It’s the Economy, Stupid!

Everyone .

People working for hourly wages. $15 an hour seems to be the prevailing starting wage. You can say "get a better job", but a huge amount of people are not capable of that. The average Joe has to work for three hours to buy a meal for two at a restaurant, for example.

If the catalytic converter on their car fails, where do they come up with the thousand dollars to fix it? Hit a deer? How do they pay the $1,500 dollar deductible on the only car insurance they could afford?

So, while many people are like the OP and doing fine, many more people are not. The Archie Bunkers of the world used to be able to buy a house. I don't think that is the case any more.

A recent survey from PNC bank shows 67% of people are living paycheck to paycheck. Household debt is at record levels. The average person has little invested in the stock market so does not benefit from high stock prices.

There was a recent report from Goldman Sachs about retirement savings that said that 40% of people making more than $300k are living paycheck to paycheck. THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND. That's not the economy. That's not to belittle the guy trying to get by on $50k in CA, who is legitimately going to struggle. But there's a lot of stupidity out there.

It is probably variable by state to a degree. Some local economies are doing better than others. OP is in Florida, which is a well run state. In Illinois, for example, many people have to dedicate a few months of their annual pay just to paying their property taxes on their house or condo. Car insurance seems to go up ten to twenty percent every year. Getting illegals and Indian truck drivers off the roads would decrease accidents.

This should be in the politics forum: tuscl.net
A surprising number of people think Trump is not like other politicians. They took it seriously when he promised dramatic improvements, even to the point of reversing inflation with price rollbacks.
Real estate "running high" can be good if you have some, bad if you need some: fred.stlouisfed.org . Most people would be better off if housing was getting built faster, making it more affordable. That's not a new problem with Trump. But deporting a big chuck of the construction workers is not going to help get more housing built.
When you jump off a 50 floor building, things are OK for 49 floors. With tariff costs and instability, the disruptions to major industries that rely on illegal immigrants, and the pressure on companies to hire white male idiots to avoid sanctions for "reverse discrimination", it makes sense to think we're headed for a crash. Rule of law is an economic issue as well as a moral and safety issue. There is no private enterprise without private property rights, which only truly exist under rule of law. Having a President who rules by decree and whim is not rule of law.
When the stock market is high but P/E ratio is low, that's investor anticipation of economic strength in the future, not current economic strength. Investment is dominated by wealthy people, who often think the more non-wealthy people get shit on, the better the economy will be for stock holders. But that often works out like a dairy farmer cutting costs by not feeding the cows.

Should have said P/E ratio also high.

@casey your point is valid, but not as strong as you may think. Households with that income level are mostly in high-tax states. They are probably pulling in under $200K net all taxes, federal, state and local. Then throw in high housing costs. When people are at peak earnings, that often coincides with the age where one or more of your kids are in college.

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Everyone is being hurt . Some just have enough money to cushion it more than others.

I couldn't care less about the stock market. Main street matters more than wall street. Food prices rents tge price of everything keeps going up and wages don't.

We need a reset to stop the price gouging binge.

Ironically, it seems that Trump is proving Harris right about one thing. The estimates I've seen are that companies are absorbing 40+% of the new tariff costs by cutting profit margin. Harris had said that a lot of inflation was due to padded company profit margins, that should be taxed at a higher rate. So the tariffs are somewhat doing that, but also adding a regressive sales tax. But it's not clear how much is being absorbed by foreign versus US companies. Trump had promised 100% of the cost would be absorbed outside the US.

@ibbaicni thank you for saying new tariffs. Sometimes it’s getting reported as if this is the first time the USA has put tariffs on things but reality is tariffs are far from new. They date back to the 1780s.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback (and not devolving into insults). It sounds like I really am out of touch with working America - as I watch the Ferraris and Lamborghinis whiz by me on Collins Ave. I didn’t mean to sound insensitive, I just don’t see any recession on my Main Street.

One thing I will know is, at least for some industries, they have responded to this recession differently than previous ones. Back in 2008-09 hotel is where dropping their rates like crazy, hoping to get any kind of occupancy. The next downturn/recession hotels were doing the same thing. Today you can see the same hotels still struggling to find occupancy with pre-pandemic rates. And in most major metro areas, supply has increased not contracted. This is probably a gross generalization, but I’ve been in this industry for 20 years and worked for three of the largest brands globally.
Other industries have the same thing. My perspective is, the response to this recession is not the same as previous ones.

I represent middle class people and below, representing very few people who make real money. The people I represent are getting killed by inflation. One of my client's put it best when she said: "hot dogs on the grill used to be a guilty weekend pleasure and now they are the main meat portion of our diet." My partner filed for bankruptcy for one of my clients today. Three houses, 5 cars two boats and credit card debt approaching 400k and that 275k salary looks skimpy.