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
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    6 months ago

    The stats literally show that prices went up but wages went up more.

    There are specific subgroups for whom that has not happened. But for the population as a whole, it did