[P]erhaps the voters are sensible and the economists are obtuse. And perhaps the indicators on which economists rely no longer mean what economists suppose them to mean.
[P]erhaps the voters are sensible and the economists are obtuse. And perhaps the indicators on which economists rely no longer mean what economists suppose them to mean.
There are many different metrics that can be used, in politics and campaigns we’ve focused on one set for a while now because it generally gave us an accurate idea of how people were going to feel. If it no longer accurately predicts that, then we need a new set for political discussions.
This is not a case of online spaces filtering experience, nation wide polls and indicators suggest that people are generally unhappy with the economy. To turn around and tell people their wrong for not liking the state of the economy because one set of metrics looks good is tone def at best and political suicide at worst.
The Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey that is basically the standard on this sentiment analysis seems to be heavily correlated with gasoline prices, far more than gasoline prices actually affect the economy.
And consumer sentiment about the economy has been moving upward over the past few months, while gasoline prices have been low. Did anything change between November and now, to bring it to the highest level of the last 3 years? I’d argue the only real change we’ve seen in the economy over the past few months is low gasoline prices. All the other long term structural things are still present.
The consumer confidence index has been on a down ward trend over all since an initial jump with vaccine rollouts. If you pick small parts of the graph and focus on fluctuations that support your argument you can make it look good but if you map it all the way back to the end of lock down, the trend is clear.
There are also other metrics beyond the consumer confidence index, such as Gallup’s economic confidence index which shows the same over all downward trend.
This is just the reality the number show, people are not happy with the sate of the economy and they don’t expect it to get better. Telling people they should be happier because unemployment is low is an awful political strategy.