VOTING

According to an NBC poll conducted just before the 2024 elections, "...inflation and the cost of living was one of the issues that mattered most, far above threats to democracy, abortion or healthcare."

And because all the macroeconomic numbers were really good, Democrats should have won across-the-board, up and down the ballot. 

But they didn't.

The unemployment numbers were great. So were the economic growth numbers. And the inflation that peaked at 9.1 percent for one month was, according to the Federal Reserve, over before the election.

But Democrats didn't win.

They lost big, because they failed to understand the difference between macroeconomics and kitchen-table economics.

The macro inflation (measured by price indexes) may have been over, but what wasn't over were the high prices consumers were still paying, many of which had increased far more than the macro numbers implied. And it is those numbers - the kitchen table numbers - that voters cared about and Democrats ignored.

So they lost.

Of course, the kitchen-table numbers are not independent of the macro numbers. The media's focus on the macro idea of "inflation" is what brought out the price gougers who were responsible for the terrible kitchen-table numbers.

All of which means Democrats failed in two ways. They failed to show who was actually responsible for the macro inflation. And they failed to address kitchen-table economics by not making price gouging a cornerstone of the elections. 

And so we have The Price of Cheese: How Too Much Stupidity, Not Too Much Money, Caused An Inflation by Dennis Paulaha, a Ph.D. economist.