Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
It is bizarre that Americans seem oblivious to how they’re emerged from the pandemic with a far stronger economy and higher incomes than anywhere in the world. They’ve left Europe and Asia in the dust. And no, the wealth isn’t just being hoovered up by the rich. The poorest 20 per cent of Americans haven’t seen their real incomes rise this fast in decades.
But polarization is so bad it seems Republicans can’t bring themselves to acknowledge a strong economy if a Democrat occupies the white house. And many on the left reflexively compare the U.S. unfavourably to the rest of the developed world.
The only other explanation I can think of inflation is such a shock to the population - many of whom have never experienced significant inflation in their adult lives - that it negates all other economic gains and metrics.
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It's kind of just a matter that FJB inflation is part of the vernacular for a big chunk of the country. Keep repeating it over and over and it becomes trues that it is his fault. Add in a little confirmation bias that Democrat policies cause inflation, and that's that.
It's pretty easy for everyone to see that prices have gone up more rapidly than in most periods of their life and inflation affects everyone. It's not so easy to understand that unfunded in a hot economy started the ball rolling, and COVID mitigation measures accelerated inflation. There was going to be some pain at some point with either recession and unemployment or high interest rates and some continued inflation.
It's a hard sell to the electorate that the country handled this pretty well to have the least impact on people's lives. It was a problem that Biden couldn't sell this message, and the popular media doesn't spend much time on real issues like this.
It just gets as simple as things are more painful now than they were in 2019, everyone says it is Joe's fault and he is president now, so it must be true.