{"id":49243,"date":"2012-07-10T10:45:58","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T15:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=49243"},"modified":"2012-07-04T18:40:55","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T23:40:55","slug":"the-economy-is-lousy-over-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/07\/10\/the-economy-is-lousy-over-there\/","title":{"rendered":"The Economy is Lousy… Over There"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s familiar isn\u2019t so bad, even if it\u2019s bad.<\/p>\n

One of the things I remember from my days in the crim biz is that people\u2019s perceptions of crime don\u2019t have a lot to do with actual crime rates.\u00a0 This was back in the high-crime decades, and people were more afraid of crime than they are now.\u00a0 But people felt safer in their own neighborhoods than in other neighborhoods, even when their own neighborhoods had a higher crime rate.<\/p>\n

These were the days when I would give someone directions to my building — \u201cGet off the IRT* at 72nd St…\u201d — and they would often ask, \u201cIs it safe?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course it\u2019s safe.\u00a0 It\u2019s my neighborhood,\u201d I would say, \u201cI live here. I ought to know.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Yet when I would go to a party in the East 20s or, God forbid, Brooklyn, I would emerge from the subway and follow the directions with a certain sense of apprehension and caution.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the same link between far and fear holds true for people\u2019s perceptions of economic well-being.\u00a0 A recent\u00a0Gallup poll<\/a>\u00a0asked people how the economy was in places ranging from their own city or area to the world generally.\u00a0 The closer to home, the better the economy.\u00a0 The farther from home, the lower the percent of people rating economic conditions as excellent or good.\"\"<\/a>And the farther from home, the higher the percent of people rating economic conditions as \u201conly fair\u201d or poor.\"\"<\/a>Republicans were the most pessimistic about the economy, regardless of location.\u00a0 Democrats were the most sanguine, with Independents in between. The graph shows the percent who rated the economy positively minus the percent who rated it Poor.\"\"<\/a>This obviously has nothing to do with familiarity but with contempt.\u00a0 Apparently, for Republicans, a Democrat \u2013 especially a Kenyan socialist Democrat \u2013 in the White House means that the economy must be bad everywhere.<\/p>\n

* These old subway line designations \u2013 IRT, BMT, IND \u2013 are no longer in official use.\u00a0 But when did the MTA jettison them?\u00a0 If you know the answer, please tell me.<\/p>\n

———————<\/p>\n

UPDATE, June 22<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0Andrew Gelman<\/a>\u00a0has formatted the data as line graphs, making the comparisons and trends clearer.\u00a0 He has also added his own observations \u2013 things I wish I had known or thought of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. What\u2019s familiar isn\u2019t so bad, even if it\u2019s bad. One of the things I remember from my days in the crim biz is that people\u2019s perceptions of crime don\u2019t have a lot to do with actual crime rates.\u00a0 This was back in the high-crime decades, and people were more afraid of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,12498,85,37],"class_list":["post-49243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-politics","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49243"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49267,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49243\/revisions\/49267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}