The litmus test for any difficult presidential election for a sitting party is the economy. The truth is, if you are the current president and the economy sucks, your chances of winning become more and more unlikely. 

While many of us care about the future of abortion, climate change, gun legislation, healthcare, civil rights and Social Security, Americans time and time again show that they care about their own wallets even more. In a country founded on liberal economics and individualist ideals, it makes sense.

So when Kamala Harris stepped up to bat as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, she was staring down the barrel of what many referred to as a “terrible economy.” Although the other option is a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, clear racist, misogynist and patronage peddler, people cared about their own financial situation even more. The economy “is bad,” so they voted for a felon.

But let’s take a step back and really think about the state of the nation. In a country whose average reading level isn’t above a sixth-grade level, our collective understanding of economic nuance fits on the back of a Target receipt. We must ask the question — was the economy really that bad? I mean, the price of eggs is $3.37 and the housing market is absurd. It feels like you can’t buy a new vehicle for less than $50,000.

Albert Einstein, whose theories admittedly go over the heads of many of us here at The Pitt News, introduced the theory of relativity into a scientific framework. But in a sense, Einstein’s theory of relativity explains that space and time form a unified fabric that bends in response to mass and energy, meaning the flow of time and the distance between objects depend on the observer’s motion and gravitational influences. Simply put, we need to understand that things are relative to one another. Context changes a situation that apparently millions of Americans cannot look past the surface level of.

Black Friday spending this year was up 20% from the year before across tax brackets. Job growth has averaged 217,000 per month since 2022 and small business applications have increased to 144,000 per month since 2022. Wages surpassed the annual inflation rate in 2023. The stock market is booming, likely to end the year with a 10% increase from the year before, which had also increased 23% from 2022 to make three straight years of gains. Unemployment rates hit 4.1% in Oct., down from the 8.1% high during the pandemic. In the summer of 2022, there was a four-decade-high inflation sitting at around 9%, but earlier this year the United States hit 3%.

And yet, the economy remained a top issue for voters in 2024.

Talking about relativity is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is easily understandable that things are still not great. The cost of living is exorbitantly high and federal minimum wage hasn’t increased since 2009. All of that sucks — it really does. It makes it hard to survive and live life as we want to. But we must also remember that nearly five years ago, we saw a pandemic. 

Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs, unemployment was at an all-time high, business slowed and many even shut down, international and domestic supply chains all but halted. We are five years out from a generational event that affected the economy tenfold, and under President Joe Biden’s administration, the United States is the fastest-improving economy in the world.

Looking at things relatively, we are doing pretty well. Yet we elected a man who has six bankruptcies and an insurrection under his belt to fix an economy that has been booming under a different guy. Pretty soon, consumers will face the brunt of his tariffs — a lose-lose situation for pretty much everyone involved except the business elite. Most Americans base their perceptions of the economy on their grocery receipts, gas prices and how it impacts their own wallet. Their expertise and willingness to research Trump’s policies stop before understanding that tariffs will steal the last bit of change left rattling around in their piggy banks.

Maybe it’s not that Americans don’t understand the economy — it’s that they understand just enough to panic but not enough to put things into perspective. And so, we find ourselves choosing leaders based on vibes and grocery bills rather than actual fiscal policy.

The Pitt News editorial is a weekly article written by the opinions editors in collaboration with all other desk editors. It reflects the collective opinion of the current Pitt News editorial staff.