People know when their lives are getting better or worse. You can explain to them all you want about per-capita GDP, adjusted vs raw unemployment, whatever other jargon-crusted, hyperabstract measurement you care to explain, but people know the world they're living in. They know whether they're struggling to get ahead, struggling to stay even or struggling to slow the rate at which they fall behind.
People know when their lives are getting better or worse.
They literally don't, you ever see these millionaire people making 300k+ a year calling themselves middle class? People love to claim hardship even when they're doing fine.
No, I have never once seen that. Go ahead and quotemine the one asshole in human history who did say that. Just because someone somewhere doesn't have an accurate assessment of their situation does not mean that everyone everywhere lacks it.
Hello observation bias my old friend.
I've come to see you again.
Because an internet argument softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And that alternative fact that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of observation bias
In restless dreams, I trolled alone
Narrow threads of social media
'Neath the halo of a X
I turned my collar to the facts
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a mobile alert
That split the night
And touched the sound of logical fallacies
And in the naked android app I saw
Ten thousand tweets maybe more
People texting without speaking
People scrolling without readinf
People writing posts that never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of observation bias
"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Facts like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my posts like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the threads of social media
And the people bowed and prayed
To the Facebook god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the influencers are written on the subway walls
In tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of observation bias.