Interesting numbers from Yahoo Finance. Prices rose more than 20% during Biden's four years. Under Trump's second term, they've risen 5.4% in roughly 21 months. That's a slower pace, but voters are still unhappy...a recent poll found 72% disapprove of Trump's handling of inflation.
I think there's a pretty simple explanation: lower inflation doesn't mean lower prices. People are still paying today's prices, not what groceries, housing, and utilities cost five years ago. And recent increases in gas prices and tariff-affected goods aren't helping.
There's also a difference between what the inflation report says and what people experience every time they fill their tank or buy groceries.
At what point does slowing inflation actually translate into people feeling better about the economy?
They are mad because life is more than just inflation alone. And oh, btw, inflation is still real at the grocery store and fuel pump. Nothing has dropped.
Because of the reasons that inflation has kicked up again: seemingly pointless wars in the Middle East
Because lowering inflation doesn't put food on the table. I can think of 5.5 million people (including 2 million children) who lost SNAP and have a pretty good reason to be upset
Mainstream news and info ops tell people things cost more than they did and that they're poor now.
It doesn't matter if its true or not and what the nuance is, NPC's are easily incepted.
When it was under Biden, the news called it "Putin's price hike", so instead of being mad at $8/lb ground beef the NPC's put Ukraine flags on their bios.
Anecdote from this year:
I'm president of an association, and in the spring the association voted to have me finalize scope on a maintenance project that's been needed for years, with a contractor we've used before and trust, with a fixed budget that was voted on.
Only 1 member voted no in the spring because they had just recently incurred a big emergency expense. Simple enough to accommodate them with financing, nbd.
Everyone else told me to go for it and to get it scheduled in the fall.
I did that. The contractor agreed to the budget and was actually going to get more in scope than we had hoped for. So much winning.
I sent out the good news and called for the vote to actually execute the contract so the work could start.
Everyone walked back their prior vote from this spring saying things to the effect "prices of everything are high now, let's wait another year"
Nothing has changed financially since spring. If anything, this was cheaper than we'll get it any other time because the contractor is actually available because the cost of diesel has slowed their other projects further away from his base. Absolute buy-the-dip kind of project.
Grocery prices are actually lower than in spring. Tax withholding changes have kicked in. Stonks up, therefore wealth effect up.
So why the sudden walk-back?
We live in a politically contested state, project start ran too close to mid-terms, and they're brainwashed by media telling them they're poor and costs are high.
The news doesn't report sentiment, it creates it.