There’s something weird happening with the economy. On a personal level, most Americans say they’re doing pretty well right now. And according to the data, that’s true. Wages have gone up faster than inflation. Unemployment is low, the stock market is generally up so far this year, and people are buying more stuff.

现在的经济状况有些奇怪。在个人层面上，大多数美国人说他们现在做得很好。根据数据，这是真的。工资的增长快于通货膨胀。失业率很低，今年到目前为止股市普遍上涨，人们购买更多的东西。

And yet in surveys, people keep saying the economy is bad. A recent Harris poll for The Guardian found that around half of Americans think the S. & P. 500 is down this year, and that unemployment is at a 50-year high. Fifty-six percent think we’re in a recession.

然而在调查中，人们一直说经济很糟糕。哈里斯最近为《卫报》进行的一项民意调查发现，大约一半的美国人认为标准普尔500指数(s&p 500)今年会下跌，失业率处于50年来的最高水平。56%的人认为我们正处于经济衰退之中。

There are many theories about why this gap exists. Maybe political polarization is warping how people see the economy or it’s a failure of President Biden’s messaging, or there’s just something uniquely painful about inflation. And while there’s truth in all of these, it felt like a piece of the story was missing.

关于为什么会有这种差距，有很多理论。也许政治两极分化正在扭曲人们对经济的看法，或者是拜登总统的信息传递失败，或者只是通货膨胀带来了一些独特的痛苦。虽然所有这些都是真实的，但感觉好像缺少了一部分故事。

And for me, that missing piece was an article I read right before the pandemic. An Atlantic story from February 2020 called “The Great Affordability Crisis Breaking America .” It described how some of Americans’ biggest-ticket expenses — housing, health care, higher education and child care — which were already pricey, had been getting steadily pricier for decades.

对我来说，那缺失的部分是我在大流行之前读到的一篇文章。2020年2月的一个大西洋故事，名为“打破美国的巨大负担能力危机”，它描述了美国人的一些最大的费用——住房，医疗保健，高等教育和儿童保育——已经非常昂贵，几十年来一直在稳步上涨。
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At the time, prices weren’t the big topic in the economy; the focus was more on jobs and wages. So it was easier for this trend to slip notice, like a frog boiling in water, quietly, putting more and more strain on American budgets. But today, after years of high inflation, prices are the biggest topic in the economy. And I think that explains the anger people feel: They’re noticing the price of things all the time, and getting hammered with the reality of how expensive these things have become.

当时，价格并不是经济中的大话题，人们更多地关注就业和工资。因此，这种趋势更容易被忽视，就像一只在水中沸腾的青蛙，悄悄地给美国预算带来越来越大的压力。但如今，在经历了多年的高通胀之后，价格是经济中最大的话题。我认为这解释了人们的愤怒：他们一直在注意东西的价格，并被这些东西变得多么昂贵的现实所打击。

The author of that Atlantic piece is Annie Lowrey. She’s an economics reporter,, and also my wife. In this conversation, we discuss how the affordability crisis has collided with our post-pandemic inflationary world, the forces that shape our economic perceptions, why people keep spending as if prices aren’t a strain and what this might mean for the presidential election.

《大西洋月刊》的作者是安妮·劳瑞。她是一名经济学记者，也是我的妻子，在这次谈话中，我们讨论了负担能力危机如何与我们的后流行性通货膨胀世界发生冲突，塑造我们经济观念的力量，为什么人们继续消费，好像价格不是一种压力，以及这对总统选举可能意味着什么。