It Was Never Just Vibes |
It Was Never Just Vibes
The real reason Americans are so angry about the economy
The vibecession is back, or never really went away, or is now a “permacession.” Or so we’re told. But here’s a novel thought: What if it’s not just vibes?
For years, economists and commentators have been trying to explain why American consumer sentiment and confidence in the economy have hit record lows while many objective measures of the economy remain solid. This alleged dissonance persisted throughout the Biden era, when the economy was recovering from the Covid pandemic, and has only gotten worse under President Trump. Still, commentators insist that public opinion is divorced from economic reality: Will Stancil, a University of Minnesota researcher and sometime political candidate, wages near-daily battles on Bluesky arguing that the available data belies the idea that the economy is bad, while others argue that the Democratic Party needs to determine why voters feel this way and propose ways to address it. “Democratic strategists loathe vibecession discourse, because positing that the public is factually wrong about what ails the country makes the job of pandering to voters ... much harder, no matter which party is in charge,” Brian Beutler wrote on Substack on Monday.
The common takeaway is that voters are mad at price spikes in recent years of everyday goods like gas and groceries, and at the longer-term increase of housing and health care costs. It’s become the “affordability” crisis. But a new report from the Roosevelt Institute points to a simpler yet more profound explanation: Americans no longer feel that they can achieve a good life. Whatever the economy is doing, it........