Americans never really agree on the state of the economy.
People tend to be biased toward their own situation. If you have a good job, have owned a house long enough that you have a low mortgage rate, and don't need to buy a car anytime soon, you may feel great about the economy.
If you're unemployed or under-employed you may feel very different.
The reality is that while how you experience the economy varies greatly from person to person, there's no simple metric which tells you whether the economy is doing well or not. People living paycheck to paycheck, for example, don't care that the stock market is thriving.
Someone who has big investments and no longer needs a job, may not be all that concerned that the jobs that are most plentiful rarely pay a living wage.
It's complicated and even simple answers maybe aren't that simple. TheStreet's Street Smarts podcast looked into the health of the economy and Daniel Kline, Maurie Backman, and Todd Campbell all came at the question from very different angles.
The challenging state of the U.S. ecoomy
Transcript:
Daniel Kline: Well, hello there, TheStreet. I am Dan Kline. I am one of the editors of The Street, along with my friend Todd Campbell.
Todd is joining us today, along with Maurie Backman. And this is our first ever TheStreet podcast. But many of you may know, well, we're calling this Street Smarts, to be fair.
This is our first-ever Street Smarts podcast. Many of you may recognize us from other places. And I will just say, yes, we are those people.
You've seen us in podcasts. I am an expert in retail and travel. And I dabble in some other areas.
Todd, what are your expertises?
Todd Campbell: just love the stock market, man. I just, anything having to do with the economy, things that can move the stocks.
That's where I love to live.
Kline: Maurie Backman, what is your background? What is your expertise?
Maurie Backman: You can pretty much ask me anything about Social Security, and I'll be able to tell you I've done a lot of writing on retirement and investing strategies. And here at The Street, I pretty much cover retail up and down. I may not have the same knowledge as you, Dan, though, because you've been doing this a little bit longer.
Kline: We've all been doing this together. There have been many long car rides, trips, a lot of alcohol involved between the three of us. We're going to open up talking about something that I think is on the tip of everybody's tongue.
And it's how do you feel about the economy? And I'll just, I'm going to weigh in just very quickly. On one hand, I feel great, things are going pretty well.
We have good jobs. Things look good in our lives. On the other hand, there's this giant looming, I don't know, but it feels like something terrible is about to happen.
Todd, am I reading this incorrectly?
Campbell: Yeah, I think one of the things that's really interesting to me, and when I say interesting, it's like interesting, but it's bad for some people, is that I think your view of the economy really has to do with what you're, where you are financially. You know, I mean, I think if you're making 75 grand or less a year, you're really looking at the economy going, I feel left out.
Where is all of this pie that I'm supposed to be able to eat? I think higher income households tend to respond to all the surveys as saying things are okay. You know, I'm still spending money and things are all right for me.
So I think it really is kind of a barbell. I think, you know, those people who are, you know, like my son, you know, he wants to buy a house. He can't, he's priced out of the market for a house, right?
And he's got a good-paying job, but he just can't buy a house. So for his perspective, the economy stinks. You know, I'm just remodeling my exterior of my house.
Kline: For me, the economy's all right. It's funny, my son is 21 and lives at home. So he views it as he has all the pie money he wants.
Like, no matter, he can go out to eat, he can do it because he lives at home. He doesn't have that yet, that fear. So like working a sort of, you know, decent restaurant job, he's on his way up, but he's in a different place in life.
So for him, the economy's great because he can buy whatever the heck he wants. Now, Maurie, you live in a different part of the country. You live in New Jersey.
I know the taxes on your house. I won't say them out loud, but I know you live in a tax heavy area, but you're successful. Your husband is successful.
You have pressure with, I won't mention, but a bunch of kids in college someday. How do you feel about the economy?
Backman: You know, it's weird because on the one hand, I feel reasonably confident just because my husband and I have always been good to the point of anal savers. And because of that, I tend to walk around feeling a little bit secure, just knowing that, you know, if something were to go sour, we have a little bit of a cushion there that we've worked hard to build.
I have this very weird feeling of guilt, you guys, you know, in that I just know so many people who are not thriving in this economy, like Todd mentioned, people, I guess, at a certain income level where inflation has just been a beast, costs have been up for years.
And it's weird, but I have almost a little bit of this earner's guilt, you know, where it's like, well, I'm not going out and just, you know, buying fancy things every day, but I feel that I'm reasonably comfortable. But at the same time, I sometimes feel guilty when I see that there are so many people who are struggling and I'm like, well, you know, I'm not upgrading to a mansion and buying a Porsche, but like, I could grab a pizza without having to check my checking account balance, you know, so.
Kline: I think more of the answer here is, and then we're going to move on, I think it is pay for the pizza. When you're with your friends, when you're out with people, and I've sort of been like this my whole life, I worked in high school, so I always had money and my friends didn't. If all of us could afford a pizza, if one of us can afford a pizza, then all of us can afford a pizza.
So like, you can't pay your friend's mortgage, you can't put their kids through college, but you know what you can do? You can buy them a Starbucks. You can make things a little bit easier.
