Everyone is Frolicking But Me
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why we feel bad when things are okay-ish
kyla scanlon
52
17
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itâs a protective mechanism
A non-Recession Recession (a mild economic recession with a big drop in asset prices). A jobful Recession . (jobs but things are bad?) Perchance, a vibecession .
In general, the idea that things are relatively okay, but not okay enough to be labeled capital-O-Okay. Itâs good enough, but not great. I even gave a presentation at Bloomberg Live yesterday about it - this concept of a moderate, reasonable, fine, passable, economy, and how⌠bad that can feel.
Things are decent, but I am doubtful, therefore, everything is dire.
This quote from a member of Congress about the debt ceiling is really poignant - this idea that we are âonly measuring success on how much we lostâ broadly applies to the entire economy.
My feelings on the debt ceiling are well-known - but I think when we have policy in place like this, policy that is regret minimization rather than goodness maximizing - like of course, things are going to feel dire.
Itâs a form of loss aversion bias.
People hate not having things
They tend to focus more on what could disappear rather than what could be gained.
This, of course, applies to markets - âit will go up again broâ is the rallying cry of many bagholders. But whatâs sort of funny about loss aversion bias is there is success right? Like there is some element of hope, of things being okay once again. It just comes an inverted package.
Tired Tropes
Harry tweeted this yesterday (he dmâed me to say it isnât his opinion but rather that of the recruiters but) I find this take so tiring and so old and so useless and so looped. Every generation ever has complained about those younger than them not working hard and being lazy and whatever.
Itâs sort of like being the older sibling.
You watch your younger sibling frolic around after you feel like you just did all this work for them to be able to frolic with such bliss, and the question you keep asking yourself is âwell, when is it my turn to frolic? >:-( I would also like to roll around in a field of daisies? What about me, and my Feelings?â
This old and tired and useless trope of âpeople donât want to work anymoreâ is like that too. A lot of people want to frolic! And they feel like they canât. The subsequent sentiment that carries is a thematic that can be applied to the economy at large.
Where is my Frolic?
People are mostly fine! Indeed, some might even say that people are somewhat frolicking.
But if you donât feel like you can frolic, are you frolicking at all?
And to be clear, nothing ever exists in a binary. There are some flashing red bells in terms of the speed at which some are becoming decidedly less unfine , but across the board things are relatively okay-ish, which is something to celebrate . As Felix Salmon wrote
"Americans [are] broadly happy with their own personal finances, but a majority consistently thinks (erroneously) that we're in a recession, and just 18% think the national economy is in good shape"
We arenât in a Recession
1
! Jobs were
good
! Economy is humming along! Inflation is sort of going down!
And people tend to see that in their own lives (hey, Iâm doing decent)
But then they look outside to the âah yes, letâs waste the equivalent of 5 years of spending for the National Park Service on something stupid that doesnât need to existâ debacle that is Americaâs political hellscape
Like of course the vibes are off!
But we also have no concept of measurement.
The Best Answer is I Donât Know
Adam Mastroianni wrote a paper on The Illusion of Moral Decline on the idea that many people have that people (morally) are getting worse (they arenât) -
And look, itâs fine to have strong opinions about things that you know nothing aboutâthatâs kind of what the internet is for. But itâs not fine when those strong opinions lead to demands for actual changes in the world. If you think that morality is declining, then you must think that some switch has been flipped in society, causing it to produce worse humans⌠the trend doesnât exist. Itâs like activating the sprinkler system in a building thatâs not on fire.
And thatâs so much of everything!
Everything is terrible, but Iâm fine , as Derek Thompson says - and this really complicates policy that could make the âeverything is terribleâ part get better
Because most Americans say theyâre personally fine, they might resist too much experimentation. This creates a confusing voting bloc, which is constantly angry about the state of things, but also fundamentally conservative about any change that overturns their ârather happyâ life and âat least okayâ finances.
Iâve written about doomer (Adam wrote about it too - â[crying fire is what] aspiring despots do, by the way: they cry catastrophe as a way of justifying their extreme measures. âThings are going to hell, but make me king and Iâll fix it all.â) and how our brains just love love love looping around big scary things - especially when its amplified by social media! Yes! Make it all feel bad.
