(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Opinion | Why Are Americans So Negative About the Economy? [1]
['Paul Krugman']
Date: 2023-05-15
Almost a year has passed since the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the U.S. economy had contracted for two quarters in a row. Some people believe, wrongly, that two quarters of falling G.D.P. is the official definition of a recession. Economic negativity ran rampant, especially but not only on the political right.
The interesting question now is why, at least according to some surveys, the public remains very negative on the economy — as negative as it has been in the past amid severe economic downturns — even though those recession calls were clearly a false alarm, and the economy is actually looking remarkably strong. Or maybe the question should be why people say that they’re very negative on the economy.
This is a touchy subject, albeit one I’ve commented on before. You don’t want to say that Americans are stupid; you certainly don’t want to sound like that John McCain adviser who insisted that America was a “nation of whiners” who were experiencing only a “mental recession.”
On the other hand, there are now huge gaps between what people say about the economy and both what the data says and what they say about their own experience. And we have some new information on what lies behind these gaps.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/opinion/americans-negative-economy.html
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
