“The majority of people still say that inflation has caused hardship for their families, so I think that’s really kind of underlying a lot of what we see, even though a lot of the macroeconomic numbers are pretty strong at this point,” Jones told WTOP.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to accurately determine the true state of the economy by looking at macroeconomic numbers alone. The modern economy is extremely complex, and that complexity is simply not captured in the GDP numbers, or the inflation figures, or the unemployment rate, etc. Behind each of those numbers are hundreds of millions of people, with different expectations.

I think this economy is just failing to meet a lot of people’s expectations, despite GDP growing and an unprecedented amount of wealth being created. I mean, maybe the economy will never be good enough, no matter how wealthy we all are. If the only way to be happy is to acquire more than you already have, you’re always going to be unhappy. I think that might explain why so many people are pessimistic about the economy even though the economic numbers are good.