What is in the gutters is memories of 2008-2010. That was the last time folks experienced a bad economy. I remember Ed Elson saying something along the lines of "who cares about employment, what matters is inflation". Sure, if you're 27, you haven't got a clue what a bad economy looks like.

Unemployment and CPI : The most false statistics on the planet. Instead, look at employment population ratio 25-54, and core inflation. That will FREE YOUR MIND.

It's easy when you can just lie. The data from phone surveys is increasingly divergent from the delayed payroll data.

> But objective measures of the economy like unemployment and real wages look good to excellent

Oh hell no, ever since the tail end of Biden the trend for unemployment is showing upwards when corrected for seasonal effects [1], and for real wage growth the situation has been worse for an even longer time [2] - if not for the effects of the post covid stimulus packages plus emergency wage raises following the energy cost explosion thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The story the stonk markets tell is completely decoupled from reality, partially because the AI wash trading bubble keeps distorting the statistics, partially because no matter what the stonk markets only can grow up because pension contributions keep blowing up the market [3]. Not getting that difference was what blew up Biden's reelection and is now screwing over Trump.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...

[2] https://www.atlantafed.org/research-and-data/data/wage-growt...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48233492