Ezra Klein

That, yes, we had pandemic inflation, but aside from that, you know, two-year period, I mean, inflation in the 70s, in the 80s, it was just much, much, much higher, and people were much happier with the economy.

So how do you see the prices story?

I'm going to give because I've been thinking about this question lately and I have my own answer to it because I think some of these answers don't work.

And here's why.

So the vibes have been bad and getting worse.

And when I say the vibes here, I mean a measurable set of things about how people feel about the direction of the country, how they feel about the economy, how they feel about the future.

And a lot of – we can – people tend to look at that and move backwards to things that they have every right to be upset about and maybe have been for a long time.

But the social contract, so to speak, the safety net in the U.S., prior at least to the giant Medicaid cuts and Affordable Care Act increases that are coming into play this year –

It has been better here than it has been in the past.

So we have gotten closer to where Europe is, not further away.

There are more states where you get, you know, pre-K, more states where you get subsidized child care.

Absolutely.

But the vibes are worse.

They were worse in 2014, worse in 2016, worse in 2018.

I think that, first, you cannot separate this from attentional platforms.

I think that algorithmic media is negatively biased.

It is towards outrage, towards anger.

But if you just go on X, which you talked about is Elon Musk a steward, I think the thing he thinks he did—

that was important for the country was to buy Twitter and make it a zone of what he would call free speech so he could tell everybody all day

about the conspiracies that are obsessing him and about a declining fertility rate.