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.”