Imperceptive

There's a new poll out, Anthony, a Harris poll, showing a huge misperception amongst Americans on how the economy is doing. 56% of Americans think the county's in recession; it's not. 49% believe the S&P 500 stock index is down for the year, even though it went up by about 24% in 2023 and is up again this year. An 49% believe that unemployment's at a 50-year high; it's actually at a 50-year low.

So there is this kind of misperception in America about the state of the U.S. economy under Joe Biden.

Katty Kay, The Rest Is Politics, U.S.

I'm going to quibble with Ms. Kay's understanding that many Americans misperceive the current state of the national economy. Mainly because the word "misperceive" presumes, at least in my mind, that people are actually looking at the economy. I would submit that what's actually in play here is a combination of people's personal/local circumstances and simple partisanship. The latter especially in the age of Donald Trump.

If one is a Republican partisan, of course the nation is in recession, the stock market is in free fall and unemployment has skyrocketed; there's a Democrat in the White House, and Democrats have control of the Senate. It's a wonder that anything is still standing. And as the political class labels any information to the contrary as deliberate lies on the part of government agencies and media outlets, as a means of demonstrating their support for Donald Trump (and, by extension, the people who support him) the echo chamber is in full swing, with people competing to gain status by reinforcing the message that the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress are undermining the nation though gross incompetence or deliberate evil.

And even for non-partisans, since the most recent round of inflation started after President Biden took office, it clear must be because of something he did. And just as importantly, many people seem to be under the mistaken impression that end of inflation is deflation. Expecting that prices (although not their paychecks) will revert to 2019 levels, people still think that the relatively high inflation of 2020 to 2022 persists. The steady drip of reporting on layoffs in the technology sector isn't helping things, even though it's nowhere near indicative of the broader economy.

This isn't a result of looking at the various economic indicators and drawing incorrect conclusions; this is a matter of not looking at those indicators. It's simply a measure of people's current levels of economic optimism. If Donald Trump wins this November's election, the shoe is going to be on the other foot. Democratic partisans will become pessimistic, and that economic pessimism will prove to be impervious to the facts on the ground; while any hiccups that occur will be laid at his feet, no matter when the policy or policies that caused the difficulties were actually put into place.

The average member of the public doesn't judge the performance of the economy based on statistics and data. The judgement is made on how they personally feel at the time they are asked. Accordingly, perceptions of anything broader than a person's own opinions don't really play much of a role.