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I think there’s the real world issue that people always see the economy in personal terms, as whether they themselves are better or worse off. And to the degree that an individual has higher costs without getting raises to match (keep in mind that raises aren’t evenly distributed and those in high-demand jobs are getting more raises than the rest of the people) they’re going to react to that. And they aren’t wrong. How the economy works for you is heavily dependent on where you live, what you do, and where you sit on the dominance hierarchy. So while they’re not right about the general United States economic health stats, they’re also not wrong about how that economy is working for them.
A thousand times this. It seems like every person I talk to who thinks the economy is doing well is because they're doing well, and every person who thinks it sucks is looking at moths fly out of their wallet, and hearing the economy makes them feel like they are losing their minds.
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