#Americans #economy #realwages #stockmarket #progressivetax #corporatetax
πΊπΈ Why are Americans so gloomy about their great economy? π€ That’s the burning question that has been on everyone’s mind lately. Despite low unemployment rates and a booming stock market, many Americans are feeling less than optimistic about the state of the economy. So, what’s really going on here? Let’s dive into the factors that contribute to this widespread gloominess and explore potential solutions to address the underlying issues.
##The Gap Between Perception and Reality
It’s no secret that the U.S. economy boasts some impressive statistics – low unemployment, a thriving stock market, and supposedly improving real wages. However, these numbers only tell part of the story. There’s a stark contrast between the macroeconomic indicators and the lived experiences of the majority of Americans. Here are a few key reasons why many Americans are feeling gloomy about the economy:
###1. Growing Income Inequality
The elephant in the room that many fail to acknowledge is the widening gap between the wealthy and the rest of the population. The gains from economic growth have disproportionately flowed to the top earners, leaving most people struggling to make ends meet. This stark income inequality has eroded confidence in the economy among the working class.
###2. Lack of Economic Mobility
For many Americans, the promise of upward mobility and a better life for the next generation seems increasingly out of reach. The opportunities for economic advancement have become more limited, contributing to a sense of helplessness and disillusionment.
###3. Policy Inequity
The current tax system has come under scrutiny for its preferential treatment of the wealthy and corporations. Calls for progressive tax reforms and higher corporate taxation have largely fallen on deaf ears, further exacerbating the divide between the haves and the have-nots.
##Potential Solutions for Restoring Confidence
While the reasons behind Americans’ gloominess about the economy are complex, there are practical steps that can be taken to address the root causes of this widespread discontent. Here are a few potential solutions to consider:
###1. Implement Progressive Tax Reforms
Restoring strongly progressive tax brackets and raising tax rates on high earners could help address income inequality and fund social programs aimed at uplifting the less fortunate.
###2. Revise Capital Gains Taxation
Revisiting the tax treatment of capital gains and aligning them with prevailing marginal rates would ensure that investment income is taxed fairly and contribute to a more equitable distribution of wealth.
###3. Overhaul Corporate Taxation
Significantly raising corporate taxation rates and closing existing loopholes could generate additional revenue for public investment in infrastructure, education, and social welfare programs.
##The Path Forward
At the end of the day, the gloominess about the economy reflects the deep-seated grievances of many Americans who feel left behind by the apparent prosperity of the few. It’s clear that focusing solely on macroeconomic indicators is insufficient in addressing the underlying issues that are driving this pervasive dissatisfaction. By embracing policy reforms that prioritize fairness and economic justice, the U.S. has the opportunity to build a more inclusive and sustainable economy that benefits all its citizens.
In conclusion, the question “Why are Americans so gloomy about their great economy?” demands a more nuanced understanding of the real challenges facing the nation. It’s time to shift the conversation from mere perception to tangible actions that will restore confidence, promote equity, and ensure that the benefits of a strong economy are shared by all. It’s not about dismissing people’s concerns as mere “malaise,” but rather addressing the structural imbalances that have led to widespread disillusionment. Only then can we truly have an economy that lives up to its potential for all Americans.
For more information and in-depth analysis on this topic, I encourage you to check out the full article on The Economist’s website [here](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/14/why-are-americans-so-gloomy-about-their-great-economy). Let’s continue the conversation and work towards a brighter economic future for everyone. π
American here, not poor, but still gloomy.
Wages going up is not a “gotcha”. Wages will always go up, forever, until the end of time. It’s about how quickly they’re going up that’s the problem.
It’s not gloom. It’s alternative happiness β’
Prices and wages. It is all about prices. Inflation has fallen, costs to businesses have fallen, but they are not lowering prices. In fact it has increasingly become obvious that the massive price increase in goods in services was not inflation driven, but profit driven. Corporations used the excuse of inflation to drive market prices to the breaking point while keeping wages down.
You say wages are up, but they are not up 17% across the board and that is the estimate of “inflation” driven prices have risen. We all literally need about 20% raise to even get back to our purchasing power of 2020.
Finally it is an election year and the poo throwing screech monkeys have ramped up their poo throwing and screeching.
60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Yeah everything’s fine….
