Americans are far too pessimistic about the future

The start of the new year is often a time of optimism. But look at surveys from the past few months and you will find that strikingly high numbers of Americans — sometimes around three-quarters of those polled — think America is on the wrong track. This profound sense of despair is perplexing because I don’t find much objective data to support it.

The U.S. economy grew an astonishing 5.2 percent in the third quarter of 2023, and the International Monetary Fund expects growth for last year to be 2.1 percent, which is substantially better than other advanced Western economies such as Canada, Germany and Britain. Inflation is dropping sharply, real wages are up and manufacturing employment is experiencing a boom. It is hard to find another country where so many measures are pointing in the right direction.

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