Gallup recently released the results of a poll they run every election cycle or two. In it, they ask respondents whether they believe their family is better off now than four years ago. Take a look at the results below:

These responses are staggering. This year, a meager 39% of Americans feel better off, while over half feel worse off than they were in 2020.

Do these people have memory loss?

In 2020, unemployment reached its highest point in modern history, we had one of the deadliest pandemics in American history, and the average American’s life expectancy dropped by nearly two whole years. Businesses were shuttered, median household income dropped by nearly $5,000 per year, our cities were burning, and wildfires were blanketing the globe.

Simply put, 2020 was awful.

These respondents’ perceptions of the world are detached from reality. And it makes me wonder what other kinds of memory loss we’re having. Are we really so ignorant of the recent past that we look back on one of the worst years in modern American history as better than today?

Or is there something behind this cynicism toward the present? First, let’s take a look at some numbers on the state of our country today. Then, we’ll try to figure out why everyone’s so pessimistic despite 2024 being a pretty decent year.

After a half-century of relying on foreign imports of oil to fuel our growing economy, the United States headed into 2024 having become energy independent. While we still benefit from the supply of foreign oil to keep prices low, we no longer are fully reliant on foreign powers and cartels like OPEC to meet our energy needs.

The employment rate is also the highest it has been since the start of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. We’ve not just come back from the pandemic—our economy is more active than it was beforehand.

Inflation has definitely been a concern for many over the past couple of years, and with good reason. Prices of household items increased significantly over the past four years. But the good news is that wages have grown even faster! Americans have even more purchasing power today than they did in 2020.

And while things like groceries have increased in price significantly, the Average American actually has to work less for the food they eat than at almost any other time in American history. To afford a week’s worth of groceries, the average American has to work about three and a half hours, compared to the 4.5 hours they would have had to work in the 1990s.

And it’s not like these benefits have been isolated among certain groups of individuals. Since the end of 2019, the bottom half of Americans have doubled their wealth, while the rest of the middle class saw a 54% increase in wealth.

Millennials have also surpassed previous generations in terms of wealth ownership. Today’s 30-40 year-olds are better off financially than the 30-40 year-olds of previous generations.

This is predominantly because, after decades of decreasing, homeownership rates among young professionals has increased over the last decade. While we like to tell ourselves that it used to be so easy to buy a home compared to today, millennials are beginning to achieve homeownership at similar levels to their parents!

With all of these trends, one would expect to see Americans feel pretty good about our current situation! But for all of the talk there has been over recent years about a “soft landing”, nobody seems to recognize that it already happened.

Finance writer/trader Ben Carlson put it best:

Alas, we still feel awful. One group, The Conference Board, found that while Americans’ perceptions of their own present situation is up from 2020, their expectations for the near future are actually worse than they were at the height of the pandemic!

And a staggeringly high (though declining) percent of Americans believe that it’s likely we’ll see a recession over the next 12 months, despite economic indicators pointing the opposite direction.

This post from Bravos Research really tickled me:

In trying to peddle a pessimistic view of the future, they seemed to completely misread their own chart. They’re implying that the more that Bloomberg writers talk about “soft landings”, the more likely a recession is coming. But their own chart doesn’t even show that!

Take a look at all of these spikes in mentions of a “soft landing” that were not followed by even a short recession:

And even then, one of the larger spikes preceding the Global Financial Crisis came almost a full year before the recession hit:

Based on the charts above, you shouldn’t be concerned when you’re reading about there being a soft landing; you should be concerned when you stop reading about a soft landing.

That is, assuming that this pessimistic take is any more reliable than those aquatic animals that predict the next World Cup winner.

These takes don’t rule the internet because they’re well thought out, deeply researched, and reliable; they’re prevalent because they get views, they get engagement, and they get boosted by the algorithm. Negativity and rage bait gets people to stay on social media platforms more often, so those platforms feed it to people like you and me to keep us scrolling, typing, and so on.

