Are Americans' perceptions of the economy and crime broken?(niemanlab.org)
niemanlab.org
Are Americans' perceptions of the economy and crime broken?
https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/11/are-americans-perceptions-of-the-economy-and-crime-broken/
137 comments
IMO we have plenty of independent and trusted media, the issue is that they are independently, and increasingly monomaniacally, pursuing financial outcomes. Not an obviously terrible thing except when they each independently discovered that the best way to make $number go up is to produce outrage.
For the most part, the less you understand a topic, the more easily you'll be outraged about it, and the more viewership ($$$) you'll drive to the people who give you outrage and withhold understanding.
The most dangerous meme in existence is Friedman's extremist view of shareholder supremacy, which we saw drawn to its obvious conclusion the past few weeks in the Rotunda.
For the most part, the less you understand a topic, the more easily you'll be outraged about it, and the more viewership ($$$) you'll drive to the people who give you outrage and withhold understanding.
The most dangerous meme in existence is Friedman's extremist view of shareholder supremacy, which we saw drawn to its obvious conclusion the past few weeks in the Rotunda.
I don't disagree, there is that Dutch saying that trust enters the town on foot and leaves on a horse. When the media's pursuit of financial incomes results in actions that actively destroy trust (the WaPo non-endorsement and unwillingness to present important points of view is the current poster child for this) then they simply become 'independent and untrusted' which is of not much use.
For me, a more sobering example was that Twitter was gaining trust and it seems that in response Elon Musk bought and killed it. That felt a bit more like actively denying the emergence of new media. It was also an example completely counter to Friedman's view on shareholder value as, as an action, it destroyed shareholder value. Just as Bezo's actions have destroyed shareholder value in the Washington Post.
For me, a more sobering example was that Twitter was gaining trust and it seems that in response Elon Musk bought and killed it. That felt a bit more like actively denying the emergence of new media. It was also an example completely counter to Friedman's view on shareholder value as, as an action, it destroyed shareholder value. Just as Bezo's actions have destroyed shareholder value in the Washington Post.
I know people were outraged over the WaPo not endorsing anybody but personally I wish newspapers would drop most columnists and also stop endorsing. I subscribed to WaPo and WSJ for a year and reading the opinion columns was really bad for my mental state. You just get angry constantly. Now I am reading Reuters mostly and they are refreshingly boring in comparison
Would WaPo have stopped endorsing if it was set to endorse Bezos' favoured candidate? Of those that stopped endorsing, what's the ratio by candidate they would've endorsed? If only the outlets who were set to endorse candidate A stop doing so, but those for candidate B keep doing so, do you still consider this an improvement? From some philosophical PoV it might be, but in terms of real world consequences, I'm not sure how it can.
It is hard to emphasize how insanely important editorials are for local news.
It’s hard to emphasize how unimportant it is for national news.
It’s hard to emphasize how unimportant it is for national news.
Some years ago, I decided that if I could read the headline and the byline and then at least summarize the column, there was no point in reading an opinion piece. This has saved a good deal of time and stress.
As other respondents to this wapo comment argue, dropping endorsement could be seen as net better. Can be argued a number of ways.
However, I think it's worth pointing out what goes on at root: distrust and/or seeing oneself as having being manipulated.
On this fulcrum the actual details, facts, intent etc is rendered irrelevant: if I feel the fool telling me 2+2=4 (a fact) will to me become more evidence of bs.
The only way out in the current environment is to not get caught up emotionally in non falsafible stories, stick to facts, and regard anything from news that's not communicating data, facts as entertainment.
Opinion makers are entertainment.
However, I think it's worth pointing out what goes on at root: distrust and/or seeing oneself as having being manipulated.
On this fulcrum the actual details, facts, intent etc is rendered irrelevant: if I feel the fool telling me 2+2=4 (a fact) will to me become more evidence of bs.
The only way out in the current environment is to not get caught up emotionally in non falsafible stories, stick to facts, and regard anything from news that's not communicating data, facts as entertainment.
Opinion makers are entertainment.
How about WaPo choosing not endorse and then Blue Origin executives meeting with Trump the same day? Doesn’t have a fishy smell?
Twitter actively destroyed accounts that reported in the covid lab leak theory. Trust, lol.
As a subscriber to the (print) Post and steady reader, the decision not to endorse struck me as bizarrely coy. Day after day the A section was full of news articles that more or less labeled Donald Trump a fool, liar, and dangerous man. Yes, OK, so now why not endorse his opponent?
It was meant to increase trust. Why should a trump supporter trust a newspaper that endorses his opponent? Better to leave that up to the reader.
Increase trust by a last minute break with tradition forced by executives who then had their sibling rocket company (Blue Origin) go meet, the same day, with the candidate they just helped?
Now I just have to imagine a Trump supporter who trusts The Washington Post. It was not always easy to find a Bush 41 supporter who trusted it.
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> Twitter was gaining trust
It's interesting how our perception of this can be so different. From my viewpoint, Twitter had completely lost all trust by actively silencing people they disagreed with. This got particularly bad around covid. I am not much of a Twitter/X user, but at least people aren't being silenced on a massive scale anymore.
It's interesting how our perception of this can be so different. From my viewpoint, Twitter had completely lost all trust by actively silencing people they disagreed with. This got particularly bad around covid. I am not much of a Twitter/X user, but at least people aren't being silenced on a massive scale anymore.
> but at least people aren't being silenced on a massive scale anymore.
This simply isn't true.
This simply isn't true.
I dunno, try explaining how bad elon is at video games and watch how fast your checkmark goes away.
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I agree, it is interesting and that is kind of my point. What you're labeling as "perception" (not a bad label, just different) I tend to label "belief."
From your comment you clearly believe that Twitter had lost trust by "actively silencing people they disagreed with" whereas I, reading the reports that the trust and safety folks were putting out, felt like the policies they had in place to moderate people who they felt were not contributing to the conversation seemed to be rooted in reasonable principles. So we had two very different beliefs leading to very different viewpoints.
The original article that kicked this off talks exactly about this. Some people believe that the economy was "bad/weak", others believe that the economy is "good/strong". Two opposite viewpoints with presumably access to the same data!
Its a reasonable thing to engage in discussion with people who believe differently than you do to understand their point of view and what sources of data or evidence they base their beliefs on. To give a commonly cited example, one person would say "I believe the earth is roughly 6,000 years old based on my source which is the Bible." and another person might say, "I believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old, based on the idea of nuclear decay and carbon dating."
In examples like this, one can often quickly come to an assessment of whether or not it is worthwhile to re-examine one's own beliefs based on the other person's sources of evidence. It doesn't end up that you'll agree, just that you will understand why they believe what they believe.
From your comment you clearly believe that Twitter had lost trust by "actively silencing people they disagreed with" whereas I, reading the reports that the trust and safety folks were putting out, felt like the policies they had in place to moderate people who they felt were not contributing to the conversation seemed to be rooted in reasonable principles. So we had two very different beliefs leading to very different viewpoints.
The original article that kicked this off talks exactly about this. Some people believe that the economy was "bad/weak", others believe that the economy is "good/strong". Two opposite viewpoints with presumably access to the same data!
Its a reasonable thing to engage in discussion with people who believe differently than you do to understand their point of view and what sources of data or evidence they base their beliefs on. To give a commonly cited example, one person would say "I believe the earth is roughly 6,000 years old based on my source which is the Bible." and another person might say, "I believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old, based on the idea of nuclear decay and carbon dating."
In examples like this, one can often quickly come to an assessment of whether or not it is worthwhile to re-examine one's own beliefs based on the other person's sources of evidence. It doesn't end up that you'll agree, just that you will understand why they believe what they believe.
"The most dangerous meme in existence is Friedman's extremist view of shareholder supremacy"
Trickle down is a kissing cousin.
Rich people are fine; insane profits are just fine.
Imbalance however is not. Single variable local maximums are distorting leading to corrupting.
