We think the economy is worse because it is for us. Food prices have doubled or more than doubled in the last ten years and our income is stagnant so we make the same but everything costs more. We don’t see any growth or stability in the quality of our lives.
Inflation is nothing compared to price gouging and price fixing by businesses that no one tries to curtail. This is approved of by the powers that be.
But let one opportunistic asshole corner the market on hand sanitizer in one region of the US at the beginning of a pandemic and he has to give it all away because nearly everyone thinks he is a monster.
I think what people are feeling is what has been often described as enshitification. The definition of that term as given by its creator doesn’t match the context in which I see it increasingly used. However, I think that the phenomenon that people often use it to describe is what is killing consumer confidence.
If the economy is actually serving consumers, then those at the top are making less profits. This is unacceptable. They have to keep making money. They have to keep increasing how much money they make. They have to keep increasing the rate at which they increase the money they make. If they’re not, then they are stagnating according to investors. This is incompatible with the survival of normal people. Growth cannot be infinite.
So the companies consolidate and find corners to cut and we absolutely feel it even if it doesn’t show in the numbers. They find new and creative ways to create “shrinkflation”. They don’t have to literally shrink the product - that’s too obvious. They can instead alter the formula, find cheaper low quality components, squeeze their workers harder or outsource labor, stand behind their products just a little less by updating wording to sound the same but technically promise less, add a little friction to their warranty process, hedge against inevitable future failure with no class action clauses or forced arbitration in their terms…
It feels like every company is doing something like that these days… and if they aren’t, they are being abused or bought by a company that is.
How can confidence then not be down?
Not to mention energy costs, transportation costs, basically all necessary costs have gone up. In the meantime, the cost of electronics and frivolous items have gone down. It almost seems like a goddamn ploy so they can continue to write snide articles about, “oh, you all complain about being poor? Why are you still buying TVs and iPhones?”