Why Are We All So Pissed Off?

I don’t often find myself agreeing with anything that Paul Krugman has to say, but his Monday op-ed in The (failing) New York Times about why Americans continue to believe that the economy is lousy raised some interesting issues which deserve to be discussed.

What Krugman sees as something of a paradox is the fact that unemployment is under 4%, inflation has basically disappeared and yet a healthy majority of Americans tell pollsters that the economy is still in lousy shape even though these same respondents admit that their personal financial situation is just fine.

He cites a Quinnipiac poll which found that in both Michigan and Pennsylvania, only 35% said the national economy was ‘good’ but 61% said their personal financial situation was in good shape.

And we’re talking about two swing states where the results will probably determine who wins the Presidential election and right now Trump holds a slim lead.

If you’re Joe Biden, what do you do to respond to this remarkable example of what pollsters refer to as ‘cognitive dissonance,’ which is a fancy way of saying that what people believe has nothing to do with what’s really going on?

Krugman says: “it’s important to understand that the political challenge facing Democrats is not that they have to overcome a bad economy. What they need to…