Everything is going just great, they say, unless you are among the troglodytes who desire plentiful and low-priced energy, food, housing, and overall human thriving. Once you understand the beautiful world on the other side of the "transition"—to use the favorite word of the White House—you would see this suffering as actually beneficial in the long run.

These broken eggs are making omelets.

We can argue all day about the definition of recession, but it doesn't take us to the intellectual place we need to be. The bottom line is that what we are experiencing now includes anomalies from previous downturns precisely because it is much worse. Only a few months ago, many worried that we were going back to the 1970s. That box has been checked. Then, we worried we were going back to the 1930s. My fear is that we might wish that were true.

The White House talks about the low technical rate of unemployment without referencing the falling labor participation rates that never recovered from lockdowns because so many people just left the workforce. Millions of previously employed Americans are living off legacy largesse from families or tapping plentiful unemployment benefits just to get by month to month. Real wages and salaries have been slammed, savings rates are sinking, and credit card debt is exploding.