Chris Carollo

It's worth noting that the ICS does include questions about opinions on the broader economy and projections about the future, not just current personal conditions.

This is Will's whole thesis -- that people's media and social environments determine how they feel about things like "the economy" far more than their own personal material conditions.

Multiple Jobholders as a Percent of Employed Multiple Jobholders as a Percent of Employed

Life expectancy is rising again post-Covid and the peak of the opioid crisis.

Two-income households have declined since the mid-90s.

fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12...

There are for sure disparities between the metrics, and some of those are for good reasons (ie. a large portion of the population is not impacted by current housing prices).

But it's not like BLS "doesn't include home prices" -- a significant portion of it is based on housing costs.

I think people do feel that in their real lives, but they don't feel that about the economy as a whole, because that opinion isn't driven by their own experiences.

And I think you're sorely mistaken if you think previous generations had better median lifestyles than we do today.

How does the Consumer Price Index account for the cost of housing? | Brookings The Hutchins Center explains how the BLS currently measures changes in the cost of housing for both renters and homeowners.

It does not include literally "house prices", but as the article explains, it *does* include a substantial factor for housing costs, whether that's rental or mortgage payments.

About a third of CPI is housing (or "shelter" more broadly).
www.brookings.edu/articles/how...

Wages have kept pace -- and more! -- for things overall, which includes those essentials. That's the initial claim, and it's true.

Is that the case for every person? No. Is it for every item or category? No. But overall, it's true.

Yes really

"Telling people their personal real world experience is wrong" is very far from the initial claim that started the thread.

It does include housing!

I think it’s better than any other measure, yeah.

To the degree that the middle class has been “hollowed out”, it’s been overwhelmingly because they got richer, not poorer.

CPI is literally designed to capture the whole story (rather than, say, cherry picking specific elements…)

You’re literally replying to a chart that shows how incomes have not stagnated (and particularly not since 2004).

The CPI absolutely includes housing.

If there was a generational stagnation of purchasing power, it didn’t happen during the bout of post-Covid inflation though.

They are, in aggregate, less overpriced than they ever have been in history.

(This was true as of 2024, ymmv this year)

The obvious linkage is that it's what they tell pollsters influenced their vote.

The problems is that people read that as "actual inflation/prices" and not "the prevailing narrative about inflation/prices", which may or may not line up with actual inflation/prices.

The "national party image" is more about the quality of the team as a whole though, and dovetails with a lot of what you've said about media and narrative and shared social perception of the parties (and how people's identities fit into those parties).

That's sort of the point though -- people thought that Trump was *more moderate* than Harris was.

How is this different than Fox News telling people to believe that immigration is suddenly a huge issue? Basically: how does your community coalesce around an idea? It's got to come from somewhere, and places like Fox News is a major one of those sources.

It entirely depends on the politician though. Bernie campaigns on a ton of popular stuff and feels genuine. Mamdani feels genuine. Newsom goes were the wind blows and it always feels fake.

It's not THAT hard to make a genuinely-felt case for all of these issues.

Matt talks about Plantner a lot here and I think you're mischaracterizing his support pretty badly as shifting based on the reveal of the tattoo: www.slowboring.com/p/building-a.... He's also pretty positive on Mamdani there too.

An obvious "psychological impact": there being a decades-high bout of inflation makes establishing a narrative about inflation and affordability much easier.

Yes, the narrative itself was the the thing that ultimately mattered, but material conditions made that easier to stick.

Acknowledging that the 2022 and 2024 electorates were different is not p-hacking.

My overall view is that “inflation” was a big issue in 2024, less in 2022 due to more informed voters and it being in the wake of Roe repeal, and that “inflation” is easier to make a big issue when there is a real bout of inflation.

The problem is that there’s just not much data to work with and so many things are coupled. This is basically the first big-inflation-in-the-age-of-social-media election so far, so it’s hard to be very confident about anything.

By making your opponent seem extreme while avoiding talking about your own (unpopular) positions?

He downplayed HIS views on abortion in order to appear more moderate than he really was.

The way I see it is that so long as you say MAGA, groups on the right leave you alone.

Trying to come up with unpopular positions that groups on the right force their candidates to publicize and mostly failing.