Trickle down is a kissing cousin.
Rich people are fine; insane profits are just fine.
Imbalance however is not. Single variable local maximums are distorting leading to corrupting.
The press is broke. Major press outlets can run at a loss, supported by a billionaire. Many press outfits are switching to non-profit status, or being replaced by non-profits.
The real problem isn’t money. It’s partisanship.
Journalists are overwhelming Democrats. The available numbers are stark: 96%, as far as anyone can tell.
If the roles were reversed, would any Democrat trust a media populated 96% by Republicans?
The real problem isn’t money. It’s partisanship.
Journalists are overwhelming Democrats. The available numbers are stark: 96%, as far as anyone can tell.
If the roles were reversed, would any Democrat trust a media populated 96% by Republicans?
Newt Gingrich literally said on TV that if he can make someone believe something then that's as real as fact.
Him and a CNN anchor were talking about crime stats being down. Newt disagreed and said Americans feel like crime is up.
Him and a CNN anchor were talking about crime stats being down. Newt disagreed and said Americans feel like crime is up.
"hyperreality" -- a mainstay of USSR's new media, but used and abused by the US MSM. Fox News took it to new levels.
There is an important difference between someone claiming on TV they can do something and seeing the effects of people believing something for which there is objective and easily obtained evidence that contradicts that belief.
> Jim Jones making his followers believe that their best choice was to kill themselves and their children by drinking cyanide laced Kool-aid
Just a nit: my understanding is that anyone who didn't drink the poison was murdered.
Just a nit: my understanding is that anyone who didn't drink the poison was murdered.
Also it wasn’t Kool-Aid but Flavor Aid.
Not that it matters for the overall point but it’s an example of a brand being the generic name for a product category backfiring.
Not that it matters for the overall point but it’s an example of a brand being the generic name for a product category backfiring.
The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” in the current sense precedes the Jim Jones massacre.
It began with a book called “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (1968).
It began with a book called “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (1968).
The phrase occurs in that book, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to say that it had "the current sense" before Jonestown.
The “current sense” is more similar to the Acid Test than Jonestown.
When we say “drinking the Kool Aid” we mean adopting a dumb way of thinking. Not killing yourself, or even harming yourself. Just being stupid.
We wouldn’t say “they drank the kool aid” if someone committed suicide.
More important for present discussion, “The Kool Aid Acid Test” referred to actual Kool Aid, not a generic equivalent.
The Kool Aid marketing team embraced and promoted its countercultural image. Many brands did.
But this left the brand vulnerable when the counterculture became associated with extremism.
Recent parallels to this exist.
When we say “drinking the Kool Aid” we mean adopting a dumb way of thinking. Not killing yourself, or even harming yourself. Just being stupid.
We wouldn’t say “they drank the kool aid” if someone committed suicide.
More important for present discussion, “The Kool Aid Acid Test” referred to actual Kool Aid, not a generic equivalent.
The Kool Aid marketing team embraced and promoted its countercultural image. Many brands did.
But this left the brand vulnerable when the counterculture became associated with extremism.
Recent parallels to this exist.
I don't think the current sense is suicide exactly, but rather (hyperbolically) so sold on a (misguided) belief that you would commit suicide if, per that belief, they were "supposed to" do so. I agree that it would feel awkward to use it about someone who had actually killed themselves, but I think that's mostly because there's an element of (dark) humor to it.
Yes, if you can be made to believe absurdities, you can be made to commit atrocities.
I want people to believe in stop signs.
> This is an important topic, probably not an HN topic but still it is important, and the topic isn't "perceptions of the economy and crime" is "ability to discern discourse from propaganda"
Arguably it's the same problem on HN
Arguably it's the same problem on HN
It seems wrong to mix crime and economic perceptions here.
With crime, there's a clearcut explanation of objective statistics going down and media focus giving the perception that things are more dangerous than they truly are. Fair enough. Although, I'm not sure the drug zombies are counted in these statistics and they've proliferated like rabbits in most major cities. Whether crime is down, the social fabric of these places has definitely been tarnished.
With the economy, the financialization of everything has completely disconnected macro-economic statistics (GDP) from the consumer experience. Inflation skyrocketed in 2022 - that's not debatable. The rate has come down, which just means things are getting more expensive but more slowly. Homes are out of reach for most young people - which did not used to be the case. GDP is up - who the hell cares?
With crime, there's a clearcut explanation of objective statistics going down and media focus giving the perception that things are more dangerous than they truly are. Fair enough. Although, I'm not sure the drug zombies are counted in these statistics and they've proliferated like rabbits in most major cities. Whether crime is down, the social fabric of these places has definitely been tarnished.
With the economy, the financialization of everything has completely disconnected macro-economic statistics (GDP) from the consumer experience. Inflation skyrocketed in 2022 - that's not debatable. The rate has come down, which just means things are getting more expensive but more slowly. Homes are out of reach for most young people - which did not used to be the case. GDP is up - who the hell cares?
It's easy to make crime statistics go down. Much harder to make actual crime go down.
Homicides are generally considered pretty reliable for statistics, and those have gone down. Though it's possible for those to go down while lower level crimes go up.
It's easy for any one agency or police department to cook the books, but I don't think that scales to the kind of huge shift across multiple categories and data sources shown in the article.
Right, there are definitely perverse incentives afoot from a reporting standpoint on the part of police departments. Additionally, my allusion to the opiate issue is meant to convey that - while a horde of drug addicts at the train station may not actually commit a crime, they certainly make the place feel less safe, which is what people actually experience.
The BJS crime stats are suspect, at best. Instead of relying on actual reports, it's based on polling with a series of interviews. I'm sure that is really reliable in the poor and wealthy neighborhoods. - https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/ncvs#1-0
> Homes are out of reach for most young people - which did not used to be the case.
That's been the case for most of my adult life, after the recovery from the Global Financial Crisis concentrated people into cities where it's against the law to build more housing.
That's been the case for most of my adult life, after the recovery from the Global Financial Crisis concentrated people into cities where it's against the law to build more housing.
>after the recovery from the Global Financial Crisis
Depending what exactly you mean, that's less than ten years. It wasn't until 2016 that median home sale prices exceeded 2008's.
Depending what exactly you mean, that's less than ten years. It wasn't until 2016 that median home sale prices exceeded 2008's.
I was thinking more 2010, for 15 years.
Prices in 2010 were certainly far more achievable than they are now. I was in college and had made a lot of career plans based on typical incomes an engineer could achieve and what a decent home cost in several cities at the time. It was feasible even on a single income for an engineer. Unless I hit senior staff+ at faang, a home is out of reach in several regions. It was never cheap but it was plausible.
Homes in Santa Clara weren’t always 2.5m.
Homes in Santa Clara weren’t always 2.5m.
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> Inflation skyrocketed in 2022 - that's not debatable. The rate has come down, which just means things are getting more expensive but more slowly.
Sadly, this is a perfect example (perhaps unintentional) of the sort of economic ignorance/elision that is at the heart of TFA.
Things only cost more (or less) if the percentage of take-home income that they cost goes up (or down). So if wages go up by more than nominal inflation, things cost less even though their nominal price has increased. Conversely, if wages go up by less than inflation, things cost more, and by more than just amount suggested by inflation.
But it gets worse ... measuring whether wages have gone up and by how much in a very diverse economy is very hard. Reducing the data to a single number ("Wages rose by X percent") inevitably misses a large amount of variance. Consequently, even if you were to write what you said here in a more accurate way, such as:
>Inflation skyrocketed in 2022, but in the period 2019-2024 wages grew by more than the total amount of inflation, and so most products and services cost the same now as they did then
... it would still be missing out the actual experiences of many people for whom wages did not rise by that amount.
Sadly, this is a perfect example (perhaps unintentional) of the sort of economic ignorance/elision that is at the heart of TFA.
