Government & Economy Are American’s Biggest Problems

For the fourth month in a row, Gallup found that Americans named the government as the biggest problem in the United States. Jobs and the economy tied for the second-most worrisome problems. Together, these three issues are the top concerns for almost 40% of Americans.

Though issues such as terrorism, healthcare, race relations and immigration have emerged among the top problems in recent polls, government, the economy and unemployment have been the dominant problems listed by Americans for more than a year.”

This should not be a surprise. It comes down to the public’s actual economic experience, as opposed to the government’s economic fairy tales.

While politicians paint a rosy jobs picture, it is clear that many members of the public don’t find the official unemployment rate of 5.6% reassuring. Based upon Gallup’s findings, Americans are no doubt struggling with the very problems that both Peter Schiff and the president of Gallup have publicly exposed. A preponderance of part-time jobs, the loss of full-time jobs, chronic underemployment, and workers dropping out of the job market altogether — these are the underlying facts that the official unemployment number completely obscures.

Joe Sixpack sits down to watch a few minutes of TV to relax, and what does he find? News about an economic recovery based upon government statistics. This doesn’t line-up with the fact that he has to get up early for the first of his two part-time jobs, while his wife just got laid off her full-time position she’d held for a decade.

Little wonder the American people no longer have faith in government. While the mainstream media would have you believe that the dream of steady, full-time employment is once again within the grasp of most citizens, the numbers say otherwise. Just compare the 5.6% unemployment rate to Gallup’s finding that 10% of Americans worry about jobs. Wouldn’t the numbers line up if the official statistics matched reality?

Public dissatisfaction doesn’t end with government and the country’s job situation. Gallup found that only 31% of Americans are satisfied with the direction of the US as a whole. This is another telling sign that people are waking up to economic realities. The S&P 500 has just grown 200% in six years. The last time the market did so well, in 1999, public satisfaction with the direction of the US peaked at 71%.

Satisfaction with the nation’s direction had declined in 2013 and 2014 after reaching 33% during the 2012 fall presidential campaign. Satisfaction reached an all-time low of 7% in late 2008 as the financial crisis was underway, and an all-time high of 71% in February 1999 amid the dot-com boom.”

The stock market is booming again. There’s an economic “recovery.” Why is public dissatisfaction less than half of what it was back in 1999? Perhaps average Americans are more attuned to the dangers of a stock market bubble than Wall Street traders. They’ve realized that only the financial elite — not regular citizens — benefit when the market grows wildly before crashing.

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