“A man hears what he wants to hear….”
Judd Legum wonders why President Joe Biden gets no credit for what on paper is a good economy:
1. The unemployment rate is 3.5%
The U.S. has added an average of 312K jobs every month for the last year
GDP growth has been 2.0% or higher for a year
Inflation is down to 3.2%
If the U.S. economy is doing well, why do so many Americans say it’s terrible?
2. But an August survey by Quinnipiac University found that 71% of Americans describe the economy as “not so good” or “poor.”
Just 3% say the economy is excellent.
What explains this discrepancy?
If the U.S. economy is doing well, why do so many Americans say it’s terrible?The leading economic indicators show the U.S. economy is performing well, but most Americans still believe economic conditions are extremely poor — as if the country was mired in a deep recession. Wha…https://popular.info/p/if-the-us-economy-is-doing-well-why
3. One factor is partisanship. More people today will rate the economy as poor if they don’t like the person in the White House, regardless of economic conditions.
So with Biden in the White House, a lot of Republicans are going to say the economy is bad, no matter what.
Americans’ expectations about the economy jumped 13 points after Donald Trump’s election in 2016. So it goes.
4. But only 45% of Americans lean Republican, so partisanship is not the only factor.
Another factor: millions of Americans are mired in low-paying jobs, watching the fruits of their labor get funneled to wealthy CEOs & investors
5. A new report by @IPS_DC looks the 100 public companies with the lowest wages. The report found at these companies, a group that includes the nation’s largest employers, “CEO pay averaged $15.3 million and median worker pay averaged $31,672.” That’s a ratio of 603 to 1.
6. For example, at @DollarTree — a company that employs 200K people — the median wage is $14.7K but its CEO, Michael Witynski, made $13.98 million. That’s a ratio of 951-to-1
Over the last 3 years, the median wage of a Dollar Tree employee decreased by 4.4%
7. It’s not hard to see how Dollar Tree employees would have a negative view of the economy, notwithstanding positive aggregate economic data.
And Dollar Tree is not an aberration. Millions of other workers face similar circumstances.
8. The company with the highest CEO-to-employee pay ratio is Live Nation, the parent company of TicketMaster. In 2022, CEO Michael Rapino made $139 million, while the median Live Nation employee was paid $25,673 — a ratio of 5,414-to-1.
So why do so many Americans say the economy is terrible? My bet is on “all of the above” with a heavy dose of #3 (partisanship). Meaning where the numbers look good and CEOs see green, working people see themselves falling behind, and Republicans see tan.
“Ronald Reagan regularly wore tan suits to official events while he was president,” James Surowiecki tweeted. “So why did right-wingers pretend it was scandalous when Obama wore one to a press conference?”
For the same reason Republicans insist the economy is in the toilet. They see what they want to see and disregard the rest.
Oh, by the way:
(h/t Carolina Forward)