Is It The Economy, Stupid?

This week the Federal Reserve announced another big interest-rate hike with full anticipation that it will cause the unemployment rate to climb. It’s the first good-for-workers economy in decades, and the Fed stands prepared to kill it, amid a national clamor over inflation. Is politics really as simple as “it’s the economy, stupid?” Or have we built a generation of conventional wisdom around a Goldilocks situation where the economy has to be juuuust so in order for consumers, voters, politicians, and the media to be happy with it? Are we responding to economic conditions as we experience them? Or are we just following the leads laid out for us by media figures and political leaders who can always point to passing problems like high gas prices, or even good problems like lots of job vacancies, and convince millions of people that things are actually bad? Economic sociologist and leader of the Groundwork Collaborative Lindsay Owens joins to discuss how helpful “it’s the economy, stupid” is when the economy is always a mess, and whether we can sustain an economy that works.