Why Are the Economic Polls So Gloomy?
We economists are taught not to look at polls—to shade our pristine eyes from mushy public sentiments.
There’s something to this: you’d never want to build much of story around one particular poll result, and you always want to be suspicious of short-term fluctuations: people’s feelings about the economy can change on a dime based on the cost of their last tank of gas.
But lately there’s been a pervasive “disturbance in the force”—a set of deteriorating poll results regarding people’s feeling about their economic fortunes. I’ll get to the highlights in a minute, but, as someone who mucks around in living standards’ indicators, a number of people have asked me: what’s up with these poll results?
