No. of Recommendations: 4
We don't seem to have seen any price reductions after these major issues have been resolved, why is that ? I think CEO/Corp greed. You think otherwise, and that's fine, free country.
Sure. Though CEO and corporate greed is not new, so it has limited explanatory power for why inflation has continued to be so high today when it wasn't high during the decade before the pandemic.
But that's not really what the article was arguing. It was asking why if the economy is doing well, why do Americans think it's doing poorly? It's right there in the lede:
The leading economic indicators show the U.S. economy is performing well, but most Americans still believe economic conditions are extremely poor ' as if the country was mired in a deep recession. What explains this discrepancy?
The article is wrong in not just its diagnosis, but in its initial assumptions. The U.S. economy is not performing particularly well. Sure, unemployment is low - but not lower than it was before the pandemic. Sure, GDP is growing - but at a relatively mediocre rate, and (again) no higher than before the pandemic. But interest rates, mortgage rates, many consumer goods prices (like gas) and home prices are at generationally high levels. These are all things that are very visible to Americans. These are the things that are different from four years ago. But the article doesn't mention any of them - which is just insane for an article ostensibly trying to figure out why Americans might be dissatisfied with the economy.
Even if you stipulate that CEO's are overpaid and corporations are greedy, that doesn't necessarily mean that those two factors explain why Americans are pessimistic about the economy. Again, it's not like the idea of a corporation's profits being returned to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases - instead of being given out as a bonus to workers - is a recent change to the U.S. economy. Nor is the fact that CEO's are able to capture more (though still an insignificant fraction) of their company's earnings. But $4.00 gas, 7% mortgages, and really high inflation are recent changes. So if you're looking for an explanation of why Americans think economic conditions are poor, those are much better candidates than the things discussed in the article.
