The Economy Is Growing. Your Checkbook Didn’t Get the Memo.
There are few things more comforting than being told the economy is doing fine while standing at a gas pump watching the numbers spin like a slot machine that hates you.
The latest economic report says the nation’s gross domestic product grew at a 1.5 percent annual rate during the second quarter. That gives politicians and television economists a number they can point to with great enthusiasm.
See? Growth.
Meanwhile, your checking account is hiding behind the couch.
Tech Times reports that much of the strength in business investment came from the enormous buildout of artificial intelligence equipment. Investment in factories, commercial buildings, and other structures contracted again, while spending on computer and communications equipment kept the overall investment number above water.
AI may be useful. It may change medicine, manufacturing, education, and a hundred other things.
But AI is not a space heater.
It is not a gas card.
And unless somebody has made a remarkable breakthrough since breakfast, it is not groceries.
That is the gap policymakers need to confront honestly. An economy can look respectable in the national averages while millions of families are quietly deciding which payment gets pushed into next week.
Energy costs make that choice harder.
The Tech Times story cites warnings that higher gasoline and energy prices will continue draining household purchasing power through the end of the year, with lower-income families taking the hardest hit because energy consumes more of their budget.
Colorado families do not need an economic seminar to understand this.
As of August 2, AAA put Colorado’s average price for regular gasoline at $4.13 a gallon. That was up from $3.74 one month earlier and $2.98 one year earlier.
That is not an abstract percentage. For somebody driving to a job, hauling kids to practice, or covering long distances in rural Colorado, it is real money disappearing before it ever reaches the grocery store.
Electricity is not moving in the friendlier direction either. Federal data show Colorado’s average residential electricity price reached 16.16 cents per kilowatt-hour in May, up from 15.58 cents a year earlier. Xcel has also reached a proposed natural-gas settlement that would increase the average residential bill by $5.16 a month beginning in October, if regulators approve it.
None of this means the economy is collapsing. It does mean the report card is incomplete.
GDP measures production. It does not measure the conversation between two parents deciding whether the car repair can wait. It does not record the sigh when the utility bill arrives. It does not show which family bought less meat this week so the tank could be filled.
The accountable question is not whether economic growth exists.
It is whether our leaders are measuring prosperity honestly.
Investment matters. Innovation matters. AI may create extraordinary opportunities. But policymakers should not congratulate themselves over a sturdier spreadsheet while working families absorb every increase in fuel, power, food, and credit.
A healthy economy should eventually make ordinary life more manageable.
When the numbers say growth and the family checkbook says trouble, common sense says we had better look at both.
Source: Tech Times
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