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Another reason that these takes thrive is because they are politically convenient to those who benefit from a fearful electorate. It’s well known at this point that Elon Musk has become an avid Trump fan. Take a look at the spending for his America PAC:

One hundred and nineteen million dollars spent this year alone. Almost all of it supporting Trump or opposing Harris. Over time, Musk has gone from a run of the mill, slightly kooky left-of-center billionaire to one of the largest election financiers in American history.

From buying rally attendees for a million dollars a day (an act of questionable legality) to spending $75 million of his own money to directly support Donald Trump, Musk has made even the antisemitic caricature of George Soros seem miserly.

And some of the ads his PACs are cutting demonstrate that it’s not about the truth, or “what’s better for America”; it’s simply about gaining access to the reins of power via Donald Trump.

In a report published by 404 Media, journalist Jason Koebler uncovered how one Musk-funded PAC was feeding opposing messages to Muslim and Jewish voters in Michigan. In Muslim-heavy communities like Dearborn, Michigan, voters were fed the ad on the left, which pushes the message that Harris is a die-hard Israel supporter. At the exact same time, Jewish voters are being fed the ad on the right, painting her as a two-faced Hamas fan:

These come from the same PAC, funded by the same man. Say what you will about the Soroses, the Adelsons, the Bloombergs of the world; they all donate to candidates and causes they believe in, and are consistent in the messaging they deliver to voters. They don’t lie about what side they’re on, or what side their opponent is on.

Musk, in contrast, saying anything and everything that might give a tiny edge to his supported candidate. And he’s transparently cozying up to whoever will secure more federal contracts for SpaceX, looser self-driving car regulations for Tesla, reduced NLRB scrutiny over the labor conditions at X and other Musk companies, and so forth. He’s determined that Trump can be bought, and that Americans can be scared into supporting him with whatever lie sells best.

Fear and rage are effective drivers of clicks, donations, and votes. In The Atlantic, Peter Wehner writes:

And Musk knows this. Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has allowed hate to fester on his platform. He’s kept up neo-nazi accounts and those that push death threats to marginalized groups in the name oof “free speech” at the exact same time that he has complied with government censorship requests at a rate higher than his predecessors.

For Musk, it is literally not about free speech; it is about power.

Fear of the other begets unity within the group. Creating a terrifying enemy causes an otherwise divided group to band together, and galvanizes their support for what they come to believe is an imperfect solution to an evil problem.

But there is no evil here!

The evil is invented. One candidate or another will win in November, and America will be better or worse off for it. I believe Trump is the worse candidate. But that doesn’t mean the world will end if he wins. It means the next four years will be worse than if Harris wins. That’s it!

Anyone who tells you that this election is the most important in our lifetime is usually lying. They are either trying to sell you something, or they have been sold themselves. Whether they think that Trump is going to put women into indentured servitude, or Harris is going to take all of your guns, they’re wrong. And they’re manipulating you, consciously or unconsciously.

The first step to not being so pessimistic about our world when the facts are positive is to recognize that you’re being manipulated. It’s to recognize that you are being fed misinformation, fueled by interested third parties who benefit from putting more neurotic or fearful takes in front of you.

And as with most tactics for combatting misinformation, the way to overcome this manipulation is simple but hard to do:

These are all difficult to do. You get a much bigger dopamine hit from firing off a tweet calling someone a moron. But just like a gambling addict at some point has to realize that they’re just playing the game the casino wants them to, you have to realize that you’re being made to feel angry and want to fight online by news outlets, social media algorithms, and their owners.

In his book Tribe, Sebastian Junger said:

The “unifying effects of war” don’t just unify a nation; they unify a party against those its members deem their mortal enemies. They unify a broad coalition of voters to check the box for a convicted criminal sex pest, because they’ve been made by media to fear the alternative.

It’s insanity. It’s deranged. And it’s totally detached from reality.

And for the sake of our country, you and I need to opt out of the permanent pessimism, regardless of what Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Rupert Murdoch want you to think.