I keep reading economists and policy wonks who are puzzled about why Americans generally are so pessimistic about the economy, and who believe in specific that Joe Biden should be getting some kind of credit for his management of the economy to date, in particular for a level-headed approach to inflation, to an increase in labor organizing, and his handling of supply-chain problems. The numbers, they say, look good. The American economy is healthy—and notably, healthier than other national economies. Biden’s White House apparently concurs, and is hoping to run on “Bidenomics”.
I think this is a sign of how much the indicators that economics and policy wonks value don’t measure how most people experience the economy, or think about things that seem “economic” in nature. If they are pointed at how the economic has meaning for many people, they will often respond that people are either incorrect in their impressions or are mischaracterizing something as economic which is actually someone else’s problem, an externality that isn’t subject to economic management. Whether that’s bad economics or not, it’s bad politics: you don’t get much traction by just telling people that they’re wrong or by telling them to properly assign their frustrations to some other category—or perhaps to just live with something that can’t be fixed.
If I said, for example, that people don’t feel the economy is in a good place because they have extremely low expectations that it will remain so, that they see nothing stable about its relatively short-term future, let along its long-term one, some economists will just argue that by and large the economy has its ups and downs but that the basic trends are within a stable range, with expectations of improvement overall. (Or worse yet, at this point they bust out a bigger move and say “You are so much better off than a 17th Century peasant, come on!, the world is getting better all the time.”) None of that in any way reckons with how older Americans have felt that the basic social contracts that governed work were unilaterally broken by employers while younger Americans have never had any expectation that their employers would have even the remotest sense of responsibility towards employees. None of that acknowledges that aside from some razzle-dazzle that almost no one really believes, few people look at “future jobs” without any confidence that there will be more jobs paying better in the future for most people. None of that deals with how most Americans feel as if the rug could be pulled out from beneath their feet tomorrow for reasons that make little to no sense: the boss could do something idiotic, the company could be hiding huge financial malfeasance, private equity could come along and snap the company up and destroy it, or your job could get eliminated because you’re too old, too expensive, too obstreperous. They gave you a raise last year with all the grace of an elephant on amphetamines; you figure they’re just looking for a way to claw it back. Nothing feels like a sure thing, nothing feels secure.
Most people have the completely legitimate and well-founded feeling that they’re being ripped off—that public services are being hollowed out, that things are being taken away from them for no real reason, that one person’s getting insanely rich while everybody else is every day poorer. That your dollars buy less, but also that the world is shabbier. The money that bought museums and libraries and parks and civil servants and road maintenance and buildings that employed thousands is now buying a skyscraper that has 25 apartments for foreign billionaires who don’t actually live there most of the time anyway.
The workplace health-care plan that once bought good services in a timely manner now entitles you to wait in line for six months before your next appointment or bankrupts you if you need an ambulance. That you might be helped by some amazing new medicine except that rich people who don’t really need it are buying it all up and thus making it worse to start on the medicine and lose access than it would be to never start it at all. Or that you might need a life-saving drug only to be told that for some reason nobody’s making it. The people who want to run on Bidenomics have absolutely nothing to say about health care because it was a political liability the last time they said anything, because they have no ideas about it, because they’re committed to the idea that they fixed that problem before, and because they’re trying to work with a Congress who are too busy backstabbing each other or worrying about how to arrest pregnant women on highways in Texas because they might be travelling to a state where they could get an abortion. So if health care is worrying you—or making you resigned to debility or risk—that’s not in their view “economic”.
The university education that put you on a steady path to a well-lived life is now a gateway to uncertainty while also being far more expensive than it was, while also being run by people who have very little interest in education as such. (You will be assured by the same kind of people who tell you the economy is really very good that the return on investment from education is still great. This does not reassure you.)
If you’re looking to rent, you’re uneasy: rents are hard to find, they feel they’re hard to keep. Things keep changing. You might have expected to buy a home or a condo only to find that despite earning in the top 5% you can afford nothing nearby, nothing where you’d like to live. The people who tell you Bidenomics is great think the problem is with you: you eat too much avocado toast, you want to live in places you can’t afford, you want a house without mold in it. Picky, picky, picky. Just live in a different city, just commute two hours, just cram five people into two rooms, it’s what people do. You want better, make the big bucks, like the remaining 300,000 Americans who do.
