Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Jason Furman, a Harvard professor and Chair of Obama’s CEA lectures people on how well off they are...

You might be thinking this is another Mish satirical fiction post, but it’s not. Here are some ideas to ponder by Jason Furman.

Academic clowns sit in their ivory towers telling people how good they should feel. On top of that they blame the media.

If I posted a chart of GDP of the US vs Europe, who the heck would have seen it other than those in academic wonderland, stock market investors, and a select few of us on Twitter?

More to the point, the idea is idiotic. The average person does not give a damn if US GDP is better than Europe. Only those in wonderland would concoct such a construct.

And seriously, has anyone here seen the “endless repeating” of the chart of manufacturing that Furman refers to?

Furman proves how much out of touch academia is with the lives of ordinary people.

Hello Jim Bianco, please give Jason Furman a call.

Blaming the media is an amazing hoot of its own. Hell yes, everything was amplified, about 15-1 against Trump.

The media repeated every charge of racism, lawfare (without calling it lawfare), and finally, things accelerated so much we had Obama and Biden calling Trump a Nazi and a fascist.

Real hourly compensation fell 4.2 percent in 2022. And it fell a revised 0.2 percent in 2023.

Damn that BLS Productivity Report.

That report was out yesterday. So, Furman believed things were better in 2023 than they were. But people didn’t. It’s “money illusion” says Furman.

Professor, can we discuss the real world instead of your illusion?

The Brookings Institute is right there with Furman. It called low consumer sentiment a paradox.

I gave a helping hand to the Brookings Institute.

Please consider The Brookings Institute Wonders Why Consumer Sentiment is So Bad, I Can Help

In my post, I offer 10 charts and many links that I challenge Furman and The Brookings Institute to refute.

Please click on the above link, and give it a crack. Tell me and my readers why GDP and warm fluffy thoughts would have mattered more than my allegedly cherrypicked data.

Citing GDP, the stock market, CEO confidence, and even increased air travel (things the average Joe does not give a damn about), the Brookings Institute could not figure out why sentiment is in the gutter.

I am pleased to report Jason Furman has figured this out.

In academic wonderland, if we do not tell people they are losing money to inflation, then they wouldn’t know.

And then they would have voted for Harris. And that’s why she lost.

I thought that 40% of the nation living paycheck-to-paycheck mattered. I thought negative year-over-year employment for the last nine months, except for government, mattered.

I thought that millions of people trapped in their homes unable to move, somehow mattered. And I thought millions of other people unable to buy a home (but let’s not call that inflation) mattered.

For more of my thoughts, please see Why Trump Won the Election in One Clear Picture

Please check it out and tell me where I went wrong.

Bottom line, Furman nailed it.

Harris lost because of the media. If only we would have told people they were better off than they were, people would have believed it.