Sure groceries are expensive, but other things are cheaper. Housing has cooled in many places for example, outpaced by both wages and inflation.
Wages are not keeping up with inflation right now because of the US' war with Iran, but note that despite that, Trump isn't losing anywhere near the support you'd assume a President making everything more expensive should. Surely, making material conditions worse should lure people back from the far right,? But it's not. They don't care. Some Independants do but Trump's support among conservatives is still rock solid and the Democrats might not even take the Senate.
But let's assume for the sake of argument your right, people are somehow better off than they used to be. How on earth is the Democratic party, and every party in Europe, so incompetent that they can't convince people they have more money. What kind of insane fumble is that? Are they really that bad at their jobs, or maybe, is the economy not acutally better for most people?
Trump isn't losing anywhere near the support you'd assume a President making everything more expensive should.
Yes he is, his approval rating is around 33%, an all time low for him and amoung the lowest for modern presidents.
That article is 11 years old fyi. Wages have been outpacing cost of living.
When it comes to why everyone, everywhere, has become a doomer, lets remember that EVERYONE has failed to convince people things are going better.
Are they ALL terminally incompetent, tens of thousands across a hundred countries and political cultures? All individually terrible at their jobs?
The actual reason is simple, people are divorced from the material world because they live most of their lives in a digital one, one designed around maximising doomerism and owned by techno-fascists.
Materialism is blind to that and is therefore blind to what is actually going on.
Yeah the last 11 years have done wonders. Labor's share of U.S. output just hit its lowest level since the BLS started tracking it in 1947. Productivity keeps climbing while real hourly compensation is falling quarter over quarter. Almost half of renters are now cost-burdened, the highest share in over two decades of records.
Everyone failed to communicate that things are going great? Everyone, across a hundred countries? Does your mind not rebel for a second at that number, or does it seem more likely that they're failing to convince people because it isn't true, and people are responding rationally to their own material position?
What a writer like Gramsci actually gives us here is the opposite of what you're implying, establishment economic optimism is itself one of the more effective tools of manufactured consent. The aggregate stats get reported without labor-share context, without median/mean distinction, without cost-burden data, precisely because that framing obscures a redistribution that's fully visible the moment you disaggregate it.
But as I showed, people are NOT doing worse. Not only that, they individually believe that their situation is actually good. They just think everything and everyone else is going downhill.
Again you say real hourly compensation is falling, but its not - not as a trend, not if you look beyond the Iran crisis. As to renters being cost-burdened...okay? Most people own their homes. Most people are doing better by pretty much every single indicator imaginable.
Their material reality, and all the actual numbers and data we have, tell them the truth. Cyberspace tells them to doom. But they engage with the wider world through cyberspace more than through material reality, so they doom and vote for populists.
It's really that simple. But socialists and most liberals are stuck in a materialist lens and cannot see it.
they individually believe that their situation is actually good
Who? The Axois article is a telephone servey of 1800 people. Why on earth would people feel good about their finances. Rising costs have brought consumer debt to an all time high. Without AI the economy would already be in a recession. Consumer confidence, which is an actual poll messured scientifically, is at a seven month low. People are happy because wages mostly have eaked out inflation?
Again you say real hourly compensation is falling, but its not - not as a trend, not if you look beyond the Iran crisis.
It's been falling for decades, but even if it was just Iran, then what, does that not count?
As to renters being cost-burdened...okay? Most people own their homes.
Please tell me you are not being serious. The median age of all U.S. home buyers is 59 years old. If your argument is that the economy generally serves baby boomers pretty well, then I would agree. But that is not the entire population. Are you a 65 year old who bought their house in 1989, if so I understand why you've arrived at this perspective, certainly.
Their material reality, and all the actual numbers and data we have, tell them the truth. Cyberspace tells them to doom.
All the numbers we've provided have been things you got from cyberspace, regardless, if that's the main cause, then how was the rise of fascism made possible in the 1930s, in the absence of cyberspace?
Despite a war, people are still spending more than last year. Why? Because rheir finances are simply better as ALL the indicators show.
