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Comment by caslon | Hacker News Reader

Does this seem suspect to anyone else? It's hard to believe an author trying to instill in you the idea that everything is fine, actually, when stuff is pretty obviously not actually fine.

My neighbors are not well off. I am not well off. The people I know are mostly below or hovering around the federal poverty guideline. Far from making great sums, and it's been this way for a long time.

Are we sure the author isn't just rich, and coming largely from rich parts of society?

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> Does this seem suspect to anyone else?

Yes. Things are not fine.

The trouble with journalism is that there's too much punditry and too little reporting. Newspapers used to have large staffs of "beat reporters", who went out, gathered news, and sent it in. Today, most "news" begins as a press release. Check cnn.com. Everything above the fold today started as a press release or statement from someone, or is an opinion piece. Fox News is worse.

Collecting local news is now more the job of local TV stations, because they need video.

>The trouble with journalism is that there's too much punditry and too little reporting.

That seems more like a symptom than a disease. Punditry is cheap, good journalism is very expensive.

When the symptoms are focused around cost, maybe the disease is money and profit?

The article is from 2019 and things were in pretty good shape then, though I do think the author's broader point about the concerns of journalists not really aligning with the concerns of everyone else does still hold true.

The article is from 2019 and things were in pretty good shape then...

Were they, though? I mean, things have gotten worse since then - but that doesn't mean we were doing well then. Simply that things got worse.

They were. It would be trivial to point to a time in the past when things were better than 2019, naturally, but the economy was growing, unemployment was shrinking, labor force participation was increasing, inflation was low. Some portions of the economy were in better shape than others, as the article points out, but the overall picture was good and improving.

Back in 2019 when this was written, the US was economically doing well. Unemployment was at a 15-year minimum (1), net compensation was increasing for the middle/lower classes at the fastest rate in 20 years (2), and productivity was up. The economic crash started in Jan/Feb 2020 upon Covid worries, and then just kept on going with supply and demand shocks.

(1) https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

(2) https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html

None of what you're saying implies things were good in 2019, though. It just implies things were getting better compared to the last two crashes we'd had, in theory, for some people.

I think people have a right to feel angry, and I don't think the pandemic is the thing that caused it.

If things weren't good in 2019, then they've never been good.

Seriously. In 20 years people will look back on the post-2008 economic frenzy like they look back on the Clinton years.

Have they ever been good? I come from a long lineage of people who had a parent die while they were still children. Sure doesn't seem like the good's been equitable or balanced.

The US Gini coefficient has been rising for 70 years, but life expectancies are high. So yes, better than ever for the median person, but also less equitable than ever.

> My neighbors are not well off. I am not well off. The people I know are mostly below or hovering around the federal poverty guideline. Far from making great sums, and it's been this way for a long time.

Perhaps that is true of you and your neighbors but US unemployment is at a low not seen in over a decade. That’s what the Great Resignation is about. The problem that is likely to wallop the Democrats is inflation, not unemployment. Things are going at least ok for a lot of people. They’re going well for quite a few.

Perhaps that is true of you and your neighbors but US unemployment is at a low not seen in over a decade

Employment doesn't give you a snapshot of how well things are doing, though. If you can't get a job that pays your rent, things aren't doing well even if you have low unemployment. I'll also mention that part of the low unemployment isn't because things are doing well, but because folks have died, we've had a pandemic, and a number of folks have dropped out of the workforce because of things like child care, remote schooling, and retirement (pushed forward by the pandemic).

Employment doesn't mean things are going at least OK.

How would you know. did you ring the doorbell and as "hey, are you guys well off?" What does it mean to be well off anyway? Sometimes people who save a lot of money appear poorer than they are.

Do you not... talk, to your neighbors?

Do most people these days? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen my neighbors.

This reads as so outlandish it's close to satire. How can you not see your neighbours? Do you live in the middle of a huge field with nothing in it?

I know my neighbors exist -- I share a wall with them. There's thirty families on my block and I don't know the names of a single one. I think I've said "hi" to one once, when we happened to be on our balconies at the same time. But what ocassion would I have to talk to them?

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