This election cycle showed that our evaluations of external reality are increasingly partisan. Can the media bridge the gap?
A responsible news media has a lot of jobs, but here’s one of the most important: giving audiences an accurate image of the state of the world around them. How’s the country doing, overall? Is the economy booming or busting? Is crime climbing or dropping?
Anyone can, of course, reach their own conclusions on those questions, independent of the news they consume. But their views will necessarily be influenced by their own individual circumstances. Did they just get a promotion — or laid off? Do they feel safe sleeping with their front door unlocked — or did they just get mugged? Their own personal data points might align with a larger trend — or they might not. And news stories have traditionally been a big part of how people figured out which was which.
But we’ve just concluded an election cycle that suggests something important has broken in that feedback loop. How people perceive the economy and crime are major factors in whether they reward or punish incumbents with their vote. And decades-old patterns in that process seem to have gone a little haywire.
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So why do you think this empathy not exist before the last few years? Why are people now so worried about the people who themselves say they are doing well when they weren’t before?
Because costs are higher. More people who are copping will be noting higher energy food and rent etc compared to their own incomes.
So even those coping will recognise how much harder it will be for people on much lower incomes. And recognising your own situation is only just above water. Tends to mean most people notice how many around them are in worse situations.
My guess is this will be happening way way more in cities where these interactions tend to be more common. And often higher earners are also renting and moving more often than in rural areas. Leading to them noticing an increase in housing costs every few years. Or more.
But the basic truth is humanity is a social based tribe. And when forced into close living we tend to recognise a little more how much our life depends on others around us.
This is in part why left of centre politics is more common in more urban areas.
So you think after decades of wage stagnation, the 2008 financial crash, and multiple recessions demonstrably didn’t have this effect, a short spike in inflation where the poorest workers actually saw the first real wage gains in decades was all it took to suddenly develop a new form of previously nonexistent class consciousness?
I guess Amaricans really do hate moderate inflation more than high levels of unemployment.
Likely: with gains on the low end, people saw themselves closer to the low end suddenly, and that’s a problem I guess.