{"id":1489705,"date":"2024-02-08T13:31:58","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T13:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/02\/us-economy-opinion-polls-cost-of-living\/"},"modified":"2024-02-09T09:12:17","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T09:12:17","slug":"americans-have-many-good-reasons-to-be-unhappy-with-this-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/08\/americans-have-many-good-reasons-to-be-unhappy-with-this-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans Have Good Reasons to Be Unhappy With the Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

A recent uptick in consumer confidence has led many commentators to decide Americans unhappy with the economy are just delusional. But make no mistake: the signs of economic struggle are very real, and they\u2019re everywhere.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n A volunteer organizes bags of groceries at a food pantry in Connecticut, November 20, 2023. (Jose A. Alvarado Jr \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

For the sizable number of commentators who want to believe that the US public\u2019s dissatisfaction with the economy \u2014 and, therefore, Joe Biden\u2019s presidency \u2014 is simply a result of partisanship and media misinformation rather than being based in something real and tangible, last month proved a godsend. January\u2019s edition of the University of Michigan\u2019s nearly five-decade-long Surveys of Consumers showed a noted uptick in consumer confidence, reaching its highest point since July 2021 and seeing one of its largest gains on record.<\/p>\n

The results were immediately seized upon as grist for yet another round<\/a> of media coverage charging that the current economy is working well for everyone, and that the voting public\u2019s unhappiness with this administration is simply irrational and doesn\u2019t reflect reality.<\/p>\n

As Paul Krugman, arguably the leading purveyor of this line of thinking, recently put it<\/a>, \u201cAmericans finally seem to be noticing the good news.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot you could quibble with when it comes to just this reading of the survey. For one, this spike still puts consumer confidence quite a bit below its historical average, roughly on par with where it was when Trump lost the 2020 election, and ten points below the heady days of April 2021, when Biden\u2019s approval rating was soaring \u2014 let alone the prepandemic Trump years. And a larger plurality of voters still expect<\/a> bad times ahead for the economy than good.<\/p>\n

In other words, while consumer sentiment as measured in the survey has improved a lot, the results actually confirm<\/em> that people are still feeling iffy about this economy.<\/p>\n

But in many ways, fixating on this one survey is beside this point. As with earlier waves of this genre of coverage, there are many, many signs that even as the rate of inflation is slowing down and unemployment is low, people are finding this economy tough to live in.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Surveys of Struggle<\/h2>\n \n

First of all, other recent major surveys paint a more somber picture of how people feel about the economy.<\/p>\n

A late January 2024 Pew poll<\/a> of more than five thousand Americans, for instance, asked the 72 percent of people who say economic conditions are either \u201cfair\u201d or \u201cpoor\u201d why exactly they rated them so badly. A full 67 percent of them pointed to some variation of struggling to keep up with rising costs, with 28 percent saying \u201chigh inflation,\u201d and a little more than one-fifth saying \u201chigh cost of living.\u201d When asked<\/a> what economic issues they are \u201cvery\u201d concerned with today, 72 percent \u2014 the highest figure \u2014 chose the price of food and other goods, and 64 percent chose the cost of housing, both feelings that cut across partisan lines.<\/p>\n

Axios<\/em>\u2019s \u201cVibes\u201d survey, conducted by the Harris Poll in late December, turned up<\/a> similar results: half of Millennial and Gen Z voters, nearly two-thirds of Latinos, and more than 40 percent of women are worried about their finances, with 49 percent of respondents overall saying they face more budget stress today than before the pandemic. Close to two-thirds say<\/a> they feel anxious, resigned, or, most commonly, angry when shopping for groceries, where 72 percent say they most acutely feel the impact of inflation.<\/p>\n