Things only cost more (or less) if the percentage of take-home income that they cost goes up (or down). So if wages go up by more than nominal inflation, things cost less even though their nominal price has increased. Conversely, if wages go up by less than inflation, things cost more, and by more than just amount suggested by inflation.
But it gets worse ... measuring whether wages have gone up and by how much in a very diverse economy is very hard. Reducing the data to a single number ("Wages rose by X percent") inevitably misses a large amount of variance. Consequently, even if you were to write what you said here in a more accurate way, such as:
>Inflation skyrocketed in 2022, but in the period 2019-2024 wages grew by more than the total amount of inflation, and so most products and services cost the same now as they did then
... it would still be missing out the actual experiences of many people for whom wages did not rise by that amount.
I think it's hard to get all the data captured in a broad economy as you state. So I simply go by what people are saying vs. what they are doing. Revealed preference, if may be slightly misusing the term.
The 2008 crash? Absolutely was a horrible local economy where I lived. Shops closed up left and right due to lack of customers, restaurants were basically empty, crazy deals to be had on tools on craigslist, people moving in with family, etc. The actions of the people absolutely matched the broader economic readings and it was trivial to see simply driving around for a day in the commercial/retail areas of town.
Now? I hear more complaints than I did in 2008 at the local bar, but it's jam packed and you are lucky to get a table on a Tuesday night at a mediocre middle class restaurant. Everyone seems to be talking about how expensive new(ish) cars are and how high inflation is over their $8 beer and $20 appetizers.
I understand my local perception is not 100% accurate, but it's really hard to square the "local chatter" with "local actions" at the moment. If you didn't talk to folks and only looked around at economic activity you'd think things were going pretty okay, if not great. But then you talk to folks and you get an entirely different story.
I think we're seeing a bifurcation of society, but not just at the "top 1%" like it was before. The top 20-30% seem to be doing just fine, but complaining on behalf of the bottom 50%. Everyone "feels" like they are doing poorly while engaging in economic activity I could only dream of growing up. It's really jarring to me, and I'm still trying to fully understand it. There is also the increasing asset prices (housing the primary but not only example) that may be hitting tipping point levels for people to finally notice.
Edit: A good one to talk to someone about is grocery prices. They will swear they are paying double or more than they were pre-pandemic. Absolute belief in this to the point of actively angering someone if you challenge them on it.
Then I check my actual history from those days and now? I see them more or less match the official USDA statistics of about 25%. Mine are actually around 18%. I can't square this either. It's like folks want to have inflation be far more exaggerated than it really is, and they truly believe this - regardless of political party in my case.
The 2008 crash? Absolutely was a horrible local economy where I lived. Shops closed up left and right due to lack of customers, restaurants were basically empty, crazy deals to be had on tools on craigslist, people moving in with family, etc. The actions of the people absolutely matched the broader economic readings and it was trivial to see simply driving around for a day in the commercial/retail areas of town.
Now? I hear more complaints than I did in 2008 at the local bar, but it's jam packed and you are lucky to get a table on a Tuesday night at a mediocre middle class restaurant. Everyone seems to be talking about how expensive new(ish) cars are and how high inflation is over their $8 beer and $20 appetizers.
I understand my local perception is not 100% accurate, but it's really hard to square the "local chatter" with "local actions" at the moment. If you didn't talk to folks and only looked around at economic activity you'd think things were going pretty okay, if not great. But then you talk to folks and you get an entirely different story.
I think we're seeing a bifurcation of society, but not just at the "top 1%" like it was before. The top 20-30% seem to be doing just fine, but complaining on behalf of the bottom 50%. Everyone "feels" like they are doing poorly while engaging in economic activity I could only dream of growing up. It's really jarring to me, and I'm still trying to fully understand it. There is also the increasing asset prices (housing the primary but not only example) that may be hitting tipping point levels for people to finally notice.
Edit: A good one to talk to someone about is grocery prices. They will swear they are paying double or more than they were pre-pandemic. Absolute belief in this to the point of actively angering someone if you challenge them on it.
Then I check my actual history from those days and now? I see them more or less match the official USDA statistics of about 25%. Mine are actually around 18%. I can't square this either. It's like folks want to have inflation be far more exaggerated than it really is, and they truly believe this - regardless of political party in my case.
About inflation: We had basically zero inflation for a decade. That's long enough for people to get used to it. When inflation hit, it felt like "that's really high", because we were comparing it to zero, and it was really high by comparison. But that meant that the emotional impact was higher than the real impact. (I'm not minimizing the real impact! But the emotional impact was out of proportion, and higher.)
Yes. Something I read recently was a long the lines "if people think this is a bad economy, what would a good economy even look like?"
> it would still be missing out the actual experiences of many people for whom wages did not rise by that amount
And the experiences of many with cash savings, pensions that haven't kept up with inflation, etc.
And the experiences of many with cash savings, pensions that haven't kept up with inflation, etc.
It always jars me when people conflate public drug use, which is fundamentally an aesthetic issue and not a matter of public safety, with crime - as though people getting dysfunctionally high on opioids pose a danger to anyone but themselves. It suggests a very foreign moral system, which is hard for me to understand.
Well, legally, many of those things are crime, and so people call it crime.
But public safety is more than worries about being violently attacked. If you have someone passed out on a narrow sidewalk, you then have to walk into the street to get past them: that's unsafe, and even worse for people with mobility issues. If someone relieves themself in a public space or throws away needles on the street, that's a matter of hygiene and disease.
And although opioid users aren't going to be violent, there are other drugs. Am I allowed to be concerned for my own safety when someone is smoking meth on the bus?
But public safety is more than worries about being violently attacked. If you have someone passed out on a narrow sidewalk, you then have to walk into the street to get past them: that's unsafe, and even worse for people with mobility issues. If someone relieves themself in a public space or throws away needles on the street, that's a matter of hygiene and disease.
And although opioid users aren't going to be violent, there are other drugs. Am I allowed to be concerned for my own safety when someone is smoking meth on the bus?
> Well, legally, many of those things are crime
I suppose that not everyone has abandoned the old drug-warrior mindset yet, absurd and useless as that philosophy has proved to be.
> Am I allowed to be concerned for my own safety when someone is smoking meth on the bus?
That certainly is a different situation, and I would feel concerned about that too: but meth has been a problem for decades, while the phrase "drug zombies" has only come into use during the fentanyl era, when you now see people tipping over and passing out and otherwise shambling around unable to fully control their bodies. Those people are out of it, unable to do much of anything but breathe (usually). The fear is really unwarranted.
I suppose that not everyone has abandoned the old drug-warrior mindset yet, absurd and useless as that philosophy has proved to be.
> Am I allowed to be concerned for my own safety when someone is smoking meth on the bus?
That certainly is a different situation, and I would feel concerned about that too: but meth has been a problem for decades, while the phrase "drug zombies" has only come into use during the fentanyl era, when you now see people tipping over and passing out and otherwise shambling around unable to fully control their bodies. Those people are out of it, unable to do much of anything but breathe (usually). The fear is really unwarranted.
> The fear is really unwarranted.
Here's the deal: you have no right to tell people how to feel.
Here's the deal: you have no right to tell people how to feel.
When someone's fear comes from ignorance, what kindness is it to leave them in the dark?
CS Lewis once observed: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive"
I suppose it's a good thing, then, that I have no power over you - beyond that which you may have created de novo, by choosing to care about my opinion - and therefore have no means of exercising tyranny.
Where would you want a young female (for their own safety) to walk through at 9pm at night, given the choice:
A block of drug zombies, or a block doesn't have any of that?
A block of drug zombies, or a block doesn't have any of that?
Calling suffering people "zombies" is kind of offensive; it seems pretty obvious that people who are too high to stand up or keep their eyes open pose less of a threat than people who are fully alert and in control of their faculties would.
I was walking down the street in San Francisco, and a guy defecated on my shoe.
I saw the look in his eyes, and any anger I had just vanished. There was nobody home.
