Rabbit rabbit. Happy December everyone. One more month to go in 2024. That’s wild.
Let’s get into the recs for today:
1/ Are Americans’ perceptions of the economy and crime broken?
Take the economy. This spring, everyone was talking about the “vibecession.” Americans believed the economy was in the tank, despite loads of evidence showing the opposite. Just before Election Day, 54% of Americans surveyed said the U.S. was currently in a recession, versus only 30% who said it wasn’t. (It wasn’t and isn’t.) Americans feel quite good about their own financial situation, but they’re convinced the American economy writ large is in dire straits.
Fascinating when applied to the crime data shared in the article too. Post-pandemic Americans view things as far worse than the reality of the situations per data on crime.
People’s ability to evaluate crime relative to the trends has been completely broken. And it’s a new thing, in terms of the level of brokenness. Gallup just came out with its poll of people’s perceptions of crime. They found overall that 64% of people in 2024 said there was more crime than a year ago — which was down from 2023, when it was 77%. But the split is 29% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans say there was more crime now than there was a year ago, nationally.
2/ I’ve got three shows to recommend.