Five squeezes, one wallet: The pressures hitting U.S. consumers this week
American consumers are walking into the second week of May juggling a tighter set of trade-offs than at any point this year.
There’s a lot of palaver and caterwauling — much of it justified — about the state of the news business and the effect that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on what’s left of independent journalism.
Skeptics say AI may be able to jam words together quickly but won’t have the news judgment and experience to make important story selection decisions. So, in the spirit of journalistic inquiry, we’re putting it to the test, through our new lab site, ConsumerNews.ai. The first report just rolled out and there’ll be another one tomorrow … and tomorrow and …
It identified today’s top consumer stories as:
Gas prices and the Iran war;
Record credit card debt;
Groceries: eggs down, almost everything else up;
Health care: Obamacare retreat and rising premiums;
The cost of borrowing: cars and homes.
Full results here. Like what you see? Forward it to a friend.