But I make sure when my daughter visits, we never walk down that street, or any other streets that have similar inhabitants.
I can tell unpleasant stories of how the homeless have treated women, especially those who wear headscarves.
Buses now have recorded messages telling people to report “gender-based” aggression.
Since I’m male, I guess I don’t need to report someone defecating on my shoe.
I saw the look in his eyes, and any anger I had just vanished. There was nobody home.
But I make sure when my daughter visits, we never walk down that street, or any other streets that have similar inhabitants.
I can tell unpleasant stories of how the homeless have treated women, especially those who wear headscarves.
Buses now have recorded messages telling people to report “gender-based” aggression.
Since I’m male, I guess I don’t need to report someone defecating on my shoe.
I agree - the desire to not step in feces and other bodily fluids while walking in SF does seem like a foreign moral system when I'm there.
You think public drug use is just an “aesthetic” problem? That’s the problem with this kind of “nerd reasoning” that is in HN a lot; it lacks any common sense. Public open drug use is much more than aesthetics and is a safety and draws more crime and it’s drives poverty.
Pay too much attention to common sense and you will find yourself believing that the sun revolves around the earth; it's good at spotting correlations, but when you want to understand actual causes, you need research.
I can see as well as you can that crime, poverty, and public drug use are related - but research shows that your intuitive explanation of causality is backward. It is housing policy which causes homelessness, which causes desperation, and desperation causes addiction - but does addiction cause crime? Not so much as you'd think: drug addicts are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime - which is mostly a function of poverty, a consequence of economic policy.
When someone focuses on public drug use as an issue, they mistake an ugly, visible downstream symptom for the actual disease. It is a matter of unpleasant appearances, not the meaningful problem. Trying to eliminate public drug use by focusing enforcement on the people who are using drugs in public is a cruel and pointless game of whack-a-mole, so long as the policy engine which creates those desperate addicts remains in operation.
I can see as well as you can that crime, poverty, and public drug use are related - but research shows that your intuitive explanation of causality is backward. It is housing policy which causes homelessness, which causes desperation, and desperation causes addiction - but does addiction cause crime? Not so much as you'd think: drug addicts are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime - which is mostly a function of poverty, a consequence of economic policy.
When someone focuses on public drug use as an issue, they mistake an ugly, visible downstream symptom for the actual disease. It is a matter of unpleasant appearances, not the meaningful problem. Trying to eliminate public drug use by focusing enforcement on the people who are using drugs in public is a cruel and pointless game of whack-a-mole, so long as the policy engine which creates those desperate addicts remains in operation.
Yeah, the thing about inflation in the 1970s was that a significant number of workers had cost of living adjustments so they could survive with inflation at a higher level than now. Moreover, many people had a cushion for survival.
When you have no wage increases and no cushion, as common now, all it takes is little inflation to screw you considerably. That situation isn't considered in statistic about how the economy is doing.
And the thing with crime is that when people's own situation isn't good and they're told X-that-they-can't-directly-measure is bad, they tend to believe it. And indeed, the visibility of the homeless can look like crime.
When you have no wage increases and no cushion, as common now, all it takes is little inflation to screw you considerably. That situation isn't considered in statistic about how the economy is doing.
And the thing with crime is that when people's own situation isn't good and they're told X-that-they-can't-directly-measure is bad, they tend to believe it. And indeed, the visibility of the homeless can look like crime.
American perceptions of a lot of things seem to be based on whether "their" party is in power or not. When democrats are in power, republicans feel inflation is bad, democrats don't see a problem. As soon as a republican gets in power, republicans don't worry about inflation anymore but democrats do. Same for many other things.
It's a really bad state to be in. Real data doesn't matter anymore. It's all about what they are being fed by their favorite super biased media (Fox News or MSNBC and CNN come to mind).
It's a really bad state to be in. Real data doesn't matter anymore. It's all about what they are being fed by their favorite super biased media (Fox News or MSNBC and CNN come to mind).
Thanks to Media Matters for America, I'm very aware of actual data on how Fox coverage of inflation changes depending on the party in power (e.g. a massive drop in coverage after a Republican wins an election).
Do you have any links to actual data that suggests that MSNBC or CNN do the same thing?
Do you have any links to actual data that suggests that MSNBC or CNN do the same thing?
> Americans believed the economy was in the tank, despite loads of evidence showing the opposite.
The evidence they use is in the form of the financial markets. Blue collar workers don't care about the market. Nurses don't care about the market, construction workers don't care about the market. They care about can they afford food, can they afford a home, and can they afford healthcare. The answer is more and more becoming no.
The evidence they use is in the form of the financial markets. Blue collar workers don't care about the market. Nurses don't care about the market, construction workers don't care about the market. They care about can they afford food, can they afford a home, and can they afford healthcare. The answer is more and more becoming no.
Exactly! There probably is a disconnect in perception driven by political agenda like the essay suggests, but Americans who exist in the real world and not in the quirky stock market graphs world know that how well the stock market is doing is more and more disconnected from how well the average American is doing. The phenomenon in the article can in large part explained by rampant wealth inequality.
> But there also seems to be something more fundamental happening. Before the covid pandemic, consumer sentiment was relatively predictable based on economic fundamentals. The hard data and the survey responses tended to move up and down in something like unison. But since 2020, they’ve become disconnected, with a wide and pessimistic gap opening up between them. It’s hard to look at that phenomenon and see the impact of a changed media environment.
I don't understand that last sentence. I suspect I'm reading it wrong, but am having trouble parsing it in a way that doesn't mean: this data cannot be explained by a changing media environment since 2020. It's very easy for me to look at the disconnect between survey responses and economic data and see that how people receive and process news is largely responsible for it. The disconnect between facts and opinions has been widely observed, and while the pandemic didn't start it, it seems to have been an accelerator for it.
I don't understand that last sentence. I suspect I'm reading it wrong, but am having trouble parsing it in a way that doesn't mean: this data cannot be explained by a changing media environment since 2020. It's very easy for me to look at the disconnect between survey responses and economic data and see that how people receive and process news is largely responsible for it. The disconnect between facts and opinions has been widely observed, and while the pandemic didn't start it, it seems to have been an accelerator for it.
I've read before with interest the phenomena discussed in this article, and I find it fascinating. This is one of the better-written about it in my opinion.
It seems like it should be possible to model this along with surveys of media consumption, at the individual level? Maybe I'm mistaken in this impression but I imagine some of the larger social surveys track news consumption habits. Of course that assumes they're accurate reporters, which might be problematic.
It seems like it should be possible to model this along with surveys of media consumption, at the individual level? Maybe I'm mistaken in this impression but I imagine some of the larger social surveys track news consumption habits. Of course that assumes they're accurate reporters, which might be problematic.
Anecdotally, I completely agree that consumption of media has shifted since the pandemic and could reasonable explain this gap
I do think there's a bit of a faulty premise to the start of the article.
> A responsible news media has a lot of jobs, but here’s one of the most important: giving audiences an accurate image of the state of the world around them.
Most "News" orgs aren't News Orgs. They're entertainment companies with a goal of selling ad space. I.e. the weather channels routinely overestimates the chances of a weather event because it gets you to keep paying attention. Painting an accurate imagine can be at odds with generating revenue and so an inaccurate image will be painted.
Then we get into probably another fault premise that the economy as graphed by a single metric is fine. There was all this talk about a K-shaped recovery post covid. It's very possible your single metric will look at good but there can still be a lot of people doing worse as long as it's outweighed by a few people doing very well.
The article had a very interesting comment one crime though about if homelessness counted. I think it'd be a bit more interesting to ask if immigration counted. But the guy definitely hits the nail on the head in saying that nobody is reporting crime correctly in the news so it's not a surprise that people listening to it don't have a clue.
> A responsible news media has a lot of jobs, but here’s one of the most important: giving audiences an accurate image of the state of the world around them.
