[laidoffamazon]

I'd love to see a better understanding of why American HN commenters, a cohort that likely makes 2-3x the typical compensation of an ordinary American, wants to catatastrophize a pretty decent to great American economy.

The comments are literally data being "refuted" with anecdotes.

[cheriot]

Agreed. There's a lot of smart people on HN, but the economics commentary is consistently not great.

[laidoffamazon]

Might be the political characteristics of the tech worker crowd. Big split between the libertarians who have claimed high inflation even when America had objectively low inflation (usually as a justification for crypto), the conspiratorial far-right that thinks that the administration is falsifying economic data because they want to end democracy, and the far-left aligned folks that have to say the economy is bad for in-group signaling even though none of them are acting like the economy is all too bad.

Consumers spending more on food because they're eating out more because they can afford it isn't a sign of a bad economy in any way.

[cheriot]

I think that's a lot of it. Even the way econ/finance interpretations of surveys has changed because responses are now driven by politics. People will say their own finances are great, but the economy is horrible.