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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   10412 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025

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I don't have a sophisticated enough opinion on how GDP figures are collected and controlled to speak on them directly, but I agree that as an indicator they don't mean a whole lot for me as an individual citizen. Sure, overall the economy may be trending up, but it's clear that it's a tale of two cities. As far as I can tell, some sectors, mainly tech (AI) and finserv, are carrying the rest, and recent economic gains haven't been felt by most consumers. This year, the only sector to really gain jobs has been healthcare, which is hardly an economic engine more than it is an indicator of our aging population. Time will tell if these GDP gains are sustainable across sectors or just reverberations of the continued siren song of AI.

As far as I can tell, some sectors, mainly tech (AI) and finserv, are carrying the rest, and recent economic gains haven't been felt by most consumers.

In terms of GDP, consumer spending has increased in both Q2 and Q3. In Q2 it was finance and tech at the top, but nondurable goods increased by quite a bit as did professional and technical services and durable goods. In Q3 the top was health care services and recreational goods and vehicles, mostly "information processing equipment", but the detailed info won't be out until mid-January.

Gotcha, thanks for the extra detail. Interesting to hear consumer spending has had some gains despite the "vibecession."

The vibecession is mostly a vibe among democrats, indicating at the very least that it isn't a general poor economy- it might be localized or something, but you'd expect everyone to have a negative outlook if it there were truly broad-based economic problems the official metrics are missing.

I'm a rightwing chud who voted for Trump 3 times and I've got bad vibes about the economy too, but maybe that's because I work in tech and am waiting for the AI bubble to pop.

There's a few other possibilities to explain it too:

  1. Some stuff is cheaper, some stuff is more expensive; if the more expensive stuff is essentials, but the cheaper stuff is everything else, people can feel squeezed by the economy without actually being squeezed. (Picture a toy model where someone has $10, food costs $1, shelter costs $1, and consumer goods cost $4 each; if the costs of food + shelter go up to $2 apiece, and consumer goods go down to $2 apiece, each person can individually afford more consumer gifts, while still having less space in their budget for consumer gifts).
  2. People are able to substitute goods for cheaper substitutes, which means that their spending is relatively unimpeded, but they are accepting a lower return on each purchase they make. (So for example, maybe I used to buy steak at $4.00/lb. Steak is now $8.00/lb, but ground beef is $4.00/lb, so I now buy ground beef).
  3. Everything went up by a specific percentage, including wages; wage increases feel like a benefit of me working hard, while price increases feel like people trying to take more money from me. As a result, I feel like I'm not doing as well, because my hard work to get more money was invalidated by everything else becoming more pricey as a part of it.
  4. People have given up on certain staples like housing; as such, instead of saving for housing, they're spending the money they would be putting towards it towards consumer goods.
  5. Some demographics are spending way more, while others are spending way less.

Here's what I would assume would be observable in each case:

  1. Breakdowns of spending will reflect higher percentages of household income spent on housing and food than per usual. This would be disprovable if the percentage is similar.
  2. "Budget" companies have their share prices improve, while luxury companies start offering more budget goods. Companies that only offer luxuries start struggling.
  3. Average income goes up by a similar percentage basis to costs. This should be observable based on the fact that people have published stats on average income for many years, so I assume that someone somewhere is observing it.
  4. The boom in consumer spending is almost exclusively in luxuries; it would also die off in a few months to years, but that's probably indistinguishable from the natural flow of the economy.
  5. Spending is concentrated amongst goods that some portions of the population use. For example, if healthcare spending is way up, but bars are struggling, I'd consider this to be met.

Some stuff is cheaper, some stuff is more expensive; if the more expensive stuff is essentials, but the cheaper stuff is everything else, people can feel squeezed by the economy without actually being squeezed.

For what it's worth I feel like this is the opposite of what is happening, and I think this may explain much of the disconnect between how different demographics view the economy. I Imagine that for a single urban professional living in the city the current economy kind of sucks, housing is at a premium and consumer goods (especially imported consumer goods) have gone up in price. In the meantime, if you are a married couple with 2.5+ kids and a dog living in the 'burbs, two of your biggest expenses, food and transportation, have not only stabilized after climbing steadily for 4 years but in some areas are starting to trend downwards so naturally those people are feeling more optimistic about their situation than they were a year ago.

Yeah, the suburban lifestyle has gotten more manageable- mostly due to gas prices that are stabilizing on a bad day and declining on a good one- with grocery inflation largely stalled. IDK about rents, I think they're getting worse in blue states and better in red ones, but doordash/fast food has gotten more expensive. That's a recipe for 'blue intelligentsia hate the economy, everyone else is largely fine with it'.

There's also local issues like electricity, which has generally increased more in blue states than red.

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