~NightSky

By Michael Snyder

Americans are extremely pessimistic about the state of the U.S. economy, and that is really bad news for Joe Biden. Despite the glowing economic numbers that the Biden administration has been relentlessly feeding us, there is an overwhelming consensus among the American people that the economy is rapidly heading in the wrong direction. Prices continue to rise, mass layoffs are happening all over the country, loans are going bad at a staggering rate, homelessness and poverty are spiking, and economic activity is slowing down all around us. According to a poll about the economy that was recently conducted for Newsweek, the percentage of Americans that believe that the economy is going in the wrong direction is twice as high as the percentage of Americans that believe that the economy is going in the right direction…

Their widespread pessimism is reflected in the results of a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll conducted on behalf of Newsweek on April 11. According to the survey, some 50 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction, while only 25 percent said it is going in the right direction.

Americans are also negative about their own financial situation. Some 42 percent of respondents said their financial situation has worsened in the last year. Only 26 percent said it has improved, while 32 percent said it has stayed the same.

Some 47 percent of Americans said they were now financially worse off than they were three years before, against 26 percent who said they were better off and 27 percent who said they were about the same. Some 45 percent said they were now worse off than before the pandemic, while 28 percent said they were better off and 27 percent were about the same.

The Biden campaign should be deeply troubled by those numbers.

When U.S. voters don’t feel good about the economy, they tend to want change in Washington.

And the main thing that Americans don’t like about the economy right now is the high cost of living…

Forty-one percent of Americans responding to an April Gallup poll said inflation or the high cost of living is their main economic concern. The number has risen for three years running, from 32 percent in 2022 to 35 percent in 2023.

Prior to 2022, the highest rating inflation received in the survey was 18 percent in 2008 during the Great Recession. Otherwise, the figure has been below 10 percent since Gallup began asking the question in 2005.

Joe Biden and his minions keep telling us that inflation is “low”.

But hardly anyone believes them, because that is obviously not true.

Anyone that goes shopping for groceries on a regular basis understands what has been happening to food prices, and another recent survey discovered that young adults are really feeling the pain…

Younger Americans are feeling the pinch from inflation, with 54% saying that rising food costs have hit them the hardest.

The findings are part of a recent CNBC/Generation Lab survey that polled 1,033 people between the ages of 18 and 34.

When I was a young adult, I could get everything that I needed for one week, including an entire cake, for just 25 dollars.

But today a full cart of food will cost you hundreds of dollars.

At this point, beef is actually considered to be a “luxury meat”, and Americans have cut back as prices have soared.

In fact, Tyson is going to lose a ton of money this year because people are buying a lot less beef now…

“Tyson Shares Fall as Beef Business Struggles” is a headline story in today’s Wall Street Journal. They go on to note that Tyson, America’s largest U.S. meat supplier, said its beef business was softening and that “The company, a bellwether for the U.S. meat industry, forecast a bigger operating loss for its beef business this fiscal year—between $100 million and $400 million.”

Why? Mostly because people can’t afford beef and are eating chicken. And droughts and shrinking herds have made the situation worse.

At one time, you could economize by eating some of your meals at fast food chains, but those days are long gone…

Prices at America’s biggest fast-food chains have soared above the rate of inflation in the last five years as firms come under fire for ‘greedflation.’

Customers are now voting with their wallets causing traffic to chains to drop 3.5 percent in the first three months of the year compared to 2023, according to data from Revenue Management Solutions.

It means big chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Popeyes, Pizza Hut and Chipotle have likely sold millions fewer burgers, pizzas and burritos.

Only the wealthy can afford to regularly eat at fast food chains at this stage.

I never imagined that I would write such a thing, but this is how bad things are in 2024.

Of course housing has gotten a lot more expensive as well.

As David Stockman has aptly point out, during the Biden administration home prices have become more unaffordable than ever before…

The data leaves no room for doubt. Home prices today stand at 18.2X their Q1 1970 value while average hourly wages are at only 8.7X their value of 54 years ago.

Expressed in more practical terms, the median home sales price of $23,900 in Q1 1970 represented 7,113 hours of work at the average hourly wage. Assuming a standard 2,000-hour work year, wage workers had to toil for 3.6 years to pay for a median-priced home.

With the passage of time, of course, the Fed’s pro-inflation policies have done far more to goose asset prices than wages. Thus, at the time of Greenspan’s arrival at the Fed after Q2 1987, it required 11,350 hours to purchase a median home, which had risen to 12,138 hours by Q1 2012 when the Fed made its 2.00% inflation target official. And after still another decade of inflationary monetary policy, it now stands at just under 15,000 hours.

Meanwhile, the overall economy continues to slow down.

I shared a very shocking statistic with my readers the other day, and I am going to share it again because it demonstrates just how dire conditions have become.

During the month of April, 43 percent of all small business renters in the United States were not able to pay their rent in full…

A significant number of small businesses across the nation are struggling to pay rent due to skyrocketing costs, a recent study by business networking platform Alignable found.

The company’s latest Small Business Rent report, published on Friday, found that 43 percent of small business renters in the U.S. were unable to pay their rent in full and on time in the month of April. Such a high delinquency rate hasn’t been reported in the U.S. since March 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it reached 49 percent.

If you can’t even pay your rent, your business is literally on the brink of failing.

I believe that vast numbers of small businesses will fail in the months ahead as the historic economic meltdown that I have been relentlessly warning about continues to pick up speed.

Needless to say, a deteriorating economy is not going to help Joe Biden one bit.

According to an average of recent national polls, in a two way race Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by 1.2 points.

In a five way race, Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by 2.7 points.

As economic conditions become harsher during the second half of this year, I would expect Trump’s numbers to improve and Biden’s numbers to get worse.

Economics and politics always have a tremendous amount of influence over one another, and that will particularly be true here in 2024.