[candiddevmike]

This is a byproduct of the US political polarization. The state of the economy (and every other attribute of the US) has become a football game, and you must agree with your team on the state of it per whatever the talking head coach says, lest you grant the opposing team a "win". This ruins honest discourse about the state of things.

[laidoffamazon]

The state of the economy is objectively good to great. 3.9% unemployment as of today. 5% GDP growth over the quarter.

[bequanna]

Compare food and housing costs vs earnings now and what they were 5 years ago.

In reality, you don’t have to. You know that even if you have been getting a raise at work it is nowhere near what real inflation has been.

This is objective reality. The economy is shitty for most.

[laidoffamazon]

Real disposable personal incomes are up from 5 years ago. The spike in 2020 was because of a flood of government money and all of the low wage workers being ejected from the workforce.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96

The economy being fine to good is literally the only evidence available. Nobody is acting or voting like the economy is actually bad.

We're seeing revealed preferences in action.

[bequanna]

“Real disposable incomes” <- this is based on an inflation measuring methodology that intentionally under measures inflation

[QuarterReptile]

As long as those are your only (or dominating) objectives.

[laidoffamazon]

Those are the objectives of everyone, or at least they were until a Democrat was in office.

Now we're being told low interest rates are the dominating objective of having a good economy, even though they're lower than when my parents bought their first and only house in 1994 and lower than they were during the dot-com bubble.

[yoyohello13]

Yeah we wouldn't want stupid measurements like 'happiness' and 'stress' to get in the way of GDP.