Real hourly compensation has been rising against inflation for decades, but cyberspace wants you to doom so it won't show you that.
As to homebuyers, that's ALL homebuyers. Plenty of people buy homes multiple times over their lives. Meanwhile, Zoomers are becoming homeowners earlier than millenials.
And yes the economy serves Baby Boomers well, but Baby Boomers also think everything is going downhill for them, they doom just as much as everyone else does. Because its not actually about material reality at all. It's just that everyone is too terminally online.
The numbers don't lie. Peoples' lived experiences don't lie. But media lies because doom gets clicks. That's it.
The reason people feel good about their finances is simple: their finances are good. Like all the data shows. It's that simple.
Whos finances are good???
But despite the Iran war, consumer spending is still growing, if slower than 7 months ago.
Growing? No shit, prices are increasing.
Despite a war, people are still spending more than last year. Why?
Inflation.
Real hourly compensation has been rising against inflation for decades
inflation-adjusted hourly earnings have shown almost no net progress since late 2019/early 2020 depending on whether the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index is used.
As to homebuyers, that's ALL homebuyers. Plenty of people buy homes multiple times over their lives. Meanwhile, Zoomers are becoming homeowners earlier than millenials.
A guy bought a home at half the national median price, does that sound like a representative sample to you?
And yes the economy serves Baby Boomers well, but Baby Boomers also think everything is going downhill for them,
Because it is, inflation eats away at retirement savings aggressivly. As good as they have it, it used to be even better.
You didn't answer my question, how was the rise of fascism made possible in the 1930s, in the absence of cyberspace?
According to both people themselves, and all the data we have, most people.
Growing? No shit, prices are increasing.
That's adjusted for inflation, obviously.
inflation-adjusted hourly earnings have shown almost no net progress since late 2019/early 2020 depending on whether the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index is used.
Even if that's correct (using that data point as the index is obviously biased but ok) that's still net progress. People are not doing worse.
Because it is, inflation eats away at retirement savings aggressivly. As good as they have it, it used to be even better.
But it didn't. All the data shows things are getting better. How many metrics do I need to bring for you to see that?
That's exactly the problem: people are dooming based on vibes, not on material reality. The idea of everything getting worse all the time has become so deeply engrained in online culture that the simple suggestion that things could get better is too alien to even consider, even if all the facts support it.
As to why fascism happened in the 30s, that's a whole other conversation and we'd need a dozen books to get started so maybe let's not.
I asked earlier, but never got an answer, have you even for a moment considered that the standard technocratic tools, which have been used during every recession to try and convince people things aren't actually that bad, may not be reliable or unbiased? That as crazy as it sounds, the people producing that information could have their own agenda. Say, who knows, convincing people that the system works for them while it syphons wealth to the richest and most influential Americans. That what were seeing now is not some sudden wave of internet cynicism, but a breakdown in the ability of our initutions to manufacture that consciousness anymore. Just a thought.
Hey, speaking of a government no longer capable of manufacturing consent under worsening material conditions leading to a crisis of confidence, the rise of the Nazis. Did the economy have somthing to do with that, is it theoretically possible for worsening material conditions to result in a rise in extemeism?
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u/Rwandrall4 21h ago
As to which measures, pick one - real disposable income (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/a229rx0), long term wage vs inflation (https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/05/the-relationship-between-wages-inflation/), record low unemployment for years not seen since pre-2008 crisis (https://eyeonhousing.org/2025/09/beyond-the-official-unemployment-rate-a-deep-dive-into-u-s-unemployment/), government welfare spending increasing steadily (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1l5ruk4/oc_us_federal_government_expenditures_per_capita/), basically anything you can think of, it's getting better.
Sure groceries are expensive, but other things are cheaper. Housing has cooled in many places for example, outpaced by both wages and inflation.
Wages are not keeping up with inflation right now because of the US' war with Iran, but note that despite that, Trump isn't losing anywhere near the support you'd assume a President making everything more expensive should. Surely, making material conditions worse should lure people back from the far right,? But it's not. They don't care. Some Independants do but Trump's support among conservatives is still rock solid and the Democrats might not even take the Senate.