Most "News" orgs aren't News Orgs. They're entertainment companies with a goal of selling ad space. I.e. the weather channels routinely overestimates the chances of a weather event because it gets you to keep paying attention. Painting an accurate imagine can be at odds with generating revenue and so an inaccurate image will be painted.
Then we get into probably another fault premise that the economy as graphed by a single metric is fine. There was all this talk about a K-shaped recovery post covid. It's very possible your single metric will look at good but there can still be a lot of people doing worse as long as it's outweighed by a few people doing very well.
The article had a very interesting comment one crime though about if homelessness counted. I think it'd be a bit more interesting to ask if immigration counted. But the guy definitely hits the nail on the head in saying that nobody is reporting crime correctly in the news so it's not a surprise that people listening to it don't have a clue.
More and more I think these types of problems come down to (a) smaller attention spans, married with (b) dimensionality reduction, and (c) advertising optimization techniques.
Meaning that as the content we consume becomes shorter, the motivation for its existence and the message it's trying to communicate has to get compressed. You have to reduce the contextual load, and rely on a set of unspecified assumptions. When I talk to you, the economy is X. When I talk to the mayor, the economy is Y. When I talk to a CEO, the economy is Z.
This gets deeply corrupted by advertising, imo. Since content is mostly made to sell stuff, there is a really strong pressure for that to be the main CTA you get from what you're watching: buy the thing/experience/status.
So, messaging gets shorter and shorter, and the people seeing the ads are all getting hyper targeted feeds. The main message is to buy something, but that's not what the ad actually says. It says whatever is short and sweet and releases pleasant brain chemicals. So now we have some proxy "vibes" which is what people are actually feeling, but have lost the ability to communicate due to this compression.
Seems natural to me that we will become unable to see things in a larger context. I could spend an entire day talking through the economy and how it works, but in the news all you will see is a question like: "is the economy in good or bad shape?".
This isn't enough detail to answer the question. But we also won't dedicate enough combined attention to have the larger conversation, so everyone is just annoyed that no one is hearing the same thing even when we all use the same words.
There's a lot of parallels to how AI works and this whole misaligned-on-purpose-to-make-advertisers-money system, but I haven't gotten the words yet. Maybe ChatGPT can help.
Meaning that as the content we consume becomes shorter, the motivation for its existence and the message it's trying to communicate has to get compressed. You have to reduce the contextual load, and rely on a set of unspecified assumptions. When I talk to you, the economy is X. When I talk to the mayor, the economy is Y. When I talk to a CEO, the economy is Z.
This gets deeply corrupted by advertising, imo. Since content is mostly made to sell stuff, there is a really strong pressure for that to be the main CTA you get from what you're watching: buy the thing/experience/status.
So, messaging gets shorter and shorter, and the people seeing the ads are all getting hyper targeted feeds. The main message is to buy something, but that's not what the ad actually says. It says whatever is short and sweet and releases pleasant brain chemicals. So now we have some proxy "vibes" which is what people are actually feeling, but have lost the ability to communicate due to this compression.
Seems natural to me that we will become unable to see things in a larger context. I could spend an entire day talking through the economy and how it works, but in the news all you will see is a question like: "is the economy in good or bad shape?".
This isn't enough detail to answer the question. But we also won't dedicate enough combined attention to have the larger conversation, so everyone is just annoyed that no one is hearing the same thing even when we all use the same words.
There's a lot of parallels to how AI works and this whole misaligned-on-purpose-to-make-advertisers-money system, but I haven't gotten the words yet. Maybe ChatGPT can help.
> I think part of the challenge is that, when we talk about crime, what do you mean by crime?
As I was processing the article, I was subconsciously asking this in my head. My first thought on whether I believe crime was going up was yes, but for me, it related more to the increase in public overdoses in my town. Naturally, I would assume if I see more overdoses, then more illicit drugs must be getting sold, and therefore crime must be going up. But this raises a lot of questions:
Are the same overdoses increasingly spilling out into the public? Are the illicit drugs getting stronger and thus causing more overdoses?
Answering yes to either of these may mean the actual crime rate hasn't changed. Anyway, it was just a rabbit hole I went down in my head that I think speaks to what is being said here.
As I was processing the article, I was subconsciously asking this in my head. My first thought on whether I believe crime was going up was yes, but for me, it related more to the increase in public overdoses in my town. Naturally, I would assume if I see more overdoses, then more illicit drugs must be getting sold, and therefore crime must be going up. But this raises a lot of questions:
Are the same overdoses increasingly spilling out into the public? Are the illicit drugs getting stronger and thus causing more overdoses?
Answering yes to either of these may mean the actual crime rate hasn't changed. Anyway, it was just a rabbit hole I went down in my head that I think speaks to what is being said here.
In a sense, the macro trend is irrelevant and mainly used as a talking point by the media.
Individuals experience the world from an individual level — it is easy to go along with any trend that fits your desired narrative because until it is at odds with your individual experience, it doesn’t really matter.
(I’m being a bit reductive and haven’t fully fleshed out this thought, but think the sentiment is accurate)
Individuals experience the world from an individual level — it is easy to go along with any trend that fits your desired narrative because until it is at odds with your individual experience, it doesn’t really matter.
(I’m being a bit reductive and haven’t fully fleshed out this thought, but think the sentiment is accurate)
In my view, macro trends are important if you're trying to formulate policy or debate about it.
Do any of these sources adjust for the fact that people are not reporting crime in many places? When prosecutors don't enforce, police don't investigate, and people don't report crimes.
I feel like Americans perceptions of the economy are accurate. It comes across as very disingenuous to state that how people are feeling aren’t aligned with the facts.
Maybe the data doesn’t tell the whole story or is being carefully curated. We probably shouldn’t try to piece together micro trends with coarse macro level statistics, as there is no guarantee that the macro effect is happening at the micro level.
Maybe the data doesn’t tell the whole story or is being carefully curated. We probably shouldn’t try to piece together micro trends with coarse macro level statistics, as there is no guarantee that the macro effect is happening at the micro level.
Americans have noticed how little the overall economy correlates with their lives. That doesn’t mean they are making accurate statements about the economy, but rather that the economy isn’t something that matters to them.
Many things are done that are hypothetically good for the economy, and bad for most Americans. That’s objectively true but runs into ideological issues and the pocketbooks of those who do benefit.
On the flip side you have things that are bad for the economy and benefit millions of Americans like farm subsidies which are rarely attacked on economic grounds. It’s used more as a political talking point than an actual rational stance.
Many things are done that are hypothetically good for the economy, and bad for most Americans. That’s objectively true but runs into ideological issues and the pocketbooks of those who do benefit.
On the flip side you have things that are bad for the economy and benefit millions of Americans like farm subsidies which are rarely attacked on economic grounds. It’s used more as a political talking point than an actual rational stance.
I think it's just a terminology or definition problem then. I think when the average person talks about if the economy is doing good or bad they are mostly thinking about their own wallet and what they can buy etc and how much things cost compared to previously.
If things keep getting more expensive and they don't feel like they can afford as much as before, they might think that the economy must be doing bad if all these companies need to raise their prices so much just to survive or make a profit.
I think most people would associate things being cheap and plentiful as a good economy, and things being expensive and hard to get (out of stock, long lead times, etc) as a bad economy.
If things keep getting more expensive and they don't feel like they can afford as much as before, they might think that the economy must be doing bad if all these companies need to raise their prices so much just to survive or make a profit.
I think most people would associate things being cheap and plentiful as a good economy, and things being expensive and hard to get (out of stock, long lead times, etc) as a bad economy.
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I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s the coarse, high level statistics provided by the article aren’t in line with what the majority of Americans are experiencing.
For instance, crime may be decreasing, but it could be increasing where there are more people, meaning more people think crime is increasing. I’m not sure if that is true or not, but I feel like it is with perceptions of the economy.
