Exclusive Harris poll for the Guardian shows 55% believe economy is shrinking, in troubling sign for president’s re-election bid

Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.

The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:

  • 55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.

  • 49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.

  • 49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.

  • @givesomefucksEnglish
    36•30 days ago

    The issue is voters talk about how regular people are doing, while politicians talk about “the economy” which is rich people and business…

    For them, shits going great. Because their record profits are coming from regular Americans being priced gouged.

    Also, I stopped reading when the article clearly couldn’t understand inflation compliants.

    The poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation. The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing. In reality, the rate of inflation has fallen sharply from its post-Covid peak of 9.1% and has been fluctuating between 3% and 4% a year.

    In April, the inflation rate went down from 3.5% to 3.4% – far from inflation’s 40-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 – triggering a stock market rally that pushed the Dow Jones index to a record high.

    The inflation rate is slowly going down. But it’s a rate, prices are still up and continuing to go up. That 9.1% from 2022 is still baked into the 3% increase we’re experiencing.

    Like. Say it was 100, 9% increase makes it 109. 3% of 109 is more than 3% of 100…

    It’s compounded, but it’s not complicated and anyone writing about economics should understand that and explain it to their readers when talking about inflation rates.

    So the inflation rate should go down but it’s not like that means lower prices, it just means 1% increase now is more than a 1% increase in the past.

    And that’s not even getting into the harsh truth about inflation and capitalism:

    A lack of inflation means people save money. That takes money out of circulation. A lot of our problems are because the wealthy do that with huge sums.

    If enough money gets taken out of circulation then it leads to a recession as there’s less money floating around and changing hands.

    We need inflation to prop up this bullshit economic system the wealthy are obsessed with.

    • @jordanlundM
      5•30 days ago

      ^ This!!

      Inflation isn’t going down, it’s just going up slightly slower than before!

    • @[email protected]
      2•30 days ago

      Not only is it compounding, but 3-4% inflation hasn’t happened in over a decade. To get anything comparable to the last three years you have to go back to the 80s.

      • @[email protected]
        5•30 days ago

        I mentioned it in a different comment, but there was a paper written by some economists that compared the current inflation formula with the one they used to use (in use in the 80’s, iirc) which takes borrowing costs such as mortgage into account, and that 9.1 peak pandemic inflation number doubled to 18 something %, with our current 3.4% becoming something north of 9%. So yeah, not great.