By Jamie McGeever
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) -As President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump prepare to face off in the first of the 2024 presidential debates, the gulf between Americans’ downbeat view of the U.S. economy and its general healthy well-being could not be wider.
A year after the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest rate hiking campaign in four decades, the economy is in remarkably good shape – unemployment has not been this low for this long since the 1960s, real wages are rising, and GDP growth is above trend.
Wall Street, not always the Democrats’ most natural ally, seems to agree – a potentially transformative boom in tech is in full swing, equity volatility and credit spreads are historically low, and the stock market has never been higher.
So why is Wall Street’s view not shared by Main Street? Surveys consistently show Americans are pessimistic on the economy at large, and a Reuters/IPSOS poll this week showed Trump beats Biden 43% to 37% on who has a better approach for the economy.
The answer definitely has a lot to do with inflation, and probably a bit to do with political polarization widened by social media-fueled populism, misinformation and fear-mongering.
“The macroeconomic story is strong. But there is a huge disconnect between reality and people’s perceptions, which points to a lot of misinformation about the economy,” says Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
“It’s that one-two punch…
