Well, we had the same idiotic bullshit of constantly talking about people's vibes on the economy during Biden's term, too, and lots of real thinkpieces about how the Democrats should not dare to bother to talk about facts, but just go with the vibes, and the vibes only, and shame on anyone for talking about reality. Most especially in the run-up to the election of 2024, of course.

I get that you have to poll people for their sentiments, though, but I wish the media would do a better job of explaining to people that there are, indeed, hard numbers we could talk about as well, and "alternative facts" are not a thing.

Just take it as a description of what people are perceiving, not a way of trying to derive the facts. You’re correct, there is data. If you haven’t figured out by now that data is not what governs people’s perception, then you aren’t paying very close attention. We are in a post-data, post-truth culture where knowing the fact is not enough. You have to poll, separately, how those facts are trickling down to perceptions.

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.

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.

I think it's because a poll showing that opinions are shifting that way gives people hope about things getting better, because the hope is that public opinion would drive politics.

It wouldn't really be news to people who are struggling that things are bad. But it is news (and good news at that) if other people's opinions are shifting to acknowledge that.

It's kind of a systemic thing. Which one person is going to fix that?

One of the stickiest problems : I'm not sure how we get out of petroleum use when it comes to the Green Revolution, which now has a rather ironic name retroactively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

Are you implying that the whim of Shitstain L’Orange is not itself good reason for any damn thing he pleases? Burn the heretic! /s

The good reason is to transfer the wealth more upward.

Be more specific. Name names.

I don't mean to single you out because this is a common reaction but holy fuck am I tired of seeing it. Experiences are not universal. What is obvious to you may be completely invisible to millions of people through no fault of their own, and they need to be told. Again and again, until it sinks in. Until they learn it, they won't be able understand the scale, nature, or origins of the problems they and their fellow humans face.

American Republican culture relentlessly reinforces the idea that personal struggles are personal, shameful problems; that most people are stable and well-off, and if they aren't it's because of laziness, addiction, gayness, or some other moral failing. So, everyone hides their suffering from their peers, all the time. They don't know how other people are really doing because the entire cultural and informational ecosystem is built to suppress and obfuscate the prevalence of suffering. If you are in that ecosystem, it's really hard to see outside of it. Articles like this are the first step in the pipeline out, and they need to be as obvious as they need to be. They need to exist, and they need to be perpetually written and re-written as long as the problem exists, no matter how obvious the problem may seem to someone on the outside.

Sorry for shouting.

Americans are predominantly transitioning to 100k+ incomes. The poors are dying as planned and the middle (under 100k but above poverty limits) class continues to steadily shrink.

That's not too say they're prosperous. Most are still one missed paycheck away from homelessness.

Yet they'll sell you there's less poors than ever.