I was just as confused as you were when Trump was elected until I spoke to my mother in law. I told her how it made no sense to elect Trump when the economy was in great shape. "Just look at the numbers." She said, "it doesn't matter that everyone has a job and inflation has slowed, we can't afford to buy anything." That is the piece I was missing. There was no metric I was watching for, "can people afford the things they need." We need that metric to exist and focus heavily on that.

I think I was too focused on CPI and unemployment numbers, which I now believe are less useful ways of describing "can people buy things" because it completely ignores the actual issue of whether people can afford things or not. If prices keep going up, but wages are flat, less people can afford things. If housing prices go up, less people can afford things. If wages go up, housing goes down, CPI goes down, or any combination of those, then people can afford things. That is the answer