Pollsters must stop asking regular people about the economy. We have no idea. We don’t know what all the components of the economy are. We have no familiarity with consumption indices, gross domestic product, or inflation.
All we know is whether we have some money in the bank and can afford the stuff that keeps us alive every day. But that’s not the same as the economy of the entire nation, which is a much more complicated subject.
I bet if you randomly asked a dozen economists — people who specialize in this and have advanced degrees and should always be ready with an answer to the question — how the economy’s doing, you’d get twelve different responses. Okay, maybe not twelve, but at least three.
And certainly don’t put the question to any economist who was absolutely, positively, 100% sure we’d have a recession last summer. Oops, they meant the fourth quarter of last year. Um, make that the first quarter of this year. Er, second quarter?
Come to think of it, maybe you should ask regular people, because they have as much chance of being correct as the professionals.