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The economy remains a top concern for US voters ahead of the presidential election
(www.scrippsnews.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Simple and wrong-headed concept.
The US economy and one's personal financial situation are separate situations.
The economy is doing great, high dollar value, low unemployment, new job creation, small business subsidies, government investment, it's all greatly strengthening the dollar.
That's the strong economy.
Regulatory economic practices and corporate lobbying against fair pay and price limits on housing and living essentials has been increasing for the majority of Americans for decades.
No unions, no labor rights. No regulatory oversight, no mortgage caps.
The economy is doing great and it has nothing to do with grocery prices or something like gasoline which is largely imported and based on the whims of a single family thousands of miles away that wakes up and decides what the price will be.
When people rate the economy they are looking at their personal situation. The article is complaining that people aren't looking at all these economic indicators, but it's not clear why they would care about them if they personally are facing hardship.
They shouldn't care about the economic indicators but they should care about their own interests.
Conflating the economy with your personal finances is like conflating the number of trees in your country with the state of repair of your house.
The government could invest in planting new trees and agricultural maintenance, but that has nothing to do with how your wooden house was built.
Similarly, the economy, the ecosystem of finance, can be very strong without affecting your personal financial situation, since the two are unrelated.
How many trees are planted and how healthy the trees are doesn't have much to do with the carpenter who used cheap wood or poor insulation when building your house.
This misunderstanding is an example of false equivalence: The economy means money, My finances means money, so the economy means my finances.
Since the US economy is completely separate from control over your personal finances (except for the stimulus checks), the health of the economy has nothing to do with how much your bosses choose to pay you or the benefits you are given.
That's determined by the corporation employing you and the regulations they follow.
Those circumstances can be changed by laborers joining a union, the national labor relations board, the ACLU, grocery regulations, by good in responsible social decisions in general.
I think the point no one is outright saying is that yes, you're correct. However, that shouldn't be the case.
Many Americans find it appalling that we measure the economy by stock prices which don't reflect the economic situation that is experienced by the vast majority of Americans. They believe that we should measure the economy based on things like housing and food affordability, with less emphasis on the economic situation of the wealthy few who don't need to worry about those day to day concerns.
I wouldn't change the definition of economy simply because the term is misunderstood or pigeonholed.
With "the economy" being an accurate term for a complete financial system, we should use accurate terms like affordability or livability to describe livability and affordability problems rather than a vague, tangential unrelated term.
The economy is very strong, affordability is at a low.
National forests are very healthy, my house has termites.
The abstract number of trees is irrelevant to the termites in a house.
It is nice that the US economy is strong, it is not nice that US affordability is so weak.
It is nice that this restaurant has so many windows, it is not nice that my chicken was overcooked.
Unemployment is a flawed 6-month rolling window metric that is ostensibly meaningless.
It's also bullshit that it doesn't include people who want employment but have given up due to being unable to find adequate employment.
It is pretty significant in terms of how many jobs are filled within a totally economy, spending trends, which affects how strong the dollar is.
It's an important metric, important as any other anyway.
When people write about "the economy", including the person who wrote this article, they generally focus on just two things:
Those are the two things mentioned in the subtitle of the article. It's no coincidence that those are also the two priorities of the Fed. And those are also the two macroeconomic indicators that are most likely to affect American personal finances. The first one relates directly to gas and grocery prices, BTW.
So there is good reason to be glad when the economy is doing great.
Inflation indirectly relates to gas and grocery prices.
More directly important to those prices is the arbitrary pricing system in place that allows corporations to make up and change prices at their whim.
Inflation is a direct measure of prices.
I just want stable prices, which means I just want low inflation. How that is achieved doesn't matter so much.