With the widely-feared recession never materializing, U.S. GDP growing steadily and an unemployment rate of around 4 percent, it's hard to argue that the U.S. economy is not doing at least reasonably well. Add to that the fact that stock prices are near record highs and you'd think that Americans would be delighted about their country's resilience in the face of so many crises around the world. And yet, 46 percent of Americans describe current economic conditions as “poor” and more than 50 percent say they're worse off than they were four years ago, according to a recent Gallup poll. One of the main reasons for this dissonance is probably inflation, or, more accurately, what the past two and a half years of elevated inflation have left us with: high prices. Because despite inflation cooling to 2.4 percent or the lowest level since February 2021 in September, sticker shock is still real as many prices have not and probably won't come back down to pre-crisis levels.

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