No Great Mystery
7th March 2024
on the case when it comes to solving one of the most perplexing mysteries of our day: How can the economy be so good, and yet Americans think it’s so bad?
A recent Harris poll found that just 31 percent of registered voters believe that the economy is “on the right track.” That’s the same percentage (in the same poll) who said that Joe Biden is “showing he is fit to be president” rather than “showing he is too old.” Yet the press continues to assure readers that the economy is steaming along like a powerful locomotive.
“The economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good,” the New York Times’s Paul Krugman enthuses, as the American “economy continues to look like an amazing success story.” The title of a Financial Times article emphasizes the “strange lack of electoral reward for the success of Bidenomics.” CNN’s MJ Lee reports that the president himself is confused by the “significant gulf” between an economy that seems to be “humming along” and “the public’s stubbornly grim sentiment.”