Because the combination of our rent and insurance premium alone ate up our combined raises and then some and that isnt factoring in the extra money we have to spend on groceries, fuel to get to work especially when bosses are forcIng RTO despite wfh working just fine, and that we cant afford to save for a home, we cant afford to save for car repairs/newer vehicle, public transit has not become better in our area, we cant afford to go to the doctor when the insurance doesnt cover “problem visits”.
Yeah, I cant afford therapy, I cant afford a specialist to find out WHY i am having an issue, but the insurance DOES cover testing out numerous medications that fuck with my brain and emotions to make me range from sobbing my eyes out to having su!cidal ideation to rage back to sobbing and extreme manic episodes to deal with excruiciating pain, nausea, and syncope, but tell me again how we have it fantastic and how its all “in our heads” that we are one accident, one illness, one missed paycheck from a powertripping layoff away from homeless and expect me to feel happy, hopeful and joyous about a future.
Editing to add my car insurance also increased because the cost of everything else going up. So now what have we? Fucking nothing but even less money and prospects and even more expenses with no hope in sight despite having even more experience in our fields, more education demanded, more responsibilities demanded, and no further pay granted, and we are supposed to afford further education how?
No one’s salaries are being increased because the eonomy is “great”. Just the rich getting richer and the rest of us poors being left behind as per usual.
Yeah you’ve hit the nail on the head there. It’s not the peoples economy, their communities see none of that growth- And a lot of that growth has come via greedflation
It never fails to amaze me either.Year after year statistics come out in article after article about exactly why and how people are struggling financially. The economists largely stick their head in the sand and point to the stock market value as if we can spend that on groceries and bills today and βendlessly wonder how we could be so wrong.β
Our models for gauging how well Americans are doing are broken. 2/3 of the country says it doesnβt reflect their day to day existence and they still scratch their heads. Is it any wonder such anti-capitalist sentiment has risen in the past decades? Maybe itβs because capitalism isnβt working for most Americans anymore.
The only economy is the stock market
Like can’t your parents lend you a couple unfree thousand to get started or something?
The middle class is effectively non existent at this point
You either have amazingly returns or your a peasant
All of the people experiencing the advantages of investing are so far on the other end of the spectrum that industries are all catering to them so margins on products are services.
In addition to the fixing and gouging I’d say that’s driving up the COL line a runaway train.
Because Capitalism is a terrible system that effectively enslaves labor in all industries.
“Work for poverty wages so you can at least have food and shelter”. Yah, that’s slavery IMO.
The Economist, as well as most tv talking heads, refuse to acknowledge that a great economy for the very wealthy does not translate to a great economy for the 99%. They never factor ordinary peoples’ experience into their calculations.
The previous administration gave corporations a 14% tax cut, saying it would trickle down. Has anyone’s salary gone up 14% above their company’s growth? Yeah…
Not to mention the tech industry, which is what we’ve been telling young people to go into to escape poverty for the last 20 years, is going into full recession mode
I went to a McDonaldβs in Connecticut the other day. McNugget meal rang up to $20. I just drove off.
Also, low unemployment means low hiring which means those of us looking for a job are getting run ragged. 100+ applicants on jobs with sub-sub-par pay rates. Like 40-50K for jobs requiring a 4 year degree and 5+ years of highly specific professional experience.
It’s a mess out here…
They can publish whatever they want, but anyone can go run the numbers themselves and see the USA had negative gdp per capita growth (average person should feel about $2,000 less rich than under Trump).
Like cool of you have a house and kids
I canβt afford one let alone both, my wife and I both work and she even tutors for extra cash and just we get by but canβt really move up
We need more houses built, stop letting corporations and rich people just buy up homes to rent, need to push for working for home more so offices can become condos, we need a rent and utilities freeze and force wages to go up and you know tax rich people and corporations
If they donβt like it they can leave and show me a country more willing to make them pay nothing in taxes like they do now
Unemployment doesn’t count the people who have run out of benefits. The stock market is not the real economy. Finding a full time job is extremely difficult. Part time jobs are hard enough to get and then you need two just to scratch out a bare existence. And, if like me, you’re over 55, your chances of getting anything are slim to none. Unless you’re willing to sacrifice your body, health, and mental well being for the “good of the company.” I don’t blame young people for not wanting to work for what are essentially wage slave mentality corporations.
Lenin referred to The Economist as a “journal that speaks for British millionaires”.
When you read reports that corporations are making record profits and prices are way higher than they should be yet people are being laid off and the average U.S. citizen is living paycheck to paycheck what is there to be rosy about?