And just to be incredibly clear, there are things to be feel bad about
Student loan payments could be restarting
NYC (where I am right now) is yellow and thatâs bad for our brains (funnily enough, I was also in Denver and LA when they were yellow too from wildfires)
Real wages are being squeezed by inflation
Service sector indicators are slumping
Big pharma manages to get even goofier and more evil
Homes are expensive
The share of adults who said they were worse off financially than a year earlier rose to 35% the highest level since the Fed survey on economic well-being asked this question in 2014
Okay we get it
And this is usually when I would say something like âbut listen everyone, there are also so many things to feel good about - jobs, inflation going down, economy mostly surprisingly somehow okay - but I think that again, this line from Adam encapsulates so much -
Itâs very easy to feel like you know something about the past without actually knowing anything about the past. I just showed you data from more than 500,000 people who were asked whether morality has declined, and virtually none of them said âGosh, I donât know.â But for them, that was the right answer. Â They don't know. It took us years and another 12 million people to come up with even a halfway decent answer, which is âprobably not.â And yet an answer came to everyoneâs minds effortlessly, and they were happy to share it, and even to back it up when we asked them more about it. The past is a foreign country , but we all have the vivid delusion that weâve lived there for a long time and know everything about it.
And thatâs sort of the deal. We just donât know.
What we are doing is a protective mechanism of sorts, a way to say âwell if things do get bad, I never got my hopes up that they would be goodâ which is a completely reasonable way to exist.
We tend to confuse uncertainty for badness sometimes (and we live in a highly uncertain world) I do this a lot - if I feel like I donât know what to do about something, itâs way easier to catastrophize and say âwell clearly, this is apocalypticâ rather than reasonably assess that uncertainty usually just means I donât have the answer - not that the answer itself is bad.
But when have things like tired tropes (this youngins suck and I am not going to support their career journey) and complete fabrication of what data is saying in order to spew some narrative or pump some bag (ahem #1 and #2 ) thatâs when things begin to feel worse - the uncertainty doesnât become something that can be wrangled into goodness, it becomes something choking us into badness.
So when we look around at the gaps between theory and data and reality, a lot of it is that. Uncertainty! Social media! Loud tweeters! There is a margin of error that has to be built in for the i-donât-really-know (tough in the age of infinite knowledge) but itâs something to keep in mind when we look at sentiment or have broader discussions on How Things Are. People are uncertain, that uncertainty turns to fear, fear is scary, and thatâs how we end up where we are.
I feel like Iâve been shouting about this dogmatic for the past several newsletters, so I plan to shift course soon but yeah. Itâs just sort of the theme. And itâs hard to not bump into it.
Thanks for reading.
Other Things
Corporate Profits Contributed a Lot to Inflation in 2021 but Little in 2022 | Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2022 | USD dominance | Kafkaâs diaries | A (very short) history of global reserve currencies | How Firms Set Prices | Aliens?
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
1
This isnât to say that we will never go into a Recession ever (it seems we are teetering a tightrope) but at least right now, we arenât
52
17
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why we feel bad when things are okay-ish. kyla scanlon. 52. 17. Share. itâs a protective mechanism. A non-Recession Recession (a mild economic recession with a big drop in asset prices). A jobful Recession . (jobs but things are bad?) Perchance, a vibecession . In general, the idea that things are relatively okay, but not okay enough to be labeled capital-O-Okay. Itâs good enough, but not great. I even gave a presentation at Bloomberg Live yesterday about it - this concept of a moderate, reasonable, fine, passable, economy, and how⌠bad that can feel. Things are decent, but I am doubtful, therefore, everything is dire. This quote from a member of Congress about the debt ceiling is really poignant - this idea that we are âonly measuring success on how much we lostâ broadly applies to the entire economy. My feelings on the debt ceiling are well-known - but I think when we have policy in place like this, policy that is regret minimization rather than goodness maximizing - like of course, things are going to feel dire. Itâs a form of loss aversion bias. People hate not having things. They tend to focus more on what could disappear rather than what could be gained. This, of course, applies to markets - âit will go up again broâ is the rallying cry of many bagholders. But whatâs sort of funny about loss aversion bias is there is success right? Like there is some element of hope, of things being okay once again. It just comes an inverted package. Tired Tropes. Harry tweeted this yesterday (he dmâed me to say it isnât his opinion but rather that of the recruiters but) I find this take so tiring and so old and so useless and so looped. Every generation ever has complained about those younger than them not working hard and being lazy and whatever. Itâs sort of like being the older sibling. You watch your younger sibling frolic around after you feel like you just did all this work for them to be able to frolic with such bliss, and the question you keep asking yourself is âwell, when is it my turn to frolic? >:-( I would also like to roll around in a field of daisies? What about me, and my Feelings?