President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.
Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception. The divergence could be a decisive factor in whether the Democrat secures a second term next year. Republicans are seizing on the dissatisfaction to skewer Biden, while the White House is finding less success as it tries to highlight economic progress.
“Things are getting better and people think things are going to get worse — and that’s the most dangerous piece of this," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has worked with Biden. Lake said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.
“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it,” she said.
I just don’t think this happens that much necessarily though. Mostly because of necessities taking up such a huge percentage of peoples budgets.
I also find myself and see others kind of have a “I Like X more, but not enough to spend Y for it”. This doesn’t necessarily imply it’s a utility curve, I often find myself thinking it’s more of an anchoring psychology effect. I.e. you at age X get used to a Combo meal at the local fast food place costing $10. If it “frog boils” over say 20 years to $20, you’ll bitch about how “back in my day”… If it doubles in a year, like many things have - it just seems way more like overcharging and the utility curve is all out of whack.
I’ll tell you one thing, the service at fast food places has fallen so much where I live that if I can’t get their app to work to pre-order so I can waltz in and just grab it, I’ll go somewhere else. And the cost has gone up so much that I’ve been actively comparing to fast casual app based pick ups or hell, sit downs because the food is usually somewhat better and they’re often no longer massively more expensive or slower.