If you take 50 service industry jobs and 50 white collar jobs, raise every jobβs pay the equivalent of $1 an hour, then lay off the 50 white collar workers and leave their jobs unfilled while creating 51 service industry jobs and fill them, partly with laid off white collar workers, wages will have βgone up,βemployment rates will be βhigh,β the stock market will be booming, and workers as a group will be more broke and miserable than before
Neoliberalism basically marks the complete divorce of economic performance and widespread stability/prosperity. Whatβs good for βthe economyβ sucks for the majority. Bourgeois logic and metrics = investors paradise and workers nightmareΒ
People donβt care about THE economyβ¦they care about THEIR economy.
If THE economy is doing great and going gangbusters, but people donβt feel any gains from it in THEIR economy, then THE economy isnβt really great after all, is it?
Yeah, why are tens of millions of people who aren’t seeing any benefits from this allegedly great economy so bummed out?
This sounds like something someone really needs to fire up a couple brain cells to figure out.
Here is what every single one of us NEEDS to say in response to βthe stock market is booming.β
The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 90% ($28 Trillion) of the stock market.
The bottom 90% of Americans of Americans own 10% ($3 Trillion) of the stock market.
I will never fail to understand why they think Iβll eat their stupid propaganda. I donβt give a fuck about how well your theoretical economy is doing. It means literally nothing to me. Zilch. Zero. I care about if I can afford my bills and can the people I know afford their bills.Β
I agree with everyone about wages and prices playing a larger part in how people feel about the economy. The stock-market is not the economy!
The everyday people do not get the benefits of the stock market either. I have money in Ohio Public Employee Retirement fund, from the times I worked for THE state univeristy and my funds keep decreasing. This is not a fund I control, it is managed by the state and is based on stock prices. I have lost $20k in my retirement in the past 4 years. All of my retirement plans have lost funds, even though the stock market has made record-breaking gains.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
Gonna need a reading of this article overlaid on video footage of the homeless camps in all the major US cities.
You’re missing the point. All the important people are making out like fucking bandits – the peasantry don’t even figure in the equations. & it will remain so as long as lying venal ratbastard politicians are so very easily bought up by big money. & the much vaunted Supreme Court cheerfully sits on it’s hands when asked to rule on anything that might improve the lot of the great unwashed – because it knows which side it’s investment portfolio is buttered. ‘Murican Dream y’all.
Back in the day, the ruling class had a class of priestly whisperers telling that all of the stupid and dangerous things they wanted to do were actually smart and safe. It was Godβs will that they should live in splendor and the peasants should kick rocks. Itβs all here in this holy book.
Today we have economists in that role. Telling us itβs the will of the economy that a few lucky baby duckies should live in decadent splendor while the rest of us kick rocks. Itβs all here in the sacred chartβ¦
Maybe because most of what I buy is at least 25% more expensive than it was a few years ago.
There was a very interesting podcast about this from the excellent Planet Money.
[https://www.npr.org/2023/12/01/1197955840/planet-money-consumer-sentiment](https://www.npr.org/2023/12/01/1197955840/planet-money-consumer-sentiment)
One of the points is that statistically, the last few years coming out of the recession have been signficantly better for the working class than all previous recessions. They point more to political polarisation impacting peoples feelings, outweighing the improvements in economic environment.
Replace the words “the economy” with “rich people’s yacht money”- works every time.
People don’t directly experience the unemployment rate or the stock market. They experience grocery prices, gas prices, housing prices. I’d really argue the housing crisis is the underlying cause beneath most of our economic woes– besides, you know, capitalism itself
The economy is objectively ass for most everyday people cause of outrageous prices. It’s insulting to pretend otherwise in order to protect the administration. It is better than before as gas prices have somewhat corected, but thsthey never should have been allowed to skyrocket, taking everything up with them. Other prices have not corrected much but are no longer skyrocketing. That is a positive step but not near enough food housing, etc. must come back down to earth as well
It’s also disgenoous to pretend that it’s the worst ever and all Biden’s fault to score political points.
Because the media couches it as such whenever a Democratic Administration is in the White House, starts screaming about deficits and spending 24/7.
Why? Because they want deregulation of media monopolies and to not have taxes raised on the olicharchs that own these media sources. The same olicharchs that have dodged paying $8,000,000,000,000 so far.