Whatever you make, whether it’s $18/hour or $200,000 a year, it doesn’t feel like you can count on making it a year from now, whatever the data shows. Whatever you look forward to as possibilities, it feels like they could melt like a sno-cone under a broiler. Whatever you believe is being done to manage the economy right this second feels as if it could be all undone tomorrow by a group of erratic, corrupt failures, whether that’s elected officials, impulsive billionaires, or violent leaders who invade a neighboring country. You’re used to advertisers lying to you, but you’re not even sure that words you read this morning were written by people or that facts offered to you to govern your economic decisions have any truth to them whatsoever.
I know that when I add up the parts of my life that seem economic, I feel nothing but unease despite the fact that I should be one of the few people left in this country who can feel confident. I’m making a very good salary and yet there are days where I wonder if my employer can be counted on in that respect for the rest of my working career with them. I’ve felt confident and respected and trusted in ways that connect to my sense of my overall security and bottom line and now I’m not sure. There are days where I even wonder if my entire profession will exist in ten years. My landlord suddenly wants to change the terms of the lease and professes to have no longer-term plans for where I live but I don’t know that I can trust that reassurance. I was planning to live there for years to come and now I suddenly have to at least contemplate having to move on short notice. My health-care system is in total collapse and nobody seems to have any idea of what to do about it; what it means for me is having to find a new doctor in a new system, which turns out to involve a months-long wait where it’s not clear whether I’d be exposed to unplanned costs if something bad happened (or even where I’d go to be treated). Like everyone, I have to wonder if something unbearable or catastrophic in terms of climate is just around the corner right here right now. I have no idea if I can save enough money for retirement in the time I have left, at least not to live as I might like, and I’m already sure I’ll be priced out of many places I might want to be. I don’t know who will be in charge of my country in two years and I have at least some reason to fear the economic practices of some of the people who might be.
I look profoundly economically secure on paper but I don’t feel it. I felt far better about my economic future twenty years ago when I had less money on hand, was making much less and had more debt. And that does affect my economic decisions. I hesitate to travel. I worry about buying anything really expensive. I certainly don’t want to buy a house or condo again, not yet; the last experience was bad enough. I am terrified when I think about investments—even mutual funds keep me up at night if I let my mind wander to them. I splurge on books and food and media content and that’s about it. Not all my fears are economic even by my own reckoning, but they’re keeping company with my thoughts about money and spending and risk.
If that’s how I am, imagine people who have a lot of real things to worry about when it comes to their current prospects and their future possibilities. Only the shrinking number of extreme plutocrats likely feel like this is a “good” economy. And who knows, not even them, perhaps, considering how many of them spend such considerable effort trying to take even more money from the rest of us while hamstringing anything that might cost them even a plugged nickel. So of course Bidenomics—the idea that sane technocratic management of the conventional measures that constitute “economies” is a good thing and that one should vote for it—does little to speak to the vast churning sea of uncertainty that many Americans feel every time they check their bank accounts or think about what tomorrow might bring. That’s the economy where feelings and meaning reside, and it’s the one that politics has to address, whether it wants to or not.
Precariousness weighs heavily, and is not easily captured in macroeconomic statistics.
I tell my students this story: when my twins were born in Saskatchewan they had to be in neonatal intensive for a spell, because they were so tiny (they grew up fine, I should say). There were other babies in the unit in much more difficult circumstances, and one would see their parents, obviously distressed and worried for their child. But nobody worried about money, about economic consequences. Because there were none: such are the benefits of universal no-co-pay health insurance. The parents could focus on their children and nothing else. That is a massive effect on well-being that one doesn’t have with incomplete health coverage.
Income security matters so much for mental and family health, incalculable importance.
And today I had my regular dental cleaning at the office I’ve been going to for 30 years. First 22 years, the same dentist. She was great. Sold practice. Today I met my new dentist, making two new ones in two years, following one I had for 7-8 years. I expect to have a new one soon. Annual eye appointment postponed seven months. UM eye physician has new responsibilities. Very rare sightings of my PCP I’ve had for 30 years but always seen by a different phys asst or resident. I suspect jobs/careers like this have become very unpleasant. And I’m one with “great health care.”