If the feed and the table disagree, I keep the table.

I judge an economy by what people can actually do with their time and money. Not by the mood of the timeline.

Prices are how scattered knowledge gets used. Override them and you are not being kind. You are flying blind. A loss that never lands is not compassion. It is a subsidy paid by someone who did not make the bet.

Capitalism is just the least-bad name for that rule: private property, voluntary exchange, and losses that land on the people who made the bad bet. It is not a promise that everyone gets rich. It is a rule that no one gets to spend your life for you.

Sowell is the writer I keep. Constrained vision starts from limited knowledge and imperfect people, so it looks for trade-offs. Unconstrained vision starts from what the brightest minds could design, so it looks for solutions. There are no solutions, only trade-offs.

That is the rule behind the Census post and this morning’s mortgage reply. 2025 real median income hit $87,460. Official poverty 10.2%. Housing, insurance, and energy are still the leftover problem. The leftover is in the table too.