Years ago, I wrote an article called The Long Depression where I argued that instead of a bounce back from the 2008 crisis, we had never really recovered. If you say something like this on Twitter, 20 people will come out with charts and personal anecdotes as to why that is not the case. Unemployment is at historic lows, wages have started to grow coming out of the Pandemic, and median income is at the highest point in American history. Much of the increase in wages has come at the bottom of the market which gets into how people actually feel about the economy.
As in so many things, data only tells part of the story. The numbers can tell us that things are going along just fine but why aren’t people feeling this new wealth? Even before the Pandemic, when the economy was more healthy (in data terms) people were still feeling that the economy just wasn’t paying off for the average person. This is the great mystery of our time. It seems like the economy is doing well by the numbers but when you poll people or read their sentiment online, everyone seems to be grousing about the present economy.
Inflation, Deflation and You
Since the late 1970s, when Paul Volcker managed to break the price/wage inflation spiral that had plagued the economy since the end of Bretton Woods and a spike in energy prices, American’s enjoyed fairly low…
