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.
The poll underscored peopleâs 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% â far from inflationâs 40-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 â triggering a stock market rally that pushed the Dow Jones index to a record high.
A recession is generally defined by a decrease in economic activity, typically measured as gross domestic product (GDP), over two successive quarters, although in the US the National Bureau of Economic Research (NEBR) has the final say. US GDP has been rising over the last few years, barring a brief contraction in 2022, which the NEBR did not deem a recession.
The only recent recession was in 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the US economy has grown considerably. Unemployment has also hit historic lows, wages have been going up and consumer spending has been strong.
Now we know how uninformed the USA public is about USA economics.
Ah, but that is the key point. Tell they are still in a Covid 2019 recession as a result of bad economic decisions in 2017-2020 to destroy the US economy with (political party omitted) supply side economicsâjust like the start of the Great Depression(s) of (political party omitted) the 1800s, 1921, 1929-1940, 1973, 1980-82, 2001-2008, and the current 2017-2024 recession they claim is happening.
Or they are consuming the wrong news - and it is bipartisan.
Trump supporters and voters with less education were most likely to attribute responsibility for abortion bans to Mr. Biden, but the misperception existed across demographic groups. Twelve percent of Democrats hold Mr. Biden responsible, according to New York Times/Siena College polls in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin and a Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll in Pennsylvania.
âI think the buck stops with him, so he had the ability to fight that, and thatâs not what Iâm hearing that he did,â said Terri Yonemura, 62, an abortion rights supporter in Las Vegas who said she would not vote for Mr. Trump, but is unsure about Mr. Biden, so may not vote at all.
I guess that low-information voter thinks Biden can overrule SCOTUS - or so she heard? There is probably some leftist site out there that is actually promoting such.
On a bit of a tangent, I watched a clip yesterday of a guy who blamed 9/11 on Obama - claimed Obama was not in the office enough to stop it. This guy was clearly not smart enough to come up with that bit of misinformation on his own.
Geee⌠I wonder whoâs mostly responsible for messaging? For educating the electorate? For, in effect, depicting and defining things for The Public? Geee⌠I wonderâŚ?
True. What it also says is that a lot of people arenât having a good time economically.
DB2
This can be said, anytime anywhere. Remember the 1930âs? Tons of out-of-workers and buddy-have-ya-got-a-dimers. And some people made millions. And how about the Go-Go 90âs? First time the general public heard about actual Billionaires. Lots of high tech money being made. And many many many people where serially thrown out of work when all those flash-in-the-pan software companies flashed and flamed-out. So, yes, I guess some people are always out of work no matter how good things get. But itâs not the same people.
It isnât showing up in the numbers they are still spending. The jobless numbers are still at a historical low. The stock market is at a historical high. Inflation coming down.
I think it has to do with interest rates. Most people liked interest rates at 1 percent which everyone who understands anything knows that is not sustainable.
It is probably safe to say âeveryoneâ wants more money for themselves, and everything they want, to be cheaper, because they want more. Sort of like farmers who always declare the weather to be the worst ever, no matter what the weather is, and cry about how hard it is to make ends meet as a farmer.
You have to be optimistic, this to shall pass. They canât keep the lie going, when the cult turns on the leaders, it gets very ugly for the cult. It always turns.
Itâs not just being uninformed, itâs also a reluctance to learn and be open to differing opinions. I remembering the good olâ days when the stupid people knew enough to keep their dumb mouth shut, or risk embarrassment.
âItâs better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubtâ has been replaced with âSay it loud, Iâm dumb and Iâm proudâ
What I love is the number of people who think that theyâre doing fine economically but everyone else is having a tough time so the economy is lousy. It goes back a lot to social media and the influence that certain public figures have over us all.
An article in the Atlantic several years ago remarked on a part of this phenomenon and it seems it has only intensified since.
Oh my, of course they can. Fox News has been at it since the 1990âs and shows no signs of slowing down; indeed itâs proliferating into Alex Jones and similar all over the place.
This cult is not going to turn on its leaders. It happened in the past because people were forced to confront the truth; that is no longer true. With the kinds of news silos that have been erected no one ever needs find out anything that doesnât fit their already established beliefs. And the amount of mis- and disinformation pingponging around is proof of it.
Irregardless of the news, people know how theyâre doing. They might not follow the stock market or the index of leading economic indicators, but they do know about their rent/mortgage payment or the cost of buying a used car. Later comes the question of causation and blame. A vast majority of people have no idea about fiscal stimulus or the state of the Fedâs balance sheet (or even what it is).
âTheyâ is everyone, though. So I think âtheyâ can.
Weâve kind of sorted into groups advocating very different economic policy models. Group âAâ believes that the current economic system is broken, and that dramatic - even radical - changes are necessary for the economy to genuinely benefit everyone. Group âBâ believes that the current economic system is really good, and opposes radical change.
So when Group âAâ is in a position to implement its policies, everyone is telling people that while things might be good for them, the economy is bad for everyone else. Group âAâ is leading, but they need people to believe that other folks are suffering under the economy - else their policies are unnecessary. Group âBâ needs people to believe that the economy is bad, too, else they canât get into power to stop Group âA.â No one has an incentive to tell people that the relatively strong economic position that they themselves feel is actually pretty widespread.
Everything has a beginning and ending. Just going back to the civil war, Spanish American War, World War 1, World War 2, Korea War, Vietnam war. On and ON and ON.
So tell me why do you think this will go on forever? When have you seen a populist movement that has never burned out?
I think you need a Group âCâ - people who believe the economic system isnât completely broken, but realize that it needs to be tweaked. As with most social systems, responsible moderates can bring the extremes to the table.
Yes, no one here thinks everything is fixed in place forever, thanks for the note. But populist leaders can go on for an awfully long time; Castro lasted half a century. Huey Long for less than that, although he was eventually assassinated. Andrew Jackson did untold damage in his fairly short reign.
How long was Juan Peron in place?
Fine if you want to I wait 20 or 30 years. Some of us have a shorter timetable.
I would say the US tariff war upon China is populist in nature.
2018 toâŚongoing.
How could the US tariff war be populist? Its US [worker class] vs THEM [elites]. In the USA globalization crushed manufacturing jobs and US supply chain jobs -not solely but in conjunction with automation.
Those unaffected receiving much lower pricing on goods. The tariff war & return to the US of certain sectors protect US jobs & products; keeping out foreign competition.