Time for the other American political party to pick up the "nah it's just negative media, people still have money and food" drum!

Sure, many people (in an absolute-number sense) are in no immediate risk of crisis. But many are.

Economic policy for 40+ years has been shifting both income and wealth largely to the already-haves with massive knock-on effects on the general affordability and comfort for everybody else. The flow of money into small sets of assets and investments distorts the "inflation" measurements and we find ways to ignore it. Buy groceries instead of eating out! Just let the median household's kids work more too, in some red states! That part of the story has been going on for a long time, and the actual-Covid-inflation just drew more attention to the trend.

People were talking about it long before Covid, but the Covid bullwhip and the complete lack of foresight or management[0] of the situation pushed it into a new, noticably-worse-normal overnight. While before we were just boiling the frog and blaming avocado toast for millenials not buying houses or having kids yet. Some good math in the post about the concrete part of this vs just "vibe" parts, especially re: the behavior of the lower-income end of the economy.

But you can't have a viable consumer economy when everyone with power is squeezing the consumer tighter and tighter. We've been papering over this problem by making stuff free-with-ads but eventually there won't be enough buying power left in a large enough non-broke cohort to keep the system working for anybody.

[0] "you think maybe people will want more of the stuff they bought before, and less Pelotons, in a two years?? No way! Buy Zoom stock!"

I saw a thing in Wall Street Journal today about how millennials are "splurging on rotisserie chicken."

> “Gen Zers and millennials are swimming in student debt and may never own homes, but they’re splurging on gut-healthy juices and rotisserie chickens.”

https://offthefrontpage.com/the-wall-street-journal-gets-com...