{"id":7501,"date":"2015-04-23T06:18:25","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T11:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7501"},"modified":"2015-04-23T06:18:25","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T11:18:25","slug":"hopium-how-far-can-irrational-optimism-take-the-u-s-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7501","title":{"rendered":"Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/theeconomiccollapseblog.com\/archives\/hopium-how-far-can-irrational-optimism-take-the-u-s-economy\" target=\"_blank\">Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>If enough people truly believe that things will get better, will that actually cause them to get better?\u00a0 There is certainly something to be said for being positive and thinking that anything is possible.\u00a0 And as Americans, optimism seems to come naturally for us.\u00a0 However, no amount of positive thinking is ever going to turn the sun into a block of wood or turn the moon into a block of cheese.\u00a0 Any good counselor will tell you that one of the first steps toward recovery is to stop being delusional and to come to grips with how bad things really are.\u00a0 When we deny reality and engage in irrational wishful thinking, we are engaging in something called \u201chopium\u201d.\u00a0 This is a difficult term to define, but the favorite definition of hopium that I have come across so far\u00a0<a title=\"goes like this\" href=\"http:\/\/wordspy.com\/index.php?word=hopium\" target=\"_blank\">goes like this<\/a>: \u201c<span class=\"st\">The irrational belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, things will turn out for the best.\u201d\u00a0 In hundreds of articles, I have documented how the U.S. economy is mired in\u00a0<a title=\"a long-term decline\" href=\"http:\/\/theeconomiccollapseblog.com\/archives\/19-signs-that-american-families-are-being-economically-destroyed\">a long-term decline<\/a>\u00a0which is about to get a lot worse.\u00a0 But most Americans see things very differently.\u00a0 In fact, according to\u00a0<a title=\"a brand new \" href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2015\/04\/21\/news\/economy\/obama-economy-good-cnn-poll\/index.html?iid=HP_LN\" target=\"_blank\">a brand new\u00a0<\/a><\/span><a title=\"CNN\/ORC poll\" href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2015\/04\/21\/news\/economy\/obama-economy-good-cnn-poll\/index.html?iid=HP_LN\" target=\"_blank\">CNN\/ORC poll<\/a>, 52 percent of Americans describe the U.S. economy as \u201cvery\u201d or \u201csomewhat good\u201d, and more than two-thirds of all Americans believe that the U.S. economy will be in \u201cgood shape\u201d a year from right now.\u00a0 But if you asked most of those people why they are so optimistic, they would probably mumble something about \u201cObama\u201d or about how \u201cwe\u2019re Americans and we always bounce back\u201d or some other such gibberish.\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s wonderful that so many people are feeling good and looking forward to the future, but are those beliefs rational?<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy? If enough people truly believe that things will get better, will that actually cause them to get better?\u00a0 There is certainly something to be said for being positive and thinking that anything is possible.\u00a0 And as Americans, optimism seems to come naturally for us.\u00a0 However, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[236,1752,2149,353,4902,4903,4901,1426,655],"class_list":["post-7501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-economic-collapse","tag-economic-contraction","tag-economic-decline","tag-gdp","tag-hopium","tag-irrational-belief","tag-michael-snyder","tag-misinformation","tag-propaganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7502,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501\/revisions\/7502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}