I am not sure what media you are referring to:
For a long time, a lot of us have been saying the stock market has nothing to do with the real economy, even as the news media and politicians are constantly sending the message that we regular people should care whether stocks gain or lose money on a day by day basis.
The media I attend too, often and repeatedly says “the stock market is not the economy and the economy is not the stock market.” They say this even though the report on the Stock and Bond Markets. Why? Because while the markets are not the economy, many of us have most of our wealth invested in the stock and bond markets. These same media outlets report on the state of the economy, interest rates, inflation rates, employment rates, and other business, financial and economic news.
Oh, “we regular people,” in what way do you qualify as a regular person and outside of billionaires, celebrities, writers and politicians, who else is not a regular person?
how can anyone think good stock prices matter to anyone but a select few?
Half of all Americans have a 401K, 403B, and IRA, Roth IRA or a Pension that have investments in Stocks and Bonds. So yes stock prices matter to more than a select few.
The bottom line is that if the economy was as good as we’ve been led to believe, most people would have enough money to miss a paycheck without running out of money to buy food.
Again, the markets are not the economy and the economy is not the markets so why would people believe that the economy was so good? The reporting highlighted that wage growth has been stagnant, productivity has not been growing and work force participation was low. These are not signs of a strong economy. People who believed the Gaslighting propaganda that the rising stock market is a sign of a booming economy are idiots.
In the last two weeks record numbers of people have filed for unemployment and the stock market was up both weeks. Duh!
Too many people get their news from the wrong sources. Garbage in garbage out.
I would venture to say that most of the people who are hurting financially right now did not just happen to spend their life savings right before the virus hit; they’d never been able to build one up.
They’d never been able to build one up for a multitude of reasons. One is, it is hard to build a nest egg while paying interest on most loans. Credit cards, auto loans, education loans, payday loans. If you have any of those you probably don’t have any equity in the underlying products. You probably owe way more that any residual value of the products purchased.
Did any of them make any effort to create a nest egg or did they spend the money as fast as it came in and if their credit limit was increased did they increase their credit card balance.
I do feel sorry for anyone who has little, has no debt and still struggles from paycheck to paycheck (we need to find ways to help them). If you have a middle class income and struggle paycheck to paycheck, you need to change your ways. Move, cut spending, downsize or something, you are a durshing shame. They are on a road to ruin.
Our country has a history of somehow managing to institutionalize the dissemination of misleading information.
First, it is not just our country. Almost all the Media has a hidden agenda. Why don’t we teach people that? We let media claims of fair and balanced go unchecked. When I challenge media outlets for their biases they always claim they are fair and balanced which of course they know they are not. Their biases are plain to see and they know it but they can’t admit they are biased.
Almost all Media is advertising, a blatant attempt to increase market share. They will print whatever will draw the most eyeballs. I should not even have to point that out, it should have become common knowledge decades ago and should be taught in schools and homes.
especially big expensive home ownership,
Why don’t people understand that they should buy the smallest house that they can live in comfortably in the least expensive markets with good security and schools, not the biggest house in the swankiest neighborhoods? What buyers don’t understand that the incentive for real estate agents and mortgage brokers is the get you to spend and borrow the most possible. They don’t work for you they work for themselves.
So while yes your message that the stock market is not the economy and the economy is not the stock market is a good one, you went pretty far afield and it would have gotten lost if you did not circle back to it before you ended the story.
This:
the cost of living continuing to rise in relation to wage growth.
Without some sort of hedging is a lie. Real Wages (adjusted for the cost of living) have grown. On average wages for workers (excluding management) have risen faster than the cost of living.
Don’t become an example of the “lying media,” If you wish to make the claim that the cost of living has risen faster than wages you need to support it better as the predominant view is that is not the case. Wages have not grown as fast as would be expected if the economy was really booming but I think we understand that just because the markets were booming does not mean the economy was booming. If your contention is that the CPI does not accurately reflect the real cost of living, make that case and then provide some alternative cost of living metric.
Personally I think the employment numbers and the CPI are fudged and we a being Gaslit but I can back that up with data.
TEK
