carl marksArticles like this one really irritate me. This is PBS, supposedly one of the news outlets least susceptible to propaganda and one of the most likely to do accurate reporting.
And yet, the way this article is written is designed to leave you with an incorrect impression of our economic situation in the US.
While they quote people with a number of opinions on the subject and don't outright say who is right or wrong, they repeatedly refer to our current situation in the economy as a "vibecession" and also keep talking about how people's feelings are at odds with the data on economic trends.
But the article itself also mentions how prices for things like housing and food are still sky high compared to where they were just a few years ago and how people just can't afford basic necessities anymore.
So how is that based in "feelings"?! That's economic data!! Why is the framing of this article premised on a lie? Why are we listening to the economists who are quoted saying things that are technically true according to their models but have no bearing on basic and fundamentally important things like buying power and affordability?
Why does PBS parrot those economists' framing in the very fabric of the article while also mentioning data that proves that that framing is useless? If their goal is accuracy, it doesn't make any kind of sense.
And of course, there is no mention of any kind of wages vs inflation growth. No mention of where young people are in terms of wealth, debt, affordability etc vs where their parents were at their age. No mention of the massive wealth transfer upwards that has been happening in our economy for decades now. A bare mention of the sky high profits companies have been reporting, but no mention of the huge increase in wealth of a handful of billionaires contrasted against the same decrease in the wealth of the vast majority of ordinary people.
No, Americans are just sad about the economy because vibes. They don't understand economics, poor things. Obviously.
Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
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