I shouldn’t leave the subject of Michael Tomasky’s piece without addressing the point of departure for it: following Paul Krugman’s lead he was asking why President Biden isn’t getting more credit for the improving economy? The answer at which both he and Dr. Krugman arrive is that people have been misled by the right-wing media. That is poppycock. It’s based on their lived experience which is enormously different not just from Dr. Krugman’s and Mr. Tomasky’s but from the CPI which ignores that the CPI deliberately excludes two expense categories that loom higher the lower your income: food and gasoline.
The sharp rise in the cost of food and fuel over the last couple of years is impressed on people every time they go to the grocery store or gas station.
That graph actually understates things if anything because price increases are cumulative. What we notice are the increasing prices not the decrease in the rate which they are increasing. Furthermore, people are carrying higher credit card balances than they were a few years which makes them more sensitive to the higher interest rates we have now.
Shorter: it’s not the right-wing media. It’s the grocery store, the gas station, and their credit card companies that tell people to worry.
The point about effects being cumulative should be obvious, but is frequently missed or ignored.
And there is also housing in addition to food and gas.
https://usafacts.org/data-projects/housing-vs-wages
On wages – wages have gone up too, but not evenly. There are a non-trivial number of people who are economically worse off because their wages have not kept up.