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If you want to solve a problem, you have to describe it accurately first. "The economy is very strong" and "the bottom X% of society are having a bad time of it

If you want to solve a problem, you have to describe it accurately first. "The economy is very strong" and "the bottom X% of society are having a bad time of it" are both statements that can be true at the same time. Further, if the first isn't true, the solution set for the second is differently constrained. And as near as I can tell the bottommost segment of the American populace is, in material and numerical terms, generally seeing a more positive rate-of-change than pre-COVID; lower-end wages are increasing faster than they have in most of my lifetime and are significantly outpacing the inflation that got everybody hairshirting last year. The thing that the doomer set doesn't love to acknowledge is that so much of that dooming is sourced from precarious tech workers or members of/aspirational members of the media, who are getting hammered (in other words, the economic recovery seems K-shaped) and are in turn using their outsized megaphones to convince everybody else that it's a universal problem.

willcipriano 3y ago
> "The economy is very strong" and "the bottom X% of society are having a bad time of it" are both statements that can be true at the same time Not to a liberal (or even Adam Smith). The purpose of a economy is it benefits the people, that's why the people allow "the economy" to exist in the first place, if the common people aren't benefiting the economy isn't doing it's job and therefore cannot be "strong". It's only strong if you think the economy exists to serve mainly the professional managerial class as well as the elites and perhaps the claims of strength reveal the true thoughts of the speaker.
- pandaman 3y ago
  Common people != people who excluded themselves from the economy. Yet, even the OP who started this thread, while excluding him or herself from the economy still benefits from it, owning a vehicle, getting welfare payments and even receiving medical attention. Compare this to somebody who'd decided not to work in a poor country. You won't see posts on HN from a homeless in Mali, for example, because such a person, at best, would have been preoccupied with survival and would not have time or means for a critique of modern society on an internet forum.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Perhaps. But when so many aren't doing so well and they are force-fed "the economy is great", and *this is key* those disenfranchised vote...well, I hope you see where this is going. The Federal gov (read: both parties) can't keep using aggregated numbers to hide the details and the hurting. Ppl aren't that naive any more. The world has changed. The gov's reporting of the economy has not. The more that disconnect widens, the worse the potential for sociopolitical fallout. We've been seeing that and yet how has Uncle Sam adjusted? Please don't shoot the messenger.

willcipriano 3y ago

> "The economy is very strong" and "the bottom X% of society are having a bad time of it" are both statements that can be true at the same time Not to a liberal (or even Adam Smith). The purpose of a economy is it benefits the people, that's why the people allow "the economy" to exist in the first place, if the common people aren't benefiting the economy isn't doing it's job and therefore cannot be "strong". It's only strong if you think the economy exists to serve mainly the professional managerial class as well as the elites and perhaps the claims of strength reveal the true thoughts of the speaker.

pandaman 3y ago
Common people != people who excluded themselves from the economy. Yet, even the OP who started this thread, while excluding him or herself from the economy still benefits from it, owning a vehicle, getting welfare payments and even receiving medical attention. Compare this to somebody who'd decided not to work in a poor country. You won't see posts on HN from a homeless in Mali, for example, because such a person, at best, would have been preoccupied with survival and would not have time or means for a critique of modern society on an internet forum.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Perhaps. But when so many aren't doing so well and they are force-fed "the economy is great", and *this is key* those disenfranchised vote...well, I hope you see where this is going. The Federal gov (read: both parties) can't keep using aggregated numbers to hide the details and the hurting. Ppl aren't that naive any more. The world has changed. The gov's reporting of the economy has not. The more that disconnect widens, the worse the potential for sociopolitical fallout. We've been seeing that and yet how has Uncle Sam adjusted? Please don't shoot the messenger.