It’s okay to be optimistic about the economy next year

I’m going to throw out a wild idea here: What if the economy is good in 2024? I know, I know, prices are still too high. Everybody hates everything so much that we’ve coined the term “vibecession.” The pandemic fallout is still reverberating. But hear me out — maybe it would be neat to head into the new year without all the doom and gloom.

There is a case for hope here. I mean, look at what happened in 2023. We came into the year with the lowest of expectations. Tons of economists, including some big names, thought a major downturn was inevitable in the United States. Many people were sure the Federal Reserve’s fight to get inflation down would mean a significant spike in unemployment; the logic was preordained. In fall 2022, Bloomberg ran a headline forecasting a 100 percent chance of a recession within a year.