Arin Dube thinks he knows the answer to an ongoing issue:
I am tried of this debate because the answer is yes and we should stop debating it https://t.co/47B2nG6JOL
— Arin Dube (@arindube) November 24, 2023
In other words, the answer is yes to both questions. People are concerned about their actual conditions and social media is making it worse.
But that's wrong! The answer is no to both questions. The evidence is overwhelming that actual conditions are pretty good and that, generally speaking, people know it.
But— they are being overwhelmed by reports telling them how bad things are. And while it's fashionable to blame everything like this on social media these days, Facebook isn't at fault here. Fox News is, along with the rest of the conservative noise machine. You can't get through a day of Fox News without hearing at least a dozen times that Joe Biden has wrecked the economy and produced ruinous inflation.
Why does it take so long to hammer this into people's heads? We know people aren't very upset about their personal situations because we've asked them. And we know that Fox News and the rest of the gang are infinitely more influential than Twitter or TikTok, especially among anyone over the age of 20. Come on, folks.
Facebook is a vector for the spread of right wing misinformation, Kevin.
FB is the syringe that delivers FN.
We should know by now that every piece of disinformation is something that should be hammered, over and over. Of course, we disbelieve or ignore the real and potential good stuff. Human nature....
The New York Times
The Washington Post
NPR
If these outlets were doing their jobs, we wouldn't have to worry about Fox News.
All three of those organizations are working hard to make sure the upper income tax cuts stay in place and that no one anywhere realizes we can solve Social Security by raising the income cap.
I won't go so far as to say they are pro-Trump, but they are definitely anti-Biden & anti-Democratic Party.
Kevin's not wrong that Republicans are fed a diet of daily lies. But he's become a bit too narrow-focused on Fox and its close cousins: Democrats aren't going to get more than a tiny sliver of voters who usually vote Republican.
But if you look at polls of late, it certainly appears that Biden is getting walloped among persuadable voters (15% of the electorate). And those folks are the one slice of the population that still watches the big three news networks and CNN.
MSM coverage of the economy has really been shitty.
Not necessarily. Generally speaking the truth is boring and the lie is entertaining and even exciting. Hence people like Fox which is specialized on entertaining people by telling lies to them.
In this instance it's not just Fox News and the rest of the conservative noise machine. For the first two years of Biden's presidency, it was hard to find a story anywhere in the media that didn't qualify unambiguously positive news about economic data with a warning that it was probably only temporary, and many/most economists expected a recession in about a Friedman unit's time. It was only earlier this year that the Washington Press Rabble reluctantly let go of the recession-is-just-around-the-corner meme and decided instead to talk about how old Joe Biden is and how Democrats are increasingly in a panic about it.
Kevin, economics may say that one should compare the price of a Big Mac today to what it was before in adjusted dollars, but the average Joan doesn’t keep a conversion table in her head. She remembers the price in the dollars of the day.
Yes, people compare in terms of nominal dollars. Using inflation adjusted dollars in order to look better will just come across as too clever by half.
This effect is probably helped by the fact that many people alive have not experienced any episode of serious inflation (anyone born after about 1960). They don't understand the concept of inflation and expect nominal prices to go down to previous levels (of course they think the opposite when it comes the wages...).
The yield curve has been negative for quite a long time. Probably not because of Fox News or right wing voters. The view that the Fed will raise interest rates to the point of causing a recession is a rational interpretation of the yield curve.
Does that make anyone worse off this instant? No. Should it give them cause for concern? Yes.
At least once a week and for at least the last 18 months, I’ve read right here a recession is coming. I should have lost my job over a year ago. I’m afraid I’ll lose my job in the next few months. Or so I’m told by reliable sources.
I think there's something deeper going on here than what big macs cost and how sticky prices are.
The points about nominal pricing and the youngs never experiencing even modest inflation are important, but all of this fits into the bigger narrative that Fox has been pushing and that's hanging in the air implicitly over normal media coverage, which is an undefined sense that people can't get ahead any more. America is about getting ahead if it's about anything, and the narrative is that you can't get ahead anymore.
It's a perfect Fox-ite narrative because it's completely non-specific and unprovable *and* it accommodates almost any single supposed data point. Rising prices stop you from getting ahead. Sneaky immigrants stop you from getting ahead. Woke stops you from getting ahead. Affirmative action stops you from getting ahead. Elites won't let you get ahead. All those people on welfare stop you from getting ahead. The Biden crime family won't let you get ahead. Red tape won't let you get ahead. Crime won't let you get ahead. Covid wouldn't let us get ahead, and covid restrictions made it ten times worse. And so on, ad infinitum-- no logic, just the assertion, and everything supports it if you don't think about it.
And it becomes a general feeling, a mood (a malaise if you will) that's just in the air, furthered by almost every story about bad stuff no matter where it runs. It's impervious to facts, and pointing out that people are feeling pretty good about where they are now doesn't help-- even if they're in good shape now they still want to get ahead and are continually being told they can't, and that's what they're feeling.
This is insidious messing with the deepest parts of the American psyche. It's trump's pitch.