For instance, crime may be decreasing, but it could be increasing where there are more people, meaning more people think crime is increasing. I’m not sure if that is true or not, but I feel like it is with perceptions of the economy.
Crimes way down in populated areas. EX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City#/media/... Note that’s absolute numbers not rates.
I know people who have noticed the massive reduction in crime inside cities, and still think it’s up overall. Part of the issue is news stories harp on bad news when rates are slightly higher than last year, but not when they drop so random noise ends up looking like a steady increase.
I know people who have noticed the massive reduction in crime inside cities, and still think it’s up overall. Part of the issue is news stories harp on bad news when rates are slightly higher than last year, but not when they drop so random noise ends up looking like a steady increase.
I don’t understand the crime one personally. Just a guess:
1) people who migrate to larger cities are exposed to more crime
2) not many people from the 1950s around that can really compare accurately
1) people who migrate to larger cities are exposed to more crime
2) not many people from the 1950s around that can really compare accurately
In my city I could very much believe overall crime is down, but due to recent social events crime is far more spread out. Areas that used to experience very little crime are now seeing far more. Areas that saw crazy levels of crime leveled off some.
Crimes that were basically unheard of in my neighborhood 5 years ago (carjackings and armed muggings, for example) are now a weekly common occurrence. This will absolutely create the impression for residents in my neighborhood that crime is up. It went from something you barely thought about, to something you now plan your night around to not be walking home alone in the dark.
Reporting is also a problem. I know of two people who were violently mugged to the point of one being hospitalized who did not report it to the police since they knew it was utterly pointless to do so.
Crimes that were basically unheard of in my neighborhood 5 years ago (carjackings and armed muggings, for example) are now a weekly common occurrence. This will absolutely create the impression for residents in my neighborhood that crime is up. It went from something you barely thought about, to something you now plan your night around to not be walking home alone in the dark.
Reporting is also a problem. I know of two people who were violently mugged to the point of one being hospitalized who did not report it to the police since they knew it was utterly pointless to do so.
NYC crime only really fell in the 90’s, that’s in living memory for a large chunk of the population and there where noticeable improvements up until COVID.
Though you could be right with how many young people moved to cities after things improved.
Though you could be right with how many young people moved to cities after things improved.
When you all say “crime down not crime up” you are not saying compared to what. If you want to compare against the worst crime levels in American history, congratulations. But crime has been up in major cities due to the George Floyd effect, that’s just reality. The leftist incredulity does not change reality.
Yes, but this starts to get into semantics. If a person complains about the economy (as in the relative-to-the-past QoL of common citizens), and an economist says the economy is great, they're talking past each other by using the word economy differently (colloquial vs formal).
In this situation, though, it's economists who are using an out-of-the-norm term and upset when people don't immediately abandon existing usages. Economy literally means "home management," after all.
That confusion is born of ideology: there's an abstraction, which economists think should capture the usual meaning in a more rigorous way, and when it doesn't, it's upsetting. So it's the people who must be wrong.
That confusion is born of ideology: there's an abstraction, which economists think should capture the usual meaning in a more rigorous way, and when it doesn't, it's upsetting. So it's the people who must be wrong.
The primary definition of the word "economy" in the Oxford is:
> the wealth and resources of a country or region, especially in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services.
so, yes, it does have other meanings too, but it does not "literally mean home management".
> the wealth and resources of a country or region, especially in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services.
so, yes, it does have other meanings too, but it does not "literally mean home management".
The sense of "wealth and resources of a country" (short for political economy) is attested from 1650s That’s long before economists became a thing.
Kings looked about the economy in terms of tax revenue, so it’s not just some arbitrary abstraction.
Kings looked about the economy in terms of tax revenue, so it’s not just some arbitrary abstraction.
> Economy literally means "home management,"
No, it doesn't.
"Etymologically derives from an older term that meant" is not the same as "literally means", though for some reason the confusion of etymology and meaning is common on HN.
No, it doesn't.
"Etymologically derives from an older term that meant" is not the same as "literally means", though for some reason the confusion of etymology and meaning is common on HN.
You're wrong, here. Words are defined by how people use them, and the way people actually use the term "economy" is much closer to the original etymological meaning than how economists use it.
Economists are free to take a term and redefine it for their own purposes, but the public meaning is every bit as valid. They don't have a trump card that invalidates every other meaning because they want to use it to designate a particular abstraction.
Economists are free to take a term and redefine it for their own purposes, but the public meaning is every bit as valid. They don't have a trump card that invalidates every other meaning because they want to use it to designate a particular abstraction.
There’s two definitions of the same word both of which predate economics, but the slightly older one mostly died out.
“Home economics” was used in the 1950’s to distinguish it from the more common use of the term back then, while economics classes don’t need that clarification. Today few people are aware of the older definition.
“Home economics” was used in the 1950’s to distinguish it from the more common use of the term back then, while economics classes don’t need that clarification. Today few people are aware of the older definition.
When do you think it died out? People have used economical to mean things like affordable or thrifty for a long time.
"economical" is a different word than "economy", and also "affordable" or "thrifty", while a related concept to either the original sense of "economy" in English from the 15th C or the even older Greek root (the two are different) is not either off those simply transformed from a noun to an adjective without other shift of meaning.
By died out I meant the household aspect is gone, the original meaning included things like paying a carpenter to fix your roof which just seems like an alien use of the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconomicus Outside any transaction playing a role in the overall economy.
I suspect it shifted with the rise of companies and machinery. So I agree people talk about a ships fuel economy they are referring to efficiency, but the non efficiency aspects of the original definition is absent. Meaning people talking about the economy being good because they got a raise isn’t referring to household budgets but the wider economic system.
I suspect it shifted with the rise of companies and machinery. So I agree people talk about a ships fuel economy they are referring to efficiency, but the non efficiency aspects of the original definition is absent. Meaning people talking about the economy being good because they got a raise isn’t referring to household budgets but the wider economic system.
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If GDP keeps increasing, but the percentage of GDP that flows to labor keeps decreasing, then both of these things are true:
* the economy has grown
* people are worse off
People's feelings about the economy can be both accurate ("we are worse off") and inaccurate ("the economy is worse").
The lesson here is that we need to clear about what the metrics we are using (e.g. GDP or disposable income after housing/health/food/transportation is accounted for) are actually good for.
Rising GDP really does indicate a larger and/or more productive economy. But because of the way wealth is distributed and controlled in the US, a larger and/or more productive economy does not have any direct relationship to individual people's economic situation.
* the economy has grown
* people are worse off
People's feelings about the economy can be both accurate ("we are worse off") and inaccurate ("the economy is worse").
The lesson here is that we need to clear about what the metrics we are using (e.g. GDP or disposable income after housing/health/food/transportation is accounted for) are actually good for.
Rising GDP really does indicate a larger and/or more productive economy. But because of the way wealth is distributed and controlled in the US, a larger and/or more productive economy does not have any direct relationship to individual people's economic situation.
> I feel like Americans perceptions of the economy are accurate.
I think most of the rest of the world would disagree.
I think most of the rest of the world would disagree.
How so?
They think Americans are a bunch of cry babies because they think they are poor when it is obvious that even the poorest among them are wealthier than the majority of the people outside America.
The simpler explanation is that the (well documented) right wing propaganda outlets in the US convinced people that the economy was bad.
The poll asked people for their personal experiences at the micro level, and the respondents said things were great. The macro statistics were also great.
The only negative was people’s perception of the economy.
The poll asked people for their personal experiences at the micro level, and the respondents said things were great. The macro statistics were also great.
The only negative was people’s perception of the economy.
Also the cost of food, the impossibility of affording a home, etc. Not really just "perception" is it?
Peoples financial situation has increased overall, just like mine has. Even though it’s increased and I’m content with the increase I also see that there is less opportunity than there was a few years ago.
> Peoples financial situation has increased overall,
Some people's. Since 2020 our housing doubled. So did our auto insurance. We're housed because my children became adults and added 3 incomes to the household.
