New poll results show 53 percent of those surveyed couldn’t recall struggling harder to make ends meet
A majority of Americans now say the cost of living is the worst they can remember — and most of them blame President Donald Trump for their predicament.
Poll results published Friday by Politico showed 53 percent of those surveyed couldn’t recall struggling harder to make ends meet, up from 46 percent in November.
The poll by Public First also found 46 percent felt Trump was fully or mostly responsible for the state of the economy, unchanged from six months ago.
daycost of living*See, now here we have something that can be empirically proven with data from reliable public institutions. The cost of living for a place, and the people living there; how much money they make, and what they’re buying. All hard numbers.
And yet, we have reporting here on peoples’ opinion about financial situations. The subtext I read in this was that opinions are more important than facts and that reporting on the poll results was of greater import than the horrifying reality of creeping kleptocratic fascist psychopaths getting away with things that are the obvious cause of our limited and declining prosperity.
The subtext I read in this was that opinions are more important than facts and that reporting on the poll results
It’s also about driving engagement, a vibes based article about a poll will have a lot more engagement when its shared around social media. Sure you’d still have some people arguing and engaging regalardless, but a large and very vocal portion of the internet has been trained now to just ignore facts that don’t fit their narrative as being funded by George Soros or similar such non-sense, they see a title like “data driven research shows economic conditions worsening in key areas” they skip over it as boring and too complicated to understand, but if they see a title saying americans “feel” a certain way, then they as an american (or someone pretending to be american) can chime in about how they personally dont feel that way and anyone who does feel that way is lazy and stupid, and then it becomes a whole chain of people doing that and others citing factual data which then gets ignored.
It’s a valid comment, but I disagree that you have to reach that conclusion.
This poll gives a better picture of US citizens’ ability (or lack thereof) to obtain and understand basic facts when you combine it with actual data. I.e., the facts alone tell us only what reality is, and the opinion poll alone only tells us what Americans think, but together they tell us how well-informed Americans are.
That, in turn, helps suggest (even if proof is harder) how effective right-wing information technology is, how seamless the Fox News/influencer/social media info bubbles are.
And, as depressing as it is, opinions (the perceptions of a party’s or candidates’ culpability and capability) decide elections where reality and opinion are in conflict. 2024 proved at least to me that we have reached an inflection point and entered the Disinformation Age, where propaganda actually can consistently win out against reality by sheer flood of disinformation, if it’s not moderated or regulated.
If a sufficient portion of the population is ignorant or ambivalent of the fact of our creeping, kleptocratic, fascist, psychopathic, pedophile overlords robbing of us our rights and prosperity then nothing changes. People giving a shit does matter more than facts these days. That’s not a valuation of opinion over fact, more of an observation of how our propagandized population works.
and the rest just can’t do the math?
More than half of Americans say the cost of living is worse under Trump than at any other point in their lives
More than half of Americans say the cost of living is worse under Trump than at any other point in their lives so far…
Death to Tyranny!💀👑🥾
Free the Republic!🗽🏛🇺🇸
As bad as it is, and yes, before the apologists come in, yes it’s worse under Trump, Quality of life has declined year over year for decades, under Democratic and Republican administrations.
Biden wasn’t an improvement. Neither was Trump’s first term. Things didn’t improve under Obama. Life got objectively harder for all Americans under Bush. Clinton sold out unions and the middle class with NAFTA. Bush Sr. continued all the processes that started this downwards spiral under Reagan.
Americans are entering into almost their sixth decade of a continuous downward spiral of quality of life that has been a cooperative project under Democratic and Republican administrations to carve off and sell America for parts.
The neoliberalism and the white supremecy required to support it are the core of the issue, and that is a collaborative project both Republicans and Democrats participate in.
Thankfully it’s for absolutely no good reason that we’ve done this to ourselves
Turns out corruption and increasing the wealth gap is… Bad for the economy?
Trump announces new Electoral College of Polling
