The biggest issue Americans face is inflation, and the inevitable recession (depression?) that attempts to slow it will bring. From The Zman at thezman.com:
If you are over a certain age, something you will remember is that the economy used to be a central part of the daily news feed. People talked about the economy because it was always in the mass media. Of course, you had lots of news about finance, especially the stock market. This dovetailed with the stories about the federal budget and the resulting deficits. People used to talk about the federal debt because it was a number that was easy to conceptualize.
All of this has been pushed aside in favor of other topics now. Look at the front page of the New York Times on any day and the one thing you are not going to see is news about the debt or even the economy. Instead it is foreign affairs or perhaps a long story on the fight against Trumpism. The Washington Post is pretty much just a copy and paste operation, relying on press releases from government agencies. It is as if the economy and related topics no longer exist.
One reason people are not talking about the economy over lunch is the mass media has been told to drop it. The real power of corporate media is the power to ignore, which is what they have done with economics. When was the last time the New York Times did a big story on the finances of the government? There was a time when this was a stock feature. People used to know the size of the federal debt because it was a number that was made meaningful by the media.
