American household confidence dipped close to a historic low in October, as elevated prices stemming from the Iran war worsened the public’s economic outlook ahead of midterm elections.
The Consumer Sentiment Index from the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers dropped to 48.0 this month, down from a final reading of 48.1 in September. Economists surveyed by Reuters had predicted the index would land at 46.3, which matched the preliminary figure previously reported for October.
The October output, released on Friday, represents the second-lowest reading ever recorded, sitting just above the all-time minimum of 44.8 registered in May, not long after the war with Iran began.
These findings correspond with political polling data showing that voters hold a negative opinion of the economy, as well as Donald Trump’s and the Republican Party’s handling of economic issues.
I wonder how much of this is guided by deeply-polarized vibing. Lots of people were claiming Biden years were worst EVAR or something, and especially by 2024, that was objectively absurd.
Now, we still have numbers that are probably vibed, but being held up by idiot chud cult members who are still going around claiming that the conservatives have to clean up some unspecified thing that Biden did via unstated policies, and that it might even be worse if it wasn’t for donnie. This, while you can easily point to things donnie is doing to make things worse.
I mean, these vibes mean something, but it’s clear a lot of it is just that - vibes. It’s hard to ignore everything being crazy expensive when a typical drive is going to go right past stark evidence of those prices in gigantic fonts at gas stations, but it’s obvious the donnie cult members are actively trying to ignore that and go by the vibes that donnie is “fixing” something in the United States, LOL.
Those people were all too fucking stupid to see Biden’s admin was cleaning up after a multitude of Trump’s fuckups and it was actually getting better. Inflation was going down, and we were seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Now Trump re-fucked everything and we’re back at square 1.
It’s probably even worse than donnie 1.0, when he did tariffs also and completely bobbled the pandemic.
Almost immediately, he started doing crazy shit like “liberation day” (the guy has an insanely stupid obsession with tariffs and really seems to believe it means “money is pouring in” to the country), tackling gardeners and carpenters and disappearing them, arresting foreign workers here to train Americans, causing a brain drain in universities and research like we have probably never seen before in this country, and then, on top of all that, starting a war with Iran to drive prices of diesel to be about $2/gal more vs. last year.
Regardless of the morality of the above (and it’s all terrible) it all has negative impacts for the economy. The shit he’s doing to research and science and education is going to be something that takes a very long to repair and it’s going to have a downward drag on our economic indicators for decades, most likely.
And all because a certain type of American is frightened about seeing shifts in demographics and in culture…