American discontent
Gas prices x presidential disapproval, the happiness crash, unregistered adults don’t like whoever is in office, Craigslist and polarization, AI’s kitchen table boom
No. 397 | April 3, 2026
😡 America’s new age of discontent
Americans think the economy just plain sucks.
In 2024, you might have thought that electing Donald Trump would reset the public’s view of the economy back to what it was during Trump’s first term. After all, that’s people back then said they voted for. As I’ve noted before, there was reason to think this might work: economic perception rose sharply in the transition from Obama to Trump in 2016 and stayed pretty high throughout his first term—withstanding the shocks of the Covid pandemic.
That hasn’t happened this time.
A Reuters chart of economic approval over the last three presidencies drives the point home. Economic approval did briefly recover on Trump taking office in 2025 and then it quickly reset back to Biden-era levels. In the midst of the Iran war, it’s nosedived to a new low of 29% in their polling.
Even if inflation worries eventually subside, it seems likely that AI job loss anxiety will be next as the main narrative d…
