What's the point of the economy, though? If a bunch of people think the economy's not doing well, that seems like a pretty strong indication that it in-fact is not in terms that matter, regardless of what GDP growth et c look like.

To pick an extreme to illustrate the point: if GDP shoots up 100%(!) but it's all a dozen people trading with each other a whole lot and everyone else is now impoverished, is that better? GDP is better! GDP/capita is better, too! But the economy is definitely worse.

Another exaggerated example to illustrate the point: if GDP is outpacing consumer inflation—let's say 4% growth in a quarter, and 2% inflation in the same—but only because we've made the "basket of goods" to calculate inflation qualitatively worse, and meanwhile several important things that aren't part of that basket have gone up 1,000% and everyone rightly reports feeling poorer—is the economy doing well?

Both of your examples presume the sentiment is justified, but that isn’t a given. How do you account for a generally poor outlook that externally influences sentiment despite a well functioning economy?

Maybe everyone is miserable because they’re newly aware of the violence and injustice in the world generally. How is that useful when trying to understand the state of the economy specifically? It’s important to understand how people feel as a society, but this isn’t supposed to be that. How do you filter out the “noise”?

We can’t really use “vibes” to determine if interest rates should go back down, for example. That would be disastrous.

Exactly, take for example this graph.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/site...

The economy suddenly was awesome once a Republican was back in office, according to Republicans. Just turned on a dime.

Everyone is miserable because of interest rates and inflation. It's hitting the consumer right now and those are really obvious indicators how things are going. McDonalds costs as much as a meal at a proper restaurant did before the pandemic. That's not good.

Everyone is decidedly not miserable, and even if they were, your choice of highlighting inflation, a number that has been steadily decreasing for some time now, is curious.

You act like people would finally be happy if inflation were just under some number. No. People will just find the next thing to be miserable about. That’s how people are now.

People that watch Fox News/MSNBC and/or are addicted to social media.

> McDonalds costs as much as a meal at a proper restaurant did before the pandemic. That's not good.

This is not exactly true. They raised their prices, but they have a permanent 30% off coupon on their app.

Again, an individual “feeling” like the economy doing well shouldn’t be used as a measure for how an economy is actually doing. Like when they interview people on the streets to see how they “feel” the economy is doing.

God I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.

>If a bunch of people think the economy's not doing well, that seems like a pretty strong indication that it in-fact is not

People radically misreport this stuff for political reasons. "The economy is doing well" numbers will change radically in a week when a different party takes the White House, typically in a purely partisan fashion [1]. The economy didn't get better in that week, it's just that people "feel" differently about things when their preferred (resp. disfavored) candidate takes office.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1609/consumer-views-economy.asp...

The reality is that for republicans, "how good the economy feels" is tied directly to the letter next to the guy in the white house. It's not even based on who controls the senate, where their senators have spent the last 5 decades ruining the economy every single time they have had a chance.

"But gas prices are low" so whatever apparently.

It turns out people live in a nation and not an economy. Tying someone's kids' healthcare to their employer who could fire them for no cause at any moment sure has a way of making people nervous about the future. I guess it gets results out of them, but it doesn't seem to make them happy.

But what the hell does that have to do with quarterly measurements of economic growth?! Wildly conflating every issue into different random grievances helps nobody, and arguably delegitimizes an otherwise very real problem.

Making everything about everything is an extremely effective way to paralyze any potential improvements. It’s unhelpful and exactly what I’d do if I wanted nothing to change.

Can’t upvote this enough.

With massive inequality, those in the lower classes fall ever behind the top quintile or so. Do you think they enjoy hearing about how much better the economy does as they see their and especially their childrens' standard of living fall?

I bet it sucks to hear things are going well for others and not them, but that’s not what economic growth is supposed to measure.

Also it isn’t largely accurate, so the fact that they feel it is disconnected from reality, which is kind of my point anyway. For some it’s probably true, nothing is ever 100% good, but for the vast majority of people who feel that way they’re a) not helpless but indeed complicit based on their voting (or lack thereof) and purchasing choices and b) their lives are indeed improving even if they refuse to accept that.

> The U.S. is failing less-educated people given the dismal life expectancy prospects they face compared to their more educated peers, researchers said.

https://www.axios.com/2023/10/16/life-expectancy-educated-ad...

Their lives are literally shorter. How do you think that data makes them feel?

I get that the privileged are too isolated to understand the issues facing the unprivileged these days; it seems like yet another self-reinforcing doom-loop that will eventually lead to some sort of national breakup/collapse. At which point the GDP will probably fall and then there may be some concern. I've never been much of an optimist though; maybe everything will just work out somehow.

So your argument has shifted to "Some people are suffering" from "everyone is suffering." On that point, I agree, but to claim that the economy is terrible for everyone, or even most people, is not accurate.

Further, to conflate "many people are generally unhappy" with "the economy and choices related to the economy are what is making many people unhappy" is unhelpful. The economy can be doing well (the subject of this submission), and people can, separately, be struggling for non-economic reasons. It's unhelpful, however, to constantly bring it up when it's irrelevant, such as right now.

If you can find where I said that "everyone is suffering", I'd be surprised, but I suppose I'd own it. I've been pretty explicit about lower classes, though of course that's always a bit hard to pin down. As the article above showing the literal huge divide in life expectancy demonstrates, college education is one rather simple way of differentiating. And yes, I'm saying that the economy can in fact be doing well, but if only a minority of people are benefiting from those economic gains (like for instance, living almost a decade longer), then perhaps it's at least worth considering that those at the bottom might not be so thrilled about the situation. Something is certainly pissing them off.

Again, from the standpoint of economics, what difference do their feelings make? Should we adjust economic data to how people feel in any given day? Maybe we could do that for businesses too. “The CEO FEELS great about the company so we’re going to use Leader Adjusted EBITDA to say profits were 20% higher than what the CFO says they are.”

People's feelings matter a hell of a lot at the ballot box.

People vote for the government they deserve. When they vote for the GOP again because their eggs were too expensive for a few years, they'll reap the "rewards" when their healthcare gets decimated and their bodily autonomy is stripped away.