Matt Elson

or at least in the history of recording consumer sentiment.

This is the University of Michigan survey.

And yet, when you do look at the underlying data, the situation isn't that everyone's doing great in America, but it's certainly not the case that everyone's doing worse off from a purely numbers perspective right now than they were...

at previous times, during depressions, during recessions.

I mean, we look at the unemployment rate.

We do know that wages are growing.

Yes, inflation is growing too, and it's very tight.

But this isn't the worst time ever, but people feel that way.

And so I guess the question I would pose to you, Ben, and then I'd like Ramit's perspective, what do you think has changed in the past couple of years, say?

Because that seems to be where it started to get really bad.

Where does the pandemic sit in that?

Because you're right.

It does seem as though the pandemic happened.

It suddenly reset expectations on everything.

But I'm not sure exactly why that necessarily means that suddenly we feel worse about everything.

Like, on the one hand, I would also think that maybe we feel better.

We went through this crazy year.

We suddenly learned the beautiful nature of getting together with people.

We started to appreciate things.

But that's not what happened.