A Modest Proposal for 2026

2025 was quite the year.

I’ll let you be the sole interpreter of that phrase.

Year-in-review recaps and predictions for 2026 are everywhere. Depending on your news feed—and its built-in biases—things may look either terrific or terrible, with very little room in between.

Oxford University Press even named “rage bait” its 2025 Word of the Year – content designed to provoke outrage and keep you scrolling. Sensationalism sells. Calm statistics rarely do.

Seneca, the Roman philosopher, had a simpler way to think about it:

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

So how much is our economy actually suffering?

The picture isn’t all bad.

Prices aren’t rising as fast as before, which means paychecks are starting to stretch further and things should slowly feel more affordable in 2026.
Jobs remain plentiful, and when people are working, they tend to spend—keeping the economy moving.
As inflation cools, interest rates are likely to come down, making big purchases like homes and cars more accessible.
Recent and upcoming tax cuts may leave households and businesses with more money to spend or invest.

So, is our collective suffering and rage clicking warranted?

There will be bumps ahead. There always are. An AI bust or market downturn could affect portfolios. But a shaky stock chart isn’t the same as a ruined life. We’ve lived through sharp downturns—and even a global pandemic—and most people eventually adapted.

Seneca’s point still holds – fear and imagination often hurt more than reality itself.

I think I like John Lennon’s perspective best:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

Can we please make a collective decision to put down the “rage bait,” see life for what it is, and find happiness?

I bet we can!

Happy 2026,
Barbara

January 4, 2026

Sources:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/12/30/americas-affordability-crisis-is-mostly-a-mirage
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/quote-of-the-day-by-seneca-we-suffer-more-often-in-imagination-than-in-reality/articleshow/126156772.cms?from=mdr
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/quote-of-the-day-by-john-lennon-my-mother-always-told-me-that-happiness-was-the-key-to-life-and-/articleshow/126137048.cms?from=mdr#google_vignette

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