If We’re Having An Economic Boom, Then Why Doesn’t It Feel Like It?
At present, a thrumming dissonance exists between what is being said about the economy and how the economy is actually being felt by large swathes of Americans. Essentially, a rift has opened up between the proclamations being announced on the national stage that cheerily suggest we are in excellent times and the cloudier, murkier reality of Main Street.
Favorable economic indicators such as historically low unemployment, upticks in GDP growth, and a roaring stock market are frequently showcased in the news of late but fall somewhat flat. Why? They fail to capture the full, three-dimensional reality of American economic life as most of the country lives it.
And most of the country isn’t exactly experiencing the so-called economic boom — or if they are, the effects are tepid and somewhat conflicted. Economic indicators don’t always capture the whole truth, and we’ll get to why in a second.
Additionally, there is a spirit of brooding in the public air, a dark, coiled energy — the charred psychological remains, perhaps, of the Great Recession. People are not so much pessimistic as they are uncertain; they are not so much fatalistic as they are tense, edgy. This mass psychic orientation on the economy is more influential than is usually realized and thus, tends to be somewhat…
