Americans, the Economy and Unhappiness

According to a February Zillow survey found that two workers with full-time, minimum wage jobs can only afford a two-bedroom apartment in 10 out of the 50 biggest cities in the U.S. That’s two workers combined. 34% of households are renters, and the typical U.S. renter is 39 years-old, has never been married, with at least 4-years of college education, and earns a median annual income of $42,500. We have one of the lowest jobless rates in recent memory (with a 3.6% unemployment rate), the recent average and minimum wages have just undergone the highest increases in decades, and so many economic indicators are positive.

According to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and current UC Berkeley Professor, writing for the July 10th Guardian UK, the good news is pretty robust: “In the four years of Donald Trump’s administration, total investment on manufacturing facilities grew by 5%. During the first two years of Biden’s administration, manufacturing investment more than doubled… This has created about 800,000 manufacturing jobs.

“These remarkable results are the outcome of Biden policies – the Inflation Reduction Act and its green technology provisions, the infrastructure bill and the Chips Act… What about inflation? Yes, Biden’s stimulative spending did boost prices. But the big news that’s not getting through to most Americans is that inflation has been dropping. It has declined significantly from its mid-2022 highs above 9%... Consumer prices are now rising by about 4.9% annually – still a problem but not nearly the problem it was.”

Yet the man most responsible for this continuing positive news, President Joe Biden, continues to have horrible approval ratings, and Americans are anything but optimistic or happy with the American economy. While global economic statistics reflect this feeling of economic uncertainty, the United States is achieving positive results well above more of the rest of the world. Reich continues to look at voter malaise in these good economic times: “So why do so many Americans continue to think the economy is awful?

“According to the Gallup economic confidence index, Americans haven’t felt this bad about the economy since the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index is similarly downbeat… In an NBC News survey conducted a few weeks ago, at least 74% of Americans said the country is on the wrong track… Given all this, it’s not surprising that Joe Biden’s approval numbers have been stuck at around 43%... History shows that incumbent presidents tend not to be re-elected when about 70% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. (They tend to win when fewer than half of Americans think that.)”

The problem continues to be a notion that the rich get richer, while everyone else either stagnates or actually lives with lower expectations. Upward mobility is now relegated to the history books, the cost of that class-leveling advanced education is layered with intolerable debt, and the vast majority of Americans in the X-generation and younger never expect to generate the earning power of their parents. Housing costs are skyrocketing, and few younger workers will ever own their own homes. Inflation is eroding buying power, CEOs of major corporations are earning over 350 times the earnings of the average worker (vs. 10 times in the 1950), and, as Reich tells us, “Much of the remaining inflation is due to outsized corporate profit margins. The IMF recently found that almost half the increase in Europe’s inflation over the past two years is due to rising corporate profits.”

But concerns also revolve around the uncertainty created by our political polarization, that recent Supreme Court decisions are trending against younger citizens (retirees are not particularly concerned about anti-abortion rulings and statutes, but younger voters are) and the realities of climate change that are very clear to younger members of the labor force even as older generations have large constituencies of climate change marginalizers or deniers. Reich summarizes this destabilizing reality: “Add in the effects of the climate crisis, and you get more gloom. (This week, the earth’s average temperature reached the highest on record.) A recent study found that headlines have grown starkly more negative… Then, too, many of us are still suffering from pandemic-related PTSD.

”But I think the deeper reason Americans don’t feel very good about the economy is that is that the vast number of working non-college grads – some two-thirds of the adult US population – are still bogged down in dead-end jobs lacking any economic security, while struggling with many costs (such as housing, childcare and education) that continue to soar.

“In other words, the economy is getting better overall – but overall has become a less useful gauge of wellbeing as the rich get richer, the poor grow poorer, and the working middle is under worsening siege.” Gen Z is plagued by unhappiness in the workplace, sensing a dearth of opportunities and too many dead-jobs. They may be working, but their hope for the future is decidedly negative, as illustrated by the largest numbers of Gen Z who quit their jobs or a looking to leave. America’s place in the world is slipping, as China (with its own serious economic issues) is saber-rattling, building its military capacity and seems on track to displace the United States as the largest economy on earth. How much will this destabilization challenge Biden in 2024, and will it enhance GOP power as an alternative, albeit the party that may have created the instability? Time will tell.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am concerned over the simple and totally unworkable solutions posited against liberal America… and the very real possibility of an new American autocracy that will only make everything so much worse.