With 4 typical incomes we make basic bills + afford knock-on expenses like repair and medical bills. We also make just enough money to pay less for many expenses.
Something that changed all over: Couples generally can't afford living expenses on 2 typical wages.
Some people's. Since 2020 our housing doubled. So did our auto insurance. We're housed because my children became adults and added 3 incomes to the household.
With 4 typical incomes we make basic bills + afford knock-on expenses like repair and medical bills. We also make just enough money to pay less for many expenses.
Something that changed all over: Couples generally can't afford living expenses on 2 typical wages.
If you're earning 6-figure salaries in tech, of course everything seems OK, even if food prices double and the cost of housing gets further out of control.
A lot of people had a very different experience when the post-covid inflation hit hard.
A lot of people had a very different experience when the post-covid inflation hit hard.
The post-covid inflation hit hard everywhere on the planet. It’s not the fault of Democrats.
Ironic to bring in partisan politics when the article was explicitly talking about how deluded things become when you go down that path.
This is hard to take seriously. As someone else pointed, perhaps the leftist propaganda has convinced you of something false and not the other way round as you. You should talk to some real or go to grocery store, this is just denying basic reality. Even many leftists don’t deny the economic reality, they just like to blame the virus; I mean, which one is it?
Or perhaps the well-documented left wing propaganda outlets have you convinced that the economy is good for everyone?
@dang why is this flagged? Can we unflag it?
Very much so, most people have bought into the idea that education is lame and therefor do not apply themselves and let go of their abilities to do things like mathematics, even simple math in their head. Let a lone being able to discern statistical data.
Finances are kept in poor places, such as banks and bitcoin, the stock market instead of better investment strategies like Bonds and ETFs. This allows the rich to eat the poor. As financial knowledge decisions get branded as wall-street-only information, people do not bother to read the details. Even though many brokerage accounts have a $0 minimum with low risk of failure.
There has also been a big fall in literacy rates, again ensuring people cannot read the details.
Now we are stuck with pearl grippers and hysterics preaching absolute nonsense. Personally it has caused a rift between myself and my parents because they chose to hop on the bandwagon and spread lies. While I believe they are entitled to spread lies, I cannot back the incentive to do so.
I can however enable more like minded people who may be uneducated on topics to learn more about brokerage accounts for example, and help alleviate the stigma.
Finances are kept in poor places, such as banks and bitcoin, the stock market instead of better investment strategies like Bonds and ETFs. This allows the rich to eat the poor. As financial knowledge decisions get branded as wall-street-only information, people do not bother to read the details. Even though many brokerage accounts have a $0 minimum with low risk of failure.
There has also been a big fall in literacy rates, again ensuring people cannot read the details.
Now we are stuck with pearl grippers and hysterics preaching absolute nonsense. Personally it has caused a rift between myself and my parents because they chose to hop on the bandwagon and spread lies. While I believe they are entitled to spread lies, I cannot back the incentive to do so.
I can however enable more like minded people who may be uneducated on topics to learn more about brokerage accounts for example, and help alleviate the stigma.
> Finances are kept in poor places, such as banks and bitcoin, the stock market instead of better investment strategies like Bonds and ETFs.
Why do you list stocks in the "poor" places and bonds in the good ones? Why do you see bonds as a better investment than stocks? (Certainly that has not been true historically...)
Why do you list stocks in the "poor" places and bonds in the good ones? Why do you see bonds as a better investment than stocks? (Certainly that has not been true historically...)
Stocks will shift on a whim and rely on hype, same as bitcoin. This can cause a total crash and people losing money. Capital earned on stocks is not cash equivalent therefor if the stock goes down, you lose your initial investment. The risk is insanely high. Compared to Tbills and other cash equivalent bonds, if the yield goes down you still have your money. Take a look at what happened just today when the market opened and China released an LLM model, the AI hype market crashed.
over a large enough time scale, stocks do just fine. if you need to take the money out right this second, yeah, you've a problem, but the SP500 is going to outperform Tbills over a decade. But really, A proper portfolio is going to have a mix of both, as well as other investments, to protect from crashes in one sector.
Stocks here almost certainly means stock-picking, vs investing in broad market-tracking funds (ETFs). Historically, people are terrible at picking good stocks and have much better returns investing in ETFs that track things like the S&P500.
"Hey, I know your granddad bought the family home with his job at the local grocer, and you need to saddle 100K in student debt just to have a shot of buying a home by the time you're 35, but don't be sad, SP500 is at an all-time high!"
Not what I’m suggesting at all. This last December I was talking to a store clerk in Colorado. The store clerk mentioned needing to switch banks because their current bank wasn’t great. I advised instead they look into a Cash Management account at a financial service firm which would give you 5% investment on your money instead of letting it sit in a checking account. Explained that the 5% return was important to helping inflation proof your money on average inflation years. And that you can use it like a checking account, in-fact it was backed by one. You can always move your money back to the bank if dissatisfied.
There are obviously more nuanced things to understand such as “cash equivilent bonds/etfs” but that is what they should figure out.
It’s about undoing the stigmas not solving the housing crisis.
We keep people in the dark with this belief that financial strategies aren’t to be talked about publicly.
There are obviously more nuanced things to understand such as “cash equivilent bonds/etfs” but that is what they should figure out.
It’s about undoing the stigmas not solving the housing crisis.
We keep people in the dark with this belief that financial strategies aren’t to be talked about publicly.
Most Americans don't have enough money in reserve for 5% interest on their bank balance to make much of a difference†. If you're living paycheck to paycheck then you spend all of your money before it has a chance to accumulate any interest. I obviously don't know the financial situation of the store clerk you were talking to. But if you are trying to get typical American retail workers excited about 5% interest, you are probably a bit disconnected from the financial reality of their lives.
†https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/24/how-much-money-americans-hav...
†https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/24/how-much-money-americans-hav...
I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck and I definitely still had a few dollars to get the ball rolling after each paycheck. Claiming that you can’t is exactly the defeatist attitude that will keep you financially disabled.
People with less than $500 can still start gaining that 5% yield, and it is better than the bank taking that 5% and eating it. If you don’t get that 5%, the bank will. Furthermore most people can easily calculate 5% and make the decision themselves if you don’t actively discourage them as your reply suggests.
From the article you linked:
> This leaves them vulnerable to unexpected expenses, underscoring the importance of having an emergency fund, if they’re able to build one.
The rest of the article goes on how to vet yourself to start building an emergency fund. A great emergency fund would be a very liquid, low tax, investment option. Like cash equivalent Bonds and ETFs.
If someone has a bank account with $1 it would still be better in a Fidelity Cash Management account gaining a yield than it would be in a bank not gaining at all.
People with less than $500 can still start gaining that 5% yield, and it is better than the bank taking that 5% and eating it. If you don’t get that 5%, the bank will. Furthermore most people can easily calculate 5% and make the decision themselves if you don’t actively discourage them as your reply suggests.
From the article you linked:
> This leaves them vulnerable to unexpected expenses, underscoring the importance of having an emergency fund, if they’re able to build one.
The rest of the article goes on how to vet yourself to start building an emergency fund. A great emergency fund would be a very liquid, low tax, investment option. Like cash equivalent Bonds and ETFs.
If someone has a bank account with $1 it would still be better in a Fidelity Cash Management account gaining a yield than it would be in a bank not gaining at all.
> I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck and I definitely still had a few dollars to get the ball rolling after each paycheck. Claiming that you can’t is exactly the defeatist attitude that will keep you financially disabled.
2010s were a decade of paycheck to paycheck years for me+kids. We frequently ate plain white rice (only) because there wasn't enough money for a can of beans. Or 1 onion. Sometimes I couldn't swing a bag of rice. The kids had a couple of regular meals when school was in session.
I suggest your circumstances aren't as universal as they may seem to you.