So, whenever you see a pothole, whenever you hear about the lack of funds for Healthcare, education, social services, know that 8 trillion dollars have been denied from this country’s coffers.
What many in office, especially Republicans, don’t want to be reminded of is that some of the greatest times of prosperity in America was when the corporate tax rate was between 30-50% and the marginal tax rates for income topped off around 90% under Eisenhower (a Republican). The US saw more reinvestment, and as a result, productivity efficiency, than almost any other time considering their level of technology at the time. Republicans always talk about the good old days when America was Great. Okay – that’s cool. Lets go back to some of that, starting with how taxes were done.
This made my day. So well put. There are clearly mechanisms that could be out in place to improve things. It seems to me there is too much upheaval in gov’t right now as well as all the war mongering going on. We make money off wars. Yes. But that’s like saying if you’re out of a job, don’t worry, you can just sell drugs. Yes, you will make money off drugs, but isn’t it better if we can work instead? To tell US that WE are unhappy is the lowest shit ever. We will not be your perfect victim.
The solutions noted here are completely doable.
Thank you for an intelligent post. We need solutions based operations. There’s too much of youtube and tik tok and insta and podcasts talking talking talking about the problems.
We KNOW about the problems. It’s time for solutions. (good, creative solutions that BUILD- not lame crap like get all the brown people out.)
The gaslighting in the constant stream of news articles on the economy never ceases to amaze me, like how real wages have supposedly increased with inflation. The truth is, “inflation” to the layman like me actually means inflation + the extraordinary price gouging that has been going on. Fuck your numbers, wages have not kept up with those. Our rent and grocery bills have doubled since Covid, and trying to tell us that wage growth is higher than CPI is an insult.
The problem is the disparity. The wealth gap continues to grow. Yes, there are people benefitting from this economy, but it is primarily the people that already possess a greater percentage of the wealth or are at the higher end of the wage spectrum.
For the rest of the working class, those wage increases and market gains don’t help with the day to day expense increases and even though their paycheck may be bigger, the amount that is left over is smaller. Over the last 2 years I went from $42k / year to $48k / year. 15% wage increase by the numbers, which sounds good, but it isn’t. Since my budget was already tight, the grocery, home / auto maintenance, gas prices (thankfully back down) and service rate increases takes up more than the increase in salary.
Also, with traditional vessels of wealth stability like home ownership being further out of reach due to skyrocketing prices and rate increases, it becomes harder and harder to feel stable. Sure, I pay more for my mortgage now, than I did when I took it out 15 years ago. However, it is only a couple hundred more and I have soo much equity. The apartment I moved out of at the time was going up to $625 a month. Currently it rents for $1180 a month. I would have eventually been priced out of my old apartment.
My friends that don’t feel as negative about the economy bought homes before 2020, have jobs that pay well above the median income and have a 401k and / or a brokerage account. My friends getting $1 and $2 raises on $16 or $17 an hour, not so much.
Because most americans are working full-time, and cannot afford a place to rent, forcing then to live with roommates or family creating little communes and no privacy. Then, their job not offering adequate healthcare and forcing them to either pay out of pocket (which is a lot), or pay health insurance (which is also a lot).
Gas prices have skyrocketed, and the USA is not like europe, we have vast distances to cross and our entire economy seems wrapped up in modelling city design around cars. It would take me over four hours to walk to the nearest grocery store.
Food has gotten more expensive abruptly, making decisions about what to eat and more intensely planning daily meals more of a concern.
Housing has become entirely unaffordable for everyone except the upper class – purchasing a home now seems impossible, I myself have seen homes increase 60k, 100k a year in price yet I’m only making 35k/yr working full time and somewhat regular overtime or double shifts.
Lastly: SSI seems to be sunsetting. Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck, and any savings are not even close to near enough to be able to retire when my body will be physically incapable of work. This means that, eventually, I will probably die in the streets – homeless, cold, alone, and hungry.
The only people that seem to be doing well in this economy have purchased a home 15+ years ago, or are part of the “millionaire class” that we seem to be pumping out. Sure our stock market may or may not be doing well – but the everyperson does not so much care. Most people I know my age are in the same situation, regardless of education. It feels as if employers and land owners have collectively decided to extract as much money as possible out of the working class as possible, and there feels to be no way out.
Stopping corporate greed would help. Prices for essentials being raised 25% just because Americans will pay for it is killing a large percent of Americans budgets to live.