So while I'm happy for the numbers, IMO they don't represent the reality people face. Which makes the statistics pretty useless.
I would like to see a chart with overlays of GDP, unemployment, average CEO-to-worker-pay-multiplier, average congressional and presidential election campaign expenditure, average net worth increase for different brackets (including top 0.1% individuals), etc.
I highly suspect that the CEO multiplier, campaign expenditure, and 0.1% net worth increase lines would move similarly... and would imply that they are more significant indicators of how (poorly) the normal people are faring compared to other/previous years.
Participation rate is much more meaningful IMO
Example, the participation rate is currently ~67%, so its inverse is 33%.
This means that 33% of the working age population are currently not employed
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
> The Labor Force Participation Rate is defined by the Current Population Survey (CPS) as “the number of people in the labor force as a percentage of the civilian noninstitutional population […] the participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work.”
These sources both give the civilian labor force participation rate as 62.5% in December 2023.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART/
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
"The data reveal that as of late 2023, most workers are earning more, in inflation-adjusted terms, than they were one year prior, and the fraction of workers receiving real wage increases is about the same as it was in the years before the pandemic. The data also suggest that most individual workers are earning more today than they were before the pandemic; every prime-age worker cohort has higher inflation-adjusted median wages than before the pandemic. "
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/06/chart-wage-growth-beating-i...
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-a...
The impact of that chart on real prices means that it would take about two decades for people to have the same economic power as they did before the pandemic.
Let's not forget that we have price misalignment because of a decade of zero interest.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/08/excess-profits-of-big-firms-...
And wages did not increase at the same rate as corporate profit taking.
>>> the normal people are faring compared to other/previous years.
The economic disparity is gross, you can't argue excess.
Comparing to the past is isn't going to play out the way you think. What time period do you want to compare to? Is that a period where "better off" was for a narrow segment of the population, where "better off" was robbing tomorrow?
The problem is that life looks a lot like the classic game design dilemma of "power creep".
I'm not sure that this is 100% accurate, but its close enough to convey the point: https://compasscaliforniablog.com/have-american-homes-change...
If it was 1950, no cell phone (1 house phone bill), no internet, no cable, no streaming, no Spotify, no computer... You might have a tv (one, singular), radio, those are one time costs. Power, water, phone, food, house/transport (and likely 1 car for many family's). My neighborhood grocery story is a gym... so we traded a close by place to shop for more travel for food, and a place you pay to go exercise.
People ate canned and frozen veg, not fresh trucked in from everywhere items. And before you make the argument for health, go look at the nutrient content of a flash frozen green bean vs one that sat in a box for a week to get to your plate, the frozen wins.
Guess what, all of what we have, unsustainable. 8 billion people can't live like middle class Americans! As more of the globe wants in on the action things are only going to get HARDER for people, unless we make some drastic lifestyle changes.
In 2005 I managed to wiggle my way out of poverty by splitting a $615/mo apartment 4 ways on minimum wage (and I considered that quite lucky at the time). I ate mostly rice, soy, beans, and frozen veggies because that was the cheapest thing I could eat. Eggs were a luxury.
That same apartment is $1799/mo now and minimum wage is virtually the same. I would probably be dead or worse trying to escape poverty in those same conditions. Add in that the humiliation people must feel driving for Uber or running Doordash. You're helping others live a lifestyle that's unreachable for you, ever.
Even though I can afford it these days I still refuse to Doordash / Uber because I feel like these services are fundamentally dehumanizing. I will fetch my own food, and drive/transport myself. It's not hard.
These unemployment numbers just bury the struggle of regular people with a numerical handwave.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1dLeQ
Is a start but you'll want to fiddle with the units.
We can be sure it is objectively relevant because it is what people are experiencing, which is of course reality. If you can demonstrate that there is some other non-employment related reason people feel this way, does that mean they don't feel it? Or are somehow wrong to? Where does that even get you?
Maybe there is something else! There are probably lots of things going on. People keep saying this is affecting them though, and we have to believe them that it is.
Spending less time on YouTube may not improve your financial situation, but it could change how secure you feel. On the other hand a second job can help if you’re actually just drowning in collage debt etc.
Your argument here seems to defend the validation of people's feelings. If my point is accurate, you argue, then how people feel doesn't matter. Instead, consider what makes people feel bad about their general situation; if the cause of low sentiment isn't economic, then an improved economic situation won't improve sentiment.
It's important to tease out these things. Lumping everything together may allow us to "legitimize" negative feelings, but it doesn't give us a clear view of the causes, prohibiting our ability to consider viable improvements.
What does it mean for a someone's belief that they are one mishap from financial disaster to be "objectively relevant?" Are you saying they're wrong about their own precarity, or simply wrong to feel bad about it? It's certainly relevant to them that they feel this way. Whether it aligns with a measurable metric is another question but not the one they were talking about.
Similarly, what "things beyond reality" are people using to come to these conclusions? Astrology? Are they hallucinating their dire financial situation and the penurious chasm beneath them?
Using the words correctly doesn't mean you are using them rightly. In this case you are not.
At this point, only someone who wants to fight would read what I wrote as you have. A more reasonable interpretation of what I’ve written would be that sentiment may not be entirely associated with economic safety. “It is unlikely that sentiment would improve if unemployment dropped further”, would be a good illustration of my argument, for example (a point you alluded to elsewhere in this submission).
I recommend trying to read what I wrote with a less aggressive agenda, because the way you’re approaching this interaction is too hostile for a reasonable person to presume positive intent. It seems more likely to involve your own bad mood than anything I’ve actually written.
But even rereading it now, as charitably as I can, it still to me seems to say something pretty close to "people feeling bad is not valid." Even knowing what you intended, that's what it says. So idk, maybe we both have something to learn here regardless of my bad mood or whatever.
Luxembourg has a 6% unemployment rate, the US has a 3.7% unemployment rate, and North Korea has a 0% unemployment rate.
Those unemployment numbers are objective realities in terms of being a reflection of a set of collection methods and definitions. But those are not merely a poor proxy for the population's overall wellbeing, they are actively _misleading_.
Prices for food, housing, medical care, education, and used cars going up in the US by 20-50% in a 3 year period while corporate profit margin percentages are at historical highs does not inspire confidence in the future.
Throw in an ongoing decline in life expectancy that puts the US firmly in the category of developing countries while paying 250-400% more GDP for medical care than other industrialized countries, two costly proxy wars which threaten to continue growing in scope, outright state and regulatory capture...
...and worst of all, a political, economic, judicial, and cultural elite with a fairly bipartisan mainstream consensus which doesn't appear to be willing or able to seriously address these issues with policy favored by suparmajorities of the voting public but not by the largest donors.
When the people in charge have been pissing on your leg for decades and tell you that it's just raining when you never see them get wet, you can't expect the abuse to stop in the future, not even if you elect the alternative from one of the two oligarch-backed choices.
I'm not taking a stance on "what is wrong with the world" here per se, but if I were I'm more aligned with what you're saying than thinking 0% unemployment is the solution to our problems or whatever.
There's a lot of politically driven economic boosterism in the air right now (more than usual even) and I may have lazily assigned you to that camp with scant basis.
It's natural for politicians and their adherents to cherry-pick the data and intentionally withhold context on it to make themselves look as good as possible, while their opponents do the reverse. Then everyone accuses the other side of ignoring their numbers which they say are the true reflection of "reality."
Ever was it thus, but it's more exaggerated in these conditions where both the "good numbers" and the "bad numbers" break records and can zig-zag suddenly.
This is not true.