Americans' opinions about the state of the economy have diverged from reality

“Our results should assuage concerns that a vibecession today spells a recession tomorrow. The gap between sentiment and economic reality has finally stabilised after growing steadily from 2020-22. Bad vibes may be the new normal.”<p>The factors long correlated with high consumer sentiment still predict market outcomes (per the article) while not predicting consumer sentiment. The link between market conditions and reported confidence seems severed since 2020.<p>Wondering whether this is a disinformation&#x2F;propaganda story in that rampant disinformation&#x2F;propaganda are souring sentiment. Or, a polling error of some kind. Or, something related to a significantly divergent event (global pandemic in modernity) upending long associations.<p>Would be interesting to see a comparison between various things following the 1918 pandemic and this pandemic. Naively, I suspect market concentration and other factors against labor market equilibrium exist today that did not exist in 1918.

Odd, I remember hearing the same thing in 2007. Then the Great Recession happened and those voices disappeared and completely forgot statements they had made. Interesting though that at that time, it was the Republicans saying the Democrats were trying to engineer a recession for political reasons, now the roles are reversed and the public cares more about the financial realities of their lives than the pronouncements from Washington that everything is going great.

The economy many Americans are living in is not the one being reported on by the media. &quot;Reality&quot; is a completely different debate.

The article postulates that something changed from the Covid pandemic to cause the divergence. I think a more plausible alternate explanation is the cause is a concerted and successful effort to spread misinformation for political reasons.

-edit-<p>Sometimes we swing and miss.