A research report published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on Tuesday has found that 61 percent of Americans are pessimistic about the nation’s economic future.
The AEI’s research found that “Nearly six in 10 (58 percent) say America’s best days are behind it.” When asked specifically about the economy, 61 percent said that the US economy is getting worse. The authors also noted that in 2020, only 46 percent of Americans said the country’s best days were behind it. The American Social Capital Survey cited also showed a disparity between education level and optimism.
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While the Standard and Poor 500 stock market index (S&P 500) shows a growth of 14.75 percent so far in 2024, many Americans have stopped or reduced retirement savings due to increased spending caused by inflation. For many Americans, the necessity of spending on rent, groceries, and gas has kept them from seeing investment gains in the stock market.
Economic disparity is also seen between the top-performing US stocks and the rest of the stock market: the five largest stocks have a higher share of total S&P 500 market value than they’ve had in at least 34 years.
As Valuetainment reported previously, grocery prices and electric bills are up by 25 percent since Jan. 2020, used car prices are up by 35 percent, auto insurance by 33 percent, and rent by 20 percent. It takes $119 to buy what $100 could before 2020, virtually across the board of goods and services. Prices have risen more since 2020 than they had throughout the entire 2010s. Inflation is considered to disproportionately impact low-income households.
The Consumer Price Index is often used to measure inflation and shows a 22.5 percent increase in prices from May 2020 to May 2024. Some economists criticize the CPI and instead favor the M2 money supply as a more direct measure of inflation. The M2 money supply measures all cash, checking deposits, and savings deposits in the US. From January 2020, prior to COVID-19 policies, to its height in April of 2022, the M2 grew by just over 44 percent.
The AEI survey also found that 45 percent of Hispanic voters are in favor of Donald Trump in the 2024 election, surpassing the 38 percent of votes among latinos that he garnered in the 2020 election. Pew research has found that: “An estimated 36.2 million (Latinos) are eligible to vote this year, up from 32.3 million in 2020. This represents 50 percent of the total growth in eligible voters during this time.”
An average of recent US presidential polls shows former President Donald Trump with a 0.5 percent lead over President Biden.
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