SS: The ‘vibecession’ is an oft discussed phenomenon where consumer sentiment surveys are more pessimistic than traditional economic metrics would suggest. Joel Wertheimer argues the vibecession is in large part a result of issues with the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey. In particular, oversampling of Democrat respondents and their partisan views of the Trump administration.
Posted by Desperate_Path_377
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The vibecession will be over when I, a graduate, can be paid and employed past job board/application/waiting/interview rounds/internship/clerkship/graduate program/probation-that’s-an-excuse-for-keeping-you-for-4-months-out-of-contractual-six-as-labour-for-multiple-multi-year-project-overflows-before-dismissal.
Not even a house, maxing 401K, equity offers, or marriage with kids in a private charter school or biannual international luxury vacations for the snap and a car lease with insurance attached for something I can’t buy outright – a damned pathway into a career I can stick with as a career, with mentors and a 3-5 year plan in the internal hierarchy to be an independently responsible operator in the hierarchy, and not an excuse of “flexibility” and “adjacent skills and adaptable career pivot”.
The vibecession is real.
My evidence vibes.
The vibecession is real but the survey is off a little bit
Even correcting for the identified issues leaves you with a significant gap
Headlines lie of course. This one is in that same ignoble tradition.
I mean it’s good that Wertheimer is helping us get better data. And this does bring the data more in line with other measurements of consumer sentiment.
The answer to the question is that yes, we’re still in a “vibecession”. There is still a massive incongruity between the objective measurements of American prosperity, as well as the lived experience of most Americans, as compared to the perception that everything is garbage and the world is terrible and the economic system of the Free World is falling apart before our eyes.
So, sure, let’s get better data but the problem of the vibecession still remains.
What is interesting about the vibecession is the comparison to FDR’s famous statement that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, we are very very afraid of fear right now and it’s not manifesting as anything substantial. Fear of a failing economy should lead to a failing economy. But it isn’t.
So everybody’s saying that everything sucks but they’re still buying stuff.
I guess Kahneman taught us that human beings are not rational actors when it comes to economics, but the depth of that irrationality is constantly surprising.
If there’s too many democrats in the sample, what was the excuce for the vibecession in the Biden years? Be serious Nate.
Also, a economic survey isn’t the same as a political poll. In an election poll oversampling one group throws off your prediction accuracy which is a problem. If the republicans are dropping out of this survey panel where they’re asked to rate the economy, that probably tells you they don’t feel so great about the economy either.