Comment by kasey_junk
4 months ago
“ Many people have criticized the CPI and inflation rate as an inaccurate measure of the cost of living. Housing prices are crazy in many areas”
Do you have any ‘real’ inflation measures that show that the middle and lower middle class didn’t improve more in that period than any time since pre-Reagan? I’ve looked and can’t find any but am definitely not an economist.
It’s well studied that grocery and gas prices have an outsized impact on consumer sentiment going back a very long time, what’s new is there seems to be a disconnect between economic outcomes, consumer sentiment and consumer behaviors.
I think it’s going to be a huge point of study to figure out why people thought they were doing worse than they were but continued to spend like things were rosy.
> Do you have any ‘real’ inflation measures that show that the middle and lower middle class didn’t improve more in that period than any time since pre-Reagan?
I wasn't disputing that specifically.
> I think it’s going to be a huge point of study to figure out why people thought they were doing worse than they were
Here's a recent article by a former US Comptroller who argues that people weren't wrong:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-...
> continued to spend like things were rosy.
I think that's a strange way of putting it.
In general, I wouldn't take election outcomes to be a reflection of some cultural zeitgeist. Elections happen in the US on a single day, and if the election were held again today, the outcome might be different. In any case, the elections are usually quite close, depending on small percentages in battleground states. Little movements can make a big difference. My own state of Wisconsin has had a margin of victory of under 1% for the past 3 Presidential elections.
I wasn’t talking about elections. Lowered consumer sentiment used to be predictive of lowered consumer spending (especially on no -essential expenditures). It’s decoupled now. And consumer spending was absolutely bonkers for years after the sentiment suggested it shouldn’t be.
Consumer sentiment used to be if not directly correlated to broader economic figures, directionally the same. That stopped being true.
And this has been beyond just single methodology reports. Commercial data and polls broadly said the same thing as the non-profit data and polls which broadly matched governmental numbers.
Some fundamental change has happened and if it doesn’t revert I think it’s going to be a big point of academic research for decades to come.