The Black Friday numbers are in and spending is up.

And yet, for some reason, people still feel poor.

So is economic anxiety driving people to socialism?

Welcome to the Reason Roundtable.

Happy Cyber Monday. I'm your host, Peter

Souterman. And today I am joined by Catherine Mangy Ward, Matt Welch, and Nick Gillespie.

All right. So, Catherine, I want to start with you here. There's all of these economic indicators

that show that people are richer than ever, that they're spending more than ever

on Black Friday, that, you know, in many ways, not all, but in many ways the economy is doing well.

And yet, economic anxiety is everywhere.

It is just driving so much of our politics and our discourse.

People seem to feel, if not quite poor, then unstable and uncertain about their future.

Why do people feel so poor if they're so rich?

They're rich, but their future is unstable and uncertain.

Like, people are right, actually.

And the reason for that is because of the political risk that is built into our economic system.

We have a bunch of idiots in charge of crucial

institutions and crucial industries, including and especially healthcare and education,

that are government actors who do what they want and who aren't responsive to economic

signals in the way that we would like them to be. So people are right, that they have money

now, and also that they can't count on that

money being worth as much as they think it will be, or they can't count on that money

...