2010s were a decade of paycheck to paycheck years for me+kids. We frequently ate plain white rice (only) because there wasn't enough money for a can of beans. Or 1 onion. Sometimes I couldn't swing a bag of rice. The kids had a couple of regular meals when school was in session.
I suggest your circumstances aren't as universal as they may seem to you.
And you didn’t have a bank account with money in it? Did you cash your paychecks at a check cashing service (giving them a cut?) and spend all the cash? What were your expenses during that time that ate all your paycheck? Surely not just rice.
That comment was directed at the previous poster’s remark than since 60% of Americans have $500 or less in their bank account that must mean all 60% have no money to save and that my advice was bad. That is the defeatist attitude. I’m definitely not insisting that some portion aren’t entirely living paycheck to paycheck.
The point of my comments is to acknowledge that people should seek out return for their money instead of keeping it in a bank. Not to squabble over who is worse off.
That comment was directed at the previous poster’s remark than since 60% of Americans have $500 or less in their bank account that must mean all 60% have no money to save and that my advice was bad. That is the defeatist attitude. I’m definitely not insisting that some portion aren’t entirely living paycheck to paycheck.
The point of my comments is to acknowledge that people should seek out return for their money instead of keeping it in a bank. Not to squabble over who is worse off.
> And you didn’t have a bank account with money in it?
I had a bank account. Each month it eventually came to have the exact amount of the rent in it. Most months, anyway.
> Did you cash your paychecks at a check cashing service...
On a few occasions where utilities would be cut off in less than a day, I used a check cashing service. Specifically Ace as their fee was lowest.
> (giving them a cut?) and spend all the cash?
On those occasions I blew it on water or power.
> What were your expenses during that time that ate all your paycheck. Surely not just rice.
Not just rice, true. My expenses were rent, water, power, fuel and minimal auto insurance (until the van was stolen anyway). Water and power outweighed food because disconnected utilities were CPS threat vectors.
> The point of my comments is to acknowledge that people should seek out return for their money instead of keeping it in a bank.
For those that make more than 100% of their minimal bills sure. For the millions of us who had to live otherwise, keeping non-existent money in a bank seems unrealistic.
I had a bank account. Each month it eventually came to have the exact amount of the rent in it. Most months, anyway.
> Did you cash your paychecks at a check cashing service...
On a few occasions where utilities would be cut off in less than a day, I used a check cashing service. Specifically Ace as their fee was lowest.
> (giving them a cut?) and spend all the cash?
On those occasions I blew it on water or power.
> What were your expenses during that time that ate all your paycheck. Surely not just rice.
Not just rice, true. My expenses were rent, water, power, fuel and minimal auto insurance (until the van was stolen anyway). Water and power outweighed food because disconnected utilities were CPS threat vectors.
> The point of my comments is to acknowledge that people should seek out return for their money instead of keeping it in a bank.
For those that make more than 100% of their minimal bills sure. For the millions of us who had to live otherwise, keeping non-existent money in a bank seems unrealistic.
Sure that is a much larger issue about wage stagnation than it is about ability to save then. It sounds like you were trying to do more than the minimum when it came to keeping money.
If you maintain a $1000 average bank balance (which is at the higher end of ‘paycheck to paycheck’) then 5% interest is $50/year. It’s worth having, but people aren’t going to put time and effort into getting it when they have bigger problems to worry about.
Why not? It takes maybe a week to set up? And most of that week would be waiting for a funds transfer. It costs $0 to open and you get atm fee reimbursement and no international transaction fees. I get that people are busy but if you’re unhappy about something and you can change it, then why not carve out time to do so. People have plenty of time to seek new employment, this is just as critical.
You’re just raging at people at this point. Most people don’t optimize their finances to that extent. Sorry. An extra $50 a year (in the most optimistic case) is not going to protect anyone against inflation, as you were originally suggesting.
Sorry you must work for a bank or something?
How am I raging? I’m passively telling people ways to better their lives. They can choose to use the info or not. You are the one raging against the idea of a better world with happier people. An extra $50 certainly does help people living paycheck to paycheck. The point of my commentary is that people should be optimizing their finances more and we should be discussing options publicly. Your insistence that it’s futile is mind bogglingly stupid.
How am I raging? I’m passively telling people ways to better their lives. They can choose to use the info or not. You are the one raging against the idea of a better world with happier people. An extra $50 certainly does help people living paycheck to paycheck. The point of my commentary is that people should be optimizing their finances more and we should be discussing options publicly. Your insistence that it’s futile is mind bogglingly stupid.
It's not futile to try to get interest on a tiny bank balance and I explicitly said that it's not futile. (I said that the hypothetical $50 was 'worth having'.) The thing is that
people on low wages already have to think about money all the time. They will be reluctant to spend even more time thinking about it unless there's likely to be a big payoff. I think you are vastly overestimating how much money a typical American has lying around that has the potential to collect interest.
Also, the current interest rate on a Fidelity cash management account appears to be around 2.2%, not 5%.
Also, the current interest rate on a Fidelity cash management account appears to be around 2.2%, not 5%.
Well then you would appear to be wrong because buying SGOV, and FDLXX (cash equivalent bonds that track tbills) will give you closer to 5.0% (creating a high yield checking account for daily use). What you are quoting is an APY on a deposit sweep. There are clearly two options to get any % back.[0]
Even if you foolish choose the 2.2% option you would still yield more return on your money than a bank checking account which probably gives you less than 0.01% return.
You can optimize further by cutting Fidelity out of the equation and purchase Tbills on treasurydirect.gov straight from the government creating a high yield savings account with monthly yield.
Even better, Tbills are tax-free at the state and local level.
[0] https://www.fidelity.com/spend-save/fidelity-cash-management...
Even if you foolish choose the 2.2% option you would still yield more return on your money than a bank checking account which probably gives you less than 0.01% return.
You can optimize further by cutting Fidelity out of the equation and purchase Tbills on treasurydirect.gov straight from the government creating a high yield savings account with monthly yield.
Even better, Tbills are tax-free at the state and local level.
[0] https://www.fidelity.com/spend-save/fidelity-cash-management...
Ah, well that I totally agree with. I think it's a cultural issue in a lot of the West tbh. It is considered impolite or improper to discuss financials with friends, neighbours, even family sometimes. You also see that aversion in Westerners discomfort with bargaining in marketplaces. Like with most of our ills, I blame the British.
Respectfully, this shows more how you see unmoored from reality than it does that you are mathematically superior to the plebes. You think the 5% is going to have any success significant effect on the store clerk that is not making much and has to spend the majority of his/her money, living paycheck-to-paycheck? It’s peanuts. It doesn’t inflation proof their money, let’s be honest and not smug about it. I’m sure the people you are interacting with are not totally unaware of the benefit of saving money. The “poors” aren’t all that stupid.
Not all of them, sure, but there's a lot of money being spent on lottery tickets and scratchers and $700 shoes and other nonsense that doesn't make sense to me. Caleb Hammer on YouTube interviews people with really bad spending habits for his Financial Audit channel and it really seems like, sorry to say, that some of them really are stupid.
Wow. I didn’t say that at all. I think the smug people here are those telling me I can’t give advice and help make a difference how I see fit. That passing information is somehow abusive? Get bent.
If you can make someone believe something, you can use that belief to get them to act against their own self interest. This isn't even a controversial thing for most people to understand. The canonical example that illustrates this was Jim Jones making his followers believe that their best choice was to kill themselves and their children by drinking cyanide laced Kool-aid.
This effect is weaponized through persuasive narratives being repeatedly presented. Once the belief is set, the narratives add in the action that is required next.
That the "media" is the primary tool of setting this narrative is, and always has been, the case. One of the reasons the very first amendment to the US constitution protected the right to a 'free press' was to explicitly allow the media to present narratives that were different than what the government wished to present. Further that they could do this without fear of reprisal.
The "media" has its own agendas and influences, we have a shortage of voices which are both independent and trusted. It is informative to watch the response by established media when such voices emerge.