It's interesting that it's a surprise to you, that such information bubbles exist.
A great sage named Bill Clinton once said, "It's the economy, stupid!".
And economic performance of the US though Trump's first term was pretty good. Crushes most of the OECD and certainly all of the large OECD countries.
Plus of course Biden/Kamala ran a terrible second campaign, with the whole covering up the fact Biden is senile thing...
Depends on your definition of "the economy".
The Trump administration, like many before it and much of HN, defines "the economy" as only being the performance of the asset and stock appreciation for the existing assset holders("forget the Epstein files, the DOW is over 50,000" - Pam Bondi).
While most working class people, like me and many others, define "the economy" as being how much month they have left at the end of their paycheck, after they paid for rent, bills and groceries, if they even have a job anymore and haven't been part of some mass layoff and are applying for jobs and getting rejected. For those people, "the economy" is very much NOT GOOD right now.
"The economy" amazing if you own tonnes of F500 stocks and real estate though. Not if otherwise.
My definition of the economy is the actual definition lol.
Look at something like HDI instead, US actually down over the past ~decade:
https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/in...
The other components are just life expectancy and educational attainment.
The educational attainment one is interesting, all the countries at the top have free post-secondary... Does a PhD do more for the nation than an entrepreneur who creates a unicorn and hires 10k engineers?
Also life expectancy is a lagging indicator...
As someone from an EU country which has an oversupply of PhDs, says, definitely not. I'd much rather have more entrepreneurs and job opportunism than more broke PhDs with fancy degrees.
And GDP/capita is a poor metric since it doesn't account for inequality differences of wealth accumulation. Like if your economy has a few ultra wealthy Elon Musks, Jeff Bezos, Larry Elissons, Jenson Huangs and and tens of thousands of broke homeless people, then the average GPD per capita is more than fine.
My and many other peoples' definition, is how many people can find decent paying jobs right now, and how much they can afford after paying rent and bills. They don't care about the stock market, as that's just the playground of the top 10% of asset holders(including HN), not of the majority working class.
The per capita part literally covers the amount of people in an economy.
There are very few examples of countries where GDP per capita doesn't lead to an objectively high standard of living - really only recent low-population petrostates and tax havens.
Switzerland? High GDP per capita objectively nice place to live. Japan? High GDP per capita, objectively nice. Norway? Sweden? Netherlands? All high GDP per capita all nice.
And then there's countries like China and India. Large economics, rich as a country. But large populations of poor. And their GDP per capita reflects it.
Here's a blog post about why it's good (not mine): https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/four-reasons-why-gdp-is-a-usef...
It's not an absolutely perfect, fine grained measure, but economists haven't settled on a better measure. Even in the HDI calculation, GNI per capita PPP is their "living standards" measure.
> Like if your economy has a few ultra wealthy Elon Musks, Jeff Bezos, Larry Elissons, Jenson Huangs
Russia has plenty of oligarchs, yet their GDP per capita is way lower than the US'.
Also keep in mind, poor people in the US are richer than the average in most countries... Inequality itself isn't bad if it still brings up the bottom to a decent standard of living. Most of the EU is poorer than the poorest US state, for example.
But like I said, it doesn't cover inequality.
>Switzerland? High GDP per capita objectively nice place to live. Japan? High GDP per capita, objectively nice. Norway? Sweden? Netherlands? All high GDP per capita all nice.
And how many workers there can afford to buy a home? What use is a high GDP/capita if a lot of people can't afford to live decently as most of that wealth only concentrates in few hands and your salary melts away every month on the high-CoL with no chance of purchasing assets?
Again, like I wrote, you need to prove that inequality is inherently bad.
Or that home ownership is inherently good. You ever live in a 3rd world country? I saw families who "owned" homes that were 4 walls, 300 sq ft with a tin roof that covered the top, but had no electricity, plumbing and wasn't even sealed from small animals getting in. Is that wealth?
Home ownership is always better than no home ownership, 3rd world country or first world country. Owning an asset is better than owning nothing.
>You ever live in a 3rd world country?
What does that have to do with home ownership in first world countries? That's some bad faith moving the goalposts whataboutism.
>Is that wealth?
Where they live, by those standards, yes, it's wealth, and it's better than having zero wealth and needing to pay rent.