This is, like… you don’t hear yourself, do you?

Me: “People are miserable about the specific thing you’re pointing at to try dismiss discussion on this topic.”

You: “That’s because discussions on this topic are a distraction from problems that I deem more important.”

Me: “Okay, but you do realize that people don’t agree with your perception of the situation, or your prioritization of the problems, and that by insisting on this point in a pedantic way you come across as smug and dismissive.”

You: “Yes, but what about my perception of what’s an actual problem?”

You can shout from the rooftops that we have bigger fish to fry – and I might even agree with you – but people can’t even think about bigger problems as long as they’re struggling to pay the bills! People report having trouble paying the bills! Large swathes of the American public are drawing on their retirement savings to get by! Whether you think the inflation situation and its aftermath is an “actual problem”, telling people they’re wrong and throwing numbers at them is just not going to be an effective strategy here.

And I’m telling you that your approach to doing this is, rhetorically, disastrous. You come across as both smug and dismissive of people’s suffering and anxiety – and your response to reading me say that musn’t be, “Well, this person is irrational and not willing to engage with data.”

Yes, people are dissatisfied with basically… all of how modern nation states are organized and run, from government to business to day-to-day social interactions.

But the whole premise of democracy is that the people, in aggregate, know best how to direct our lives. And what poll after poll says is, people are frustrated in particular with the perceived decline in their purchasing power. That perceived decline comes directly from making more money and yet only being able to afford the life they had before the round of inflation started. The very “wage growth” that you are claiming has mooted the issue of inflation.

So, even if it’s true that, on average, people’s spending power is the same now as it was before the pandemic – which may not be true, depending on whether the already wealthy, to whom most of the gains have gone since the pandemic, are skewing that average – that is not a victory. It is, at best, a depressing reminder that people live in a system that cares more about aggregate statistics on a balance sheet than it does about their actual lives.

That you don’t seem to get what we’re saying is amazing. What you are talking about does not matter to most people – their own lived experience of not being able to afford basic necessities, or having to draw on savings and retirement income to afford them, are all they see. You can shout numbers at people all you like, but all they – and I – hear is, “Your own lived experience is wrong, and I know better than you do about your day to day life.”

So, let’s grant for argument’s sake that the numbers you’re citing actually say what you imply – that wage increases have made up for inflation for most people, and therefore no one has any reason to complain. You do realize that desperately job hopping to try to stay where you started economically is enervating and miserable, right? To spend three years post-pandemic finding new work, retraining, striking, and all the rest, only to find yourself economically no better off than when you started? What a nightmare.

I get that you have a pile of numbers that say everything’s rosy – but most regular people appear to disagree with you, judging by consumer sentiment polls and other surveys. The answer in that case isn’t to double down and declare that people are too stupid to know whether they’re doing okay financially – the answer is to ask yourself whether your measures are wrong, or your data isn’t capturing something critical.

I mean, this article from from AP is what we’re all talking about:

But even as overall price increases slow, it doesn’t mean inflation is reversing or that most prices are falling back to pre-pandemic levels. The consumer price index, the most widely followed measure of inflation, remains about 20% higher than it was before the pandemic.

Milk prices, which have ticked down compared with the past year, are still 23% higher than they were pre-pandemic. Ground beef prices are 31% higher. Gas prices, despite a steep decline from a year ago, are still 46% higher than before the pandemic.

Many economists say a key reason why so many Americans hold a gloomy view of the economy despite very low unemployment and steady hiring is that these prices — on items that they buy regularly — remain much higher than they were three years ago.

https://apnews.com/article/inflation-prices-interest-rates-economy-federal-reserve-1f83d45fc6e30c6864d1b02913ec60c6

Basically, the things that actually matter to most people – food, fuel, housing, utilities – remain more expensive than before the pandemic by significant margins. And those prices will never come back down. The best most can hope for is to earn more money to offset the price hike – which, for most people, means taking on new or additional employment just to be able to get back to where they were before the pandemic. People have lost ground. That’s the problem here.

More fundamentally, I think there are a lot of countries that could benefit from taking a good long look at themselves and asking –

• Why does this nation exist?
• Whose needs matter most?
• To what end are our nation’s resources directed?
• What are our our priorities?

Because I think a lot of countries have just straight-up lost the plot. They’ve lost sight of, and fail to articulate, their purpose for existing, and thus squander phenomenal resources on bullshit. They live in myths and fantasies and old cultural scripts that haven’t been relevant or functional since the mid-70s.

I think honest answers to those questions would kind of horrify people – at least, they should horrify American citizens – and it might spark an actual change of direction.

I’m baffled that you’re getting downvotes – like… yeah. It’s a no brainer that people primarily care about their own purchasing power, and the last few years have depressed that to a shocking degree. Not one person on Earth looks at their inability to pay for groceries or rent and goes, “Well, thank God the markets are okay!”

As for what can be done? Price controls exist. Subsidies exist. The trouble with the modern world is, the wrong prices are controlled, and the wrong products are subsidized – that stuff is all tipped in favor of pouring money into the gullets of the already wealthy and powerful. And that’s a problem that could, in theory, be fixed if anyone at any level of any government gave the slightest shit about the people they serve.

I’m about fifteen years older than you, and I think what I’d say is, for the United States – and a lot of developed countries – the the majority of progress has been made on issues that matter the least in the grand scheme of things.

Like, I agree, a moderate decline in the number of homophobic jokes from culture is a good thing – but compared to the lack of action on an existential crisis like the climate, or the active encouragement of wealth hoarding, and the deterioration of your once-vaunted democratic norms…? I mean, that’s like saying, “At least my executioners were polite!”

Most of that applies to developed countries generally. For the United States specifically, you folks don’t have universal healthcare, you have a tremendous problem with guns, you have tremendous problems with education, you’ve made precious little progress on race issues, you’re backsliding on women’s rights, and – to circle back – it’s not like the actual legal situation of LGBTQ folks is great and getting better.

Basically, from the outside, it looks like your nation’s vast resources are being applied to everything except improving the lives of your citizens.

And I know someone will say – “the United States isn’t homogeneous – it’s huge and there are a bunch of different states, so things aren’t bad EVERYWHERE! Don’t trust the news you see!” But, really, that just makes the United States looks like an orange that is slowly rotting. Some parts of it are still orange and healthy-looking, but vast swaths appear to be deep in decay.

Edit: And I really want to say, this isn’t sourced from smugness or intended as an insult. It’s despair for your situation. And despair for a lot of the rest of us. Because, unfortunately, the end of the United States as a functional democracy is going to pull the keystone out of the modern world, and drag all the rest of us down with you. I desperately want your country to get its shit together, while simultaneously doubting you’re capable of doing so at this late date.

This reply sort of makes the point for the OP though – the American system appears to be broken at levels so fundamental that it’s not worth engaging with, much less saving. It’s amazing the evil that people are comfortable shrugging at.

And yet you’ve collectively allowed it to happen, and have taken no action to change the status quo.

Sounds like Americans like their authoritarianism just fine.

edit: Lotta Americans here angry they don’t know how to protest like a grown up country.

These complains about “you just don’t understand our political system” are just you disempowering yourself and excusing your own inaction. If you actually cared about any of this you’d be out in the streets.

That there are no mass protests. No major efforts to modify laws. No new candidates for political offices offering anything substantive. All while your life expectancy collapses, your birth rate falls off a cliff, your healthcare system continues to implode, and your wealthiest parasites make trouble for everyone without consequences.

You don’t actually care about your problems if you aren’t willing to go outside to try to solve them.