under Biden. I must be thrilled with the economy, right?
[And, no, I’m not saying this happened to every person. Some people ARE happy with the economy, after all. I’m just baffled at the blindness in this thread that any UNhappiness just has to be that darn misinformation]
Costs keep going up though.
And with higher interest rates, older folks like us are seeing better returns on our savings. Thanks, Joe! 
(And yes, I realize the other side of that sword makes housing less affordable.)
But there are more people where the opposite will be true because salaries are up significantly, outpacing inflation. So, if the population were well-informed, this should be a net positive for Biden, right?
Anyway, peace out, this is fckdumb.
Oh man, a few more rounds didn’t resolve this!
Guess it depends on how significant you think the difference between 16% and 18% is.
Well sure. Even if Bob legitimately feels screwed by the “Biden Economy,” he surely realizes things would be 10x worse if Trump were to be reelected.
But why do you say that? For many people, the 2017 tax act was either initially neutral or positive to their personal tax situations. It’s hard for the average person to say what the various tariffs did to their situation and Biden has now imposed some massive new ones on China. I think it will be hard four years later to pin all the losses and economic problems on Trump during the pandemic. (I, for one, have gotten tired of parts of the left straight up lying about what Trump said and did. What he did was bad enough without lying.) Especially because the real grinding, frustrating part was 2021 and in some areas into 2022 (based mostly on local decisions to be fair) all under Biden.
I suspect a lot of people don’t see how they could do worse. Some may hope for better under Trump and some probably assume that their situations are both stable enough while being middling enough that they’re unlikely to see any real difference.
To me a lot of this is just the baseline. Bob has never had a good sense of numbers and extrapolated the wider economy from his individual experiences. He has always been subject to misinformation. He is probably going to vote the same way he did 4 or 8 years ago.
The question I think is why Biden is fairing so much worse then Obama or Bush or Clinton. To that I think you have to look more at Bob’s son Robbie. He doesn’t watch fox news or any news really. He is on social media but not a ton, mostly to stay in touch with family. He is knows Biden is president and old, but he doesn’t really pay attention to politics. He graduated recently and got a reasonably good job. And yet he is living paycheck to paycheck. He rarely goes out or orders in because he can’t afford it. He lives with 3 roommates already and doesn’t know how he will afford the 15% rent increase for next year. He is barely paying the minimum on his student loans. He can’t even dream of buying a house and his only friends who can have gotten substantial help from his parents. He is worried he is going to have to move back home. Robbie knows Trump is terrible, but clearly whatever Biden is doing is isn’t working, so why bother voting for either of them.
I can totally understand why the pro-Biden side would argue that Americans who are well off ought to acknowledge that the economy is good. That’s just logical.
But it seems that the pro-Biden side also wants Americans who aren’t well off to grit their teeth and say, “My rent and groceries are 40% higher than before, I’ll never own a house and I’m sinking even further into debt, but Biden’s economy is still good nonetheless” and vote for Biden anyway.
I think I’m in the camp where I’d say I’m doing well enough but that the same was true during Trump. In that I can pay my bills, I put some money away in the 401k, I can stretch a bit to do some splurge spending or travel. But that I’m trying to keep an old car going as long as I can, that buying a home isn’t really realistic, that one bad illness could really put me in trouble. In other words, I’m surviving in a system designed to screw over all but the very rich while being governed by a bunch of geriatric plutocrats who refuse to leave office except by dying in it while being lectured to by a bunch of people like Krugman that don’t actually produce anything of value that I should be all Panglossian about my situation and the structure of the economy.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve read a comment that “the stock market is not the economy” I would probably have enough to get a good twelve pack of local beer for the long weekend. But now that Biden is in trouble the stock market being up is apparently actually meaningful.
So, I’m doing very well, and honestly better than ever. I have very little debt, and good investments. I have good health insurance. I sent my kids to college without them going into debt for it. I have flexibility in my job hours & working from home or the office.
My son graduated college last year and has a good job, living on his own in another town a few hours from us.
When I look at people like Krugman, I don’t get angry at him for not “producing anything of value”. He’s an economist and an opinion columnist. I think he brings up some good points to back up what he’s saying. He certainly brings a macro-perspective to the table.
Having said all of the above, there were and are people that are angered by the price of food, cars, and houses. So, that will tend to crowd out alot of the other stuff. Now, most economists would argue that this was vastly driven by pandemic supply shocks. But that doesn’t help someone who is trying to live paycheck to paycheck. The only way for this anger to go away is for the inflation to fade further into the rear-view mirror…for some people…and for others, the way for it to go away is to see Donald Trump get elected, in which case they will immediately turn around and say the economy is all of the sudden looking better.
I’ll say it for the umpteenth time: Biden is in a very strange spot. He inherited a nation in a nightmare. During his administration, the nightmare ended, and the economy (at a macro-level) was repaired, and the crime wave subsided, and the health crisis subsided. The economic and crime numbers are verifiably better on almost all items. And people are mostly doing OK, based on how they answer surveys. But Biden is getting little to no credit for the good stuff, and instead is getting blamed for inflation he had very little to do with. And there are millions who think we’re in a recession with record unemployment…(sheesh)
I’m not sure how Biden can change this narrative. My advice to him is to first and foremost make the election about Donald Trump and the radicalism of MAGA. That’s his best chance.
They don’t have to say “the economy is good.” But they do have to vote for Biden if they care about their country.
Can’t speak for everyone, but I’d rephrase that to: “My rent and groceries are 40% higher than before, I’ll never own a house and I’m sinking even further into debt, but I recognize that Biden isn’t a wizard and that Trump would most likely make matters far worse.”