What if things got cheaper overnight, but people still felt shitty about the future, and politics in America proceeded all but unchanged?

This is a question I’d like Democratic Party officials to mull as they begin building back power. Affordability is a fine political cudgel, but a terrible political crutch, because it doesn’t have a precise meaning, and because it’s genuinely unclear whether the outlook on life in America would improve if the price of goods and services dropped somewhat.

Democratic politicians are pummeling Republicans, and defeating them in elections, by promising to address America’s supposed “affordability crisis,” which their opponents have supposedly ignored. But to the extent voters actually expect Democrats to fix this supposed affordability crisis, tools are limited, and there’s no guarantee of voter gratitude on the other side.

Joe Biden’s economic policy entailed making things cost a bit more than they had, but simultaneously making most Americans richer, such that America became as affordable as it had ever been—and voters hated him for it. The lesson Democrats took from his experience is that making people richer—something policy can address—isn’t a surefire political remedy for the “affordability crisis.”

They have instead convinced themselves that pleasing constituents entails fiddling with the other half of the affordability equation—nominal prices. But here, policy isn’t blunt instrument. How do you make things cost less money? Policy can help indirectly and in discrete cases. When eggs are expensive because of bird flu, policymakers can prioritize ending the bird flu epidemic, and egg prices will fall. When health insurance is expensive, policymakers can subsidize it. But lowering sticker prices within the entire basket of goods can’t happen without inducing a recession (which would not be popular) or redenominating the dollar (which would be gimmickry).

And even if it weren’t such a thorny challenge, or an unwise goal, who’s to say how voters would feel about it? Would cheaper beef really make Americans feel better about the future? People get annoyed when the price of gasoline increase, but there’s no clear correlation between gas prices and election results, and in any case, when gas prices inevitably fall, voters don’t rejoice—they fixate on other issues. Politicians should endeavor to lower housing prices by facilitating construction for moral reasons, but do they actually think voters will be thrilled to see the value of homes fall?

I am concerned that Democrats have interpreted voters’ putative angst over the price of things too literally, and will thus pour all of their political capital into trying to make sticker prices fall, only to find themselves surprised and disappointed when voters aren’t notably grateful.

They should ask themselves, What might voters mean by this, if they aren’t being completely literal? People are upset at Donald Trump for all kinds of reasons, including his broken promise to make things cheaper. It does not follow from there that what voters want out of their political leaders is a price discount. But it does suggest that something about economic life in the United States is leaving people cold. If most Americans were pissed at Trump, but thrilled with their economic circumstances, it’d be weird for them to be complaining about prices.

One interpretation of survey data is that voters are sincerely unhappy about nominal prices and want those numbers to go down. Another is that this is purely memetic—voters repeating the things they think they’re supposed to say about why they’re dissatisfied with political leadership. But the truth could lie somewhere in between, and I suspect it does.

If that’s the case, what are the implications for politics? What could explain why Americans have developed a feeling of precariousness we’d normally associate with the worst of times, when—factually speaking—we are not living through the worst of times?

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RUN OF THE MILLENNIALS

It’s a question of mass psychology and I don’t know the answer, but my hypotheses all center on perceptions of economic liberty: That whether things are cheap or not, Americans don’t feel like hard work has procured them greater freedom.

This is distinct from the question of whether and how easily they can afford necessities and luxuries, but the sentiments are very similar. And if the correct diagnosis is somewhere in this neighborhood, the pertinent political questions shift away from nominal prices. We have to zoom out and consider what has fed this mass sentiment, and whether and how policy can address it.

Without falling prey to common myths about American economic life, I can think of a few historical realities that might affect subjective judgment on a mass scale. ...