Opinion pieces and speeches by EPI staff and associates.

[THIS PIECE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT HUFFINGTON POST ON JULY 6, 2008.]

The Antidote to Our Pessimism: Change

By Jared Bernstein

In decades of tracking such sentiments, I’ve never seen people so pessimistic about the economy. And remember, we haven’t even had a quarter of contracting GDP yet.

Of course, rising gas prices, the deteriorating job market, and paychecks that are barely making it past gas and groceries are the major drivers of these poll results. But they’re not the whole story. Well before gas prices spiked, majorities were telling pollsters that something fundamental was wrong in the economy, and that it had to do with the fact that most of the folks who were baking the economic pie were ending up with thinner slices.

Read the rest of this piece here.

Jared Bernstein is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

[POSTED TO VIEWPOINTS ON JULY 31, 2008.]