Questionable indicators…

The cool thing to do now is bitch and complain that inflation has made everything too expensive. Social media is full of discussions about the cost of everything. It’s one of the news media’s favorite topics when they have a few extra minutes or column inches to fill. I can’t remember the last time I went a day without seeing at least one passing reference to inflation and “out of control prices.”

Everyone is bitching that everything is too expensive, but every time I leave the house, I find that the shops are packed. The restaurants are packed. The roads are packed. There are scads of people crawling all over everything from morning til night. It doesn’t feel like the kind of behavior you’d see if everyone was trying to watch their pennies.

I’m left to wonder if it’s just the “very online” people who are broke (or at least keeping the narrative alive), because the sentiment isn’t matching my lived experience and personal observations. Given that Cecil County isn’t exactly an economically well-off region you’d think it’s something that should be noticeable. Maybe it’s just me being unreasonable, but it seems to me if there’s no money and everything is too damned expensive, more people would stay home.

It feels like consumer sentiment might just be a shit economic indicator. Chalk it up to another reason why I just don’t trust people as a group. I’ll be a lot more worried about the economy when people stop buying $1000 cell phones and I don’t have to wait in a line ten people deep at the local fast food spot.