Confidence in Biden economic decision-making near record low: Gallup | The Hill
This is interesting, to me. Most REPORTED economic statistics are pretty positive. And yet Americans by and large don't feel that way. I know we're not used to inflation at this level, but one can go back a few decades when inflation at 5% was fairly "normal" and we say figures above 10% during the early Reagan era.
IMHO it's inflation. (And interest rates, but that's also sorta another way of saying inflation.)
Most other metrics, the economy is humming pretty well. GDP, unemployment, wages, etc.
But inflation is something that people see. Every single day. Everywhere around them. And even if they're doing better (i.e. got a raise / new job / etc) it seems like anything good that happens to them personally is just trying to keep pace with inflation, so it has the personal feeling of a pretty hollow victory.
And then you see news stories talking about how inflation is coming down, but what you don't see is news stories about how prices have returned to ~2021 levels. No, they're 20%(ish?) higher now for a bunch of things, and now we're supposed to accept that as the new normal and be excited that they're not
continuing to go up at the rate they were.
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As an aside, a great book I recently read was
Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely. While not based on inflation, a lot of what he discusses in there are related to inflation. Psychologically, we "anchor" prices based on some level we think they should be. It is REALLY hard to reset those anchors. Which is why everyone is so up in arms with inflation. It's not that 2021 prices were "right" or "cheap", it's that we anchored based on them and now they're higher so we're all a little pissed off about why everything is now so expensive.