whatever American consumers say about the state of the economy, they are spending as if their finances are in pretty good shape. Most recently, holiday sales appear to have been quite good.

Americans aren’t acting as if they’re terrified about crime. As I’ve written before, major downtowns have seen weekend foot traffic — roughly speaking, the number of people visiting the city for fun rather than work — recover to prepandemic levels, which isn’t what you’d expect if Americans were fleeing violent urban hellscapes.

  • silence7OP
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    6 months ago

    Except that’s not what’s going on. People are just saying “it’s bad” even though the evidence is that it’s not.

    • TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The evidence clearly shows Americans have maxed out their cards and are riding debt while buying only essentials. That’s not good. That’s ignorance of impending doom.

      It’s also NOT good for anyone who hasn’t got a new job in the past couple years. If everything around you is 20% more expensive and you’ve received a 3% raise, things are very bad for you.

      It is very good currently for those with 401ks and can leverage, use, or sell the gains they are getting.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          That one metric, divorced from cost of living, is meaningless. If you want to make a convincing argument that Americans are doing better, you have to show that rising wages matched or outpaced rising prices. It doesn’t matter if I make a dollar more than I did last year if everything costs two dollars more than it did last year.

    • JaymesRS@literature.cafe
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      6 months ago

      Similar to people thinking crime is way up and rising when it’s way lower than it’s been and decreasing.