One of the things that should bother economists more than it seems to is the loud chorus of complaints about affordability. Since wage growth has consistently outpaced inflation for the last several years, especially for the lowest paid workers under Biden, it seemed things should be getting more affordable, not less.

I have seen the rejoinder that people are not paying attention to rising prices, the rate of inflation, they are upset that prices are high. This argument does not seem very convincing. In the 1980s, when inflation slowed from close to 10% at the start of the decade, to 3-4 percent in the middle of the decade, most people seemed pretty happy that inflation was back at a manageable level.

I don’t recall any accounts of anger because prices were still high. It seemed no one expected prices to fall back to their early 1970s levels, before inflation took off. To be clear, there surely were people who wanted to see prices fall back 30-40%, but these people and their unrealistic hopes were not highlighted in the media. Instead, the story was that inflation was down and things were good.

It seems unlikely that Americans think so much differently today than they did four decades ago. If they were fine with much higher prices, as long as inflation was down, back in the 1980s, I’m inclined to think this would also be the case today.

But consumers really do seem to be experiencing distress, quite apart from what the........

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