Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
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55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
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49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
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49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
It’s metrics.
American culture has an absolutely horrible relationship with metrics.
For “the economy” the metrics are profits of corporations. Because back in the day that would generally translate to employee pay, number of employees, and how much money was changing hands.
But metrics should never be the final thing you look at, it’s just an indicator.
Like, if your engine light isn’t on but black smoke is pouring out from the engine…
It’s probably best to look under the hood at what’s actually happening.
But because our economy is based of wealthy investors, and they just care about the metrics, people game the metrics and come up with this rosey view of how things are.
Regular Americans don’t care about the metrics that are being gamed. We’re looking at the crazy person who’s driving a car around that’s obviously on fire. When they wave at us like everything is normal, it’s not reassuring, it makes us think that person has no clue what’s going on, and it’s probably not a good idea to let them keep driving