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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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This is a lot of words to write, "I don't understand why aggregate statistics don't apply to the individual".

That is not an accurate description of what I wrote. Like, at all.

There were many people who said "local costs are up in some goods more than average statistics would suggest". My beef isn't with people who concluded that "because of this + negativity bias, things feel worse than they actually are", it's with the people claiming "because of this, economic data are rigged and useless".

Is bordering on outright delusional. There are more Americans than just Democrats and Republicans and you don't get 55% fair/poor personal financial situation from just Republicans (no matter how much I'd love for 55% of Americans to be Republicans, alas).

Nothing in the article you posted contradicts what I said in either of my posts. Also, the "bordering on outright delusional" line is unnecessarily hostile.

There were many people who said "local costs are up in some goods more than average statistics would suggest". My beef isn't with people who concluded that "because of this + negativity bias, things feel worse than they actually are", it's with the people claiming "because of this, economic data are rigged and useless".

Perhaps you might have saved yourself a lot of words had you considered, "Maybe I'm wrong about the actual state of things for many people", and, "The economic data are accurate within the gamut of what they're actually measuring", aren't mutually exclusive things.

There were absolutely people who were equivocating the two, see many (though not all) of the examples I posted above.