Everything about this economy says it should have crashed by now, but the S&P 500 keeps making record highs. If that gap has been driving you a little crazy, you are not imagining it. Interest rates have stayed high for years. The housing market is frozen at its slowest pace since 2011 as roughly 80% of homeowners stay locked into sub-3% mortgages they can't afford to give up. AI is erasing real jobs in real time. Companies announced more than 1.1 million layoffs in 2025, the most since the pandemic. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has climbed to around 5.6%. And a Stanford study by Erik Brynjolfsson's team found workers between 22 and 25 in the most AI-exposed jobs, such as software development, customer service, and accounting, have seen employment fall about 13% since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, with the latest data widening that gap to 19%. Entry-level white-collar work is the first rung of the ladder, and it is being sawed off. Watch the full breakdown of wha...