Naming a deeply felt condition: Collapse Anxiety

Econometric numbers are mostly good. We fear it’s all about to crash down.

Surveys show many Americans think the economy is in bad shape. Mary Claire Evans of Gallup recently found poll results “consistent with the longer trend of negative public sentiment about the current and future American economy.”

This, despite historically low unemployment, strong second-quarter growth and moderating inflation.

Add a positive leading indicator that is easy to overlook, because it’s something that is not happening – there are no shortages of primary commodities. Fuel, food, medicine, electronic chips, metals, construction materials are in ample supply. This has not always been true, including the recent past.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Many judge the economy by gas prices. Adjusted to current dollars, through the last decade gas prices have fallen from $4.50 per gallon to $3.25. Adjusted to current dollars, gasoline costs about what it did in 1955.

And today’s gasoline is a superior product: lead and smog-forming pollutants are removed at the refinery level, “detergent” is added to keep fuel injectors clean, reducing the cost of tune-ups.

Because the United States went about 20 years without significant inflation, we’d begun to take no inflation for granted. When prices shot up in 2022 – a combination of supply chain issues and reckless federal borrowing, endorsed by both parties – inflation was a shock, and made it feel like something was out of whack.