> Feelings aren’t fact... much of it has to do with rapid inflation and "continued vibes".

Oh the lost irony.

> Consumption has risen, inflation adjusted wages have risen for blue collar and white collar alike.

My wages haven't risen for nearly 5 years, while inflation has occurred over the past 5 years. Why the blanket statements?

> The main thing holding people back is the housing crisis. This is orthogonal to the value creation of businesses.

Are you suggesting a "housing crisis," in your words, wouldn't impact consumption? I'm watching my spending (and living like a child in his parent's house, except it's not my parent and I have to pay for it) in the hopes that in about a decade, I'll have saved up enough of a down payment for a home somewhere in my state that I could actually afford the mortgage on the remaining amount. There are plenty of things I'd potentially spend money on but won't as long as I feel like I'm economically stuck and have a chance in hell of saving my way out of it. So this feeling translates to fact.

If you think my personal experience is just an anecdote and doesn't count because it's not being told through the lens of large-scale numbers, fine. But I really agree with the person you replied to that you're gonna have to be a whole lot more specific than "value creation" if you want people to spend money on your AI products "in this economy," whether it's because they're actually strapped for cash or just pretending like you seem to think they are.

The most recent U Michigan 'Survey of Consumer Sentiment', which is THE authorative source in the US, shows consumer sentiment at the lowest levels since the survey started in 1977

From the U Michigan page: https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/

or from the FED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UMCSENT

Seems to be a thing in the US to need specialised software, an accountant or AI to file taxes.

In most of Europe individuals at least don't need any of that. I'm in France and it's just a connection to a government run website to enter a few figures, takes less than an hour most of it is already pre-entered (salary etc), the main thing to add manually is charitable donations.

If you're running a business then yes an accountant can be good (or be required depending on the legal form of the business) but not for individuals.

Taxes are one of those things that seem difficult and people reach for tooling or expertise without trying initially without, but are pretty easy to do yourself just filling out the forms.

Part of the value of paying an accountant is that you can get representation in case you are audited. Though I guess you did say you were confident it is correct.

I think that to sum things up, we will have to wait until we can evaluate the cost of the mistakes. You could be lucky but you could also end up with a very negative output value in the longer time frame.

I did my taxes this year too with 5.5 and 3.1

Otherwise normally costs around $800 to do, because I have a small business too.

> as long as I am confident it is correct

Are you? Does it cost you extra (time or money) to be?