On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” NBC News Senior Business Correspondent Christine Romans stated that “We’re so scarred by the fresh inflation memories that people really focus on the price they’re paying for things, and they don’t really see the big picture” on economy among other factors like the COVID pandemic and insurance, home, and childcare costs.
Romans said, “If you look at the polls, people say it’s really lousy. And I think the reason is because the inflation scars are really fresh. And what we lived through through the coronavirus pandemic was really awful. And so, you can look at these topline numbers that seem to be so robust, and they are. The International Monetary Fund says we’re the strongest economy in the world. The Economist magazine had a whole issue called ‘The Envy of the World.’ The United States, everybody wants to be like us, except for the people who are living here, who are really distraught, really, about the economy.”
She added that there is “small business creation that is booming. You have plentiful jobs. You have wages, rising by one measure, this week, 4.6%. So, wages are rising faster than inflation. We’re so scarred by the fresh inflation memories that people really focus on the price they’re paying for things, and they don’t really see the big picture. Also, though, car insurance, home insurance, the difficulty in buying a home, and I would say child care.”
Romans further stated that “the cost of college is still fresh” in the minds of younger people, wages are good, and while the stock market has done well, “only half of Americans are directly exposed to the overall stock market. I also think that, I go back to how I feel like COVID stole our optimism. And there are other periods in American history when maybe you would look at these top-line numbers in the economy, in the ’90s, for example, and people would feel — they would feel buoyed by them. But they’re not really here. And, again, there are these cornerstones of the American economy that don’t work for everyone.”
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