Unemployment is down, wages are up, and business is growing, a bit, the economists tell us.
So why are so many Americans voting for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, who yell that this nation is heading in the wrong direction, fast and hard?
Because there's not enough prosperity, or belief in it, to go around.
Trump and Sanders are winning votes with retreads of familiar arguments from lost elections: that free trade costs Americans factory jobs, that politicians help rich donors and lobbyists, and that neither party cares to solve basic problems such as hospital and school costs, rundown roads, terrorism and cybersecurity, and immigration.
More in my column in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, see also Comments.