Post #3416068

The way the US measures "The Economy" is like trying to judge the weather using only a thermometer and nothing else. So when people say "The Economy is doing great", they aren't entirely factually *wrong*: The measurement our institutions have decided is important does, in fact, say things are going well. The problem is that it's so hilariously incomplete that it's comparable to looking at a thermometer that says it's 80F (27C) and declaring it's a perfect sunny day for outdoor fun; sure, maybe that would be the case if a bunch of other factors were also true, but temperature alone doesn't provide enough information to make that assessment. Maybe it's oppressively humid, maybe it's cloudy, maybe it's raining, or worse. Could be *anything*. So when some talking head declares that everything is Fine Actually and it must be the people who are wrong, treat them with about the same level of credibility as a weather reporter who says that it *must* be great beach weather because the thermometer says it's the perfect temperature, *IN THE MIDDLE OF A HURRICANE*. And here's the really important part: That's not just true now, that has *always* been true. Even in "normal" times. Even when things were actually doing "well". Because if you measure the weather only using a thermometer, your results *will* loosely correlate with the actual weather conditions outside, but that correlation is very coincidental. So it's not that everyone suddenly forgot how to measure "the economy", it's that THEY NEVER KNEW TO BEGIN WITH. If you or anyone in your family has *ever* heard politicians or reporters say "the economy is looking good" and felt like that accurately reflected your own life experience, that resemblance was *always* coincidental. The difference now is that we're in the middle of a hurricane and the powers that be are still looking only at the thermometer, utterly baffled about why nobody's at the beach. They were always only looking at the thermometer, it's just that the uselessness of that measurement to most people's day-to-day lives is a lot less obvious when it happens to not be raining.