â This old and tired and useless trope of âpeople donât want to work anymoreâ is like that too. A lot of people want to frolic! And they feel like they canât. The subsequent sentiment that carries is a thematic that can be applied to the economy at large. Where is my Frolic? People are mostly fine! Indeed, some might even say that people are somewhat frolicking. But if you donât feel like you can frolic, are you frolicking at all? And to be clear, nothing ever exists in a binary. There are some flashing red bells in terms of the speed at which some are becoming decidedly less unfine , but across the board things are relatively okay-ish, which is something to celebrate . As Felix Salmon wrote. "Americans [are] broadly happy with their own personal finances, but a majority consistently thinks (erroneously) that we're in a recession, and just 18% think the national economy is in good shape" We arenât in a Recession. 1. ! Jobs were. good. ! Economy is humming along! Inflation is sort of going down! And people tend to see that in their own lives (hey, Iâm doing decent) But then they look outside to the âah yes, letâs waste the equivalent of 5 years of spending for the National Park Service on something stupid that doesnât need to existâ debacle that is Americaâs political hellscape. Like of course the vibes are off! But we also have no concept of measurement. The Best Answer is I Donât Know. Adam Mastroianni wrote a paper on The Illusion of Moral Decline on the idea that many people have that people (morally) are getting worse (they arenât) - And look, itâs fine to have strong opinions about things that you know nothing aboutâthatâs kind of what the internet is for. But itâs not fine when those strong opinions lead to demands for actual changes in the world. If you think that morality is declining, then you must think that some switch has been flipped in society, causing it to produce worse humans⌠the trend doesnât exist. Itâs like activating the sprinkler system in a building thatâs not on fire. And thatâs so much of everything! Everything is terrible, but Iâm fine , as Derek Thompson says - and this really complicates policy that could make the âeverything is terribleâ part get better. Because most Americans say theyâre personally fine, they might resist too much experimentation. This creates a confusing voting bloc, which is constantly angry about the state of things, but also fundamentally conservative about any change that overturns their ârather happyâ life and âat least okayâ finances. Iâve written about doomer (Adam wrote about it too - â[crying fire is what] aspiring despots do, by the way: they cry catastrophe as a way of justifying their extreme measures. âThings are going to hell, but make me king and Iâll fix it all.â) and how our brains just love love love looping around big scary things - especially when its amplified by social media! Yes! Make it all feel bad. And just to be incredibly clear, there are things to be feel bad about. Student loan payments could be restarting. NYC (where I am right now) is yellow and thatâs bad for our brains (funnily enough, I was also in Denver and LA when they were yellow too from wildfires) Real wages are being squeezed by inflation. Service sector indicators are slumping. Big pharma manages to get even goofier and more evil. Homes are expensive. The share of adults who said they were worse off financially than a year earlier rose to 35% the highest level since the Fed survey on economic well-being asked this question in 2014. Okay we get it. And this is usually when I would say something like âbut listen everyone, there are also so many things to feel good about - jobs, inflation going down, economy mostly surprisingly somehow okay - but I think that again, this line from Adam encapsulates so much - Itâs very easy to feel like you know something about the past without actually knowing anything about the past. I just showed you data from more than 500,000 people who were asked whether morality has declined, and virtually none of them said âGosh, I donât know.â But for them, that was the right answer.  They don't know. It took us years and another 12 million people to come up with even a halfway decent answer, which is âprobably not.â And yet an answer came to everyoneâs minds effortlessly, and they were happy to share it, and even to back it up when we asked them more about it. The past is a foreign country , but we all have the vivid delusion that weâve lived there for a long time and know everything about it. And thatâs sort of the deal. We just donât know. What we are doing is a protective mechanism of sorts, a way to say âwell if things do get bad, I never got my hopes up that they would be goodâ which is a completely reasonable way to exist. We tend to confuse uncertainty for badness sometimes (and we live in a highly uncertain world) I do this a lot - if I feel like I donât know what to do about something, itâs way easier to catastrophize and say âwell clearly, this is apocalypticâ rather than reasonably assess that uncertainty usually just means I donât have the answer - not that the answer itself is bad. But when have things like tired tropes (this youngins suck and I am not going to support their career journey) and complete fabrication of what data is saying in order to spew some narrative or pump some bag (ahem #1 and #2 ) thatâs when things begin to feel worse - the uncertainty doesnât become something that can be wrangled into goodness, it becomes something choking us into badness. So when we look around at the gaps between theory and data and reality, a lot of it is that. Uncertainty! Social media! Loud tweeters! There is a margin of error that has to be built in for the i-donât-really-know (tough in the age of infinite knowledge) but itâs something to keep in mind when we look at sentiment or have broader discussions on How Things Are. People are uncertain, that uncertainty turns to fear, fear is scary, and thatâs how we end up where we are. I feel like Iâve been shouting about this dogmatic for the past several newsletters, so I plan to shift course soon but yeah. Itâs just sort of the theme. And itâs hard to not bump into it. Thanks for reading. Other Things. Corporate Profits Contributed a Lot to Inflation in 2021 but Little in 2022 | Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2022 | USD dominance | Kafkaâs diaries | A (very short) history of global reserve currencies | How Firms Set Prices | Aliens? Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. 1. This isnât to say that we will never go into a Recession ever (it seems we are teetering a tightrope) but at least right now, we arenât. 52. 17. Share. Previous.