We live in, unfortunately, interesting times. 

From Robert Reich: 

Roughly 70 percent of Americans now rate the economy as bad (with nearly half of Americans and political independents blaming Biden for inflation, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC poll). The negativity is also making it difficult for Biden to get his agenda enacted before the holidays.

Yet apart from inflation, the U.S. economy hasn’t performed this well in years. It’s created more than 6 million jobs since Biden took office, a rate higher than any in history. New claims for unemployment insurance dropped to 184,000 last week, the lowest level in more than 52 years. Economic growth is surging far faster than most analysts predicted before this year. And a record 13 million Americans quit their jobs between August and October, a signaling unprecedented confidence in their ability to get better ones.   

Even as Americans rate the overall economy poorly, they rate their personal finances as good. In an Associated Press poll, 64 percent describe their personal finances as good while only 35 percent describe the national economy as good. Why the split view? Probably because most people don’t separate their assessment of the “economy” from their view of the state of America as a whole, which — given that 60 percent of Republican voters continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen, Americans continue to be stressed about Covid (average blood pressure has risen), and fatal drug overdoses have soared — is sour. (A report last week from the surgeon general found that depression, anxiety, impulsive behavior and attempted suicides had all risen among children and adolescents.)

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/week-